You must log in or register to comment.
ac is fine i guess
It’s like money: Having it isn’t everything, but not having it is.
How is AC being a game changer surprising?? When it is hot I see my contacts in the UK sitting with icepacks in their laps or with fans all around them spraying themselves with water. Imagine if the whole room was just a tolerable temperature, it isn’t hard to picture. Seems odd.
(Yes I get it just isn’t a thing there and they have buildings older than time itself…but still…)
My house always is cool anyway - it’s well-insulated so heat doesn’t come in unless I open a window, and I open the windows every evening when it’s cool outside.
Air conditioning would just waste energy and increase humidity
Lots of places in the US don’t even get to a comfortable temperature at night. Right now I’m in Pennsylvania which is pretty far north and the lowest it’s going to get tonight is 80F with 80% humidity. It was 100F today with the same humidity. I actually got sick at work from it.
Damn, I didn’t expect it to be that bad outside of the southern states.
I’m currently getting ~30°C peak but about 15°C at night. We only have a few nights every year that reach 20°C. Austria.
Honestly, for me a reason why humans shouldn’t live in such places. For the Europeans here (that have not much clue of weird American units):
80 F = 26.667 C
100 F = 38 C
So you’re trying to say most of North America is uninhabitable? I’m in North Carolina, the temperature and relative humidity were in the 90’s yesterday. It’s July.
I mean it’s thanks to modern technology not uninhabitable, but we’re “wasting” a lot of energy to make it habitable, and this is getting worse in the future, because of climate change. I couldn’t imagine living somewhere where, I can’t get out (of AC cooled buildings) because it’s too hot.
People live there for many thousand years now and most of the time without ACs. It is defintly inhabitable. We “waste” the energy to make it comfortable.
Considering the energy we “waste” to make most of Europe inhabitable on the other hand… And here it really is about “inhabitable”, because without heating we couldn’t live in e.g. Germany.
If we only lived in areas where it would be comfortable without heating and ACs we’d have to kill of 90% of humanity.
True, there’s a lot of heating necessary to make life comfortable in Europe (but also in USA btw. probably even more, because I’d say the standards for insulation are better in Europe, and temperatures are more extreme more in the center of the continent).
But it’s absolutely possible to live without (most of) the heating, by:
- Using passive solar energy (even in the winter) + good insulation
- Clothing! There are ways to help with heat too via evaporation chill though (I’m just sitting here with a cooling west, because I easily overheat, and that makes my life quite bit more comfortable in summer without AC, even or especially outside)
Though as you correctly notice, the combination of high temperature and humidity is what potentially creates a dangerous climate for life, even with things such as cooling wests in “low” high temperatures (within 30-40C), because evaporation chill stops working, so there are times and places, and these times and places will get more frequent where humans can’t survive outside (without some serious technological counter-measures) while with cold temperatures you can always wear (somewhat specialized) clothing.
Evaporation chill does work even with quite high temperatures, but at some point (and I do think there are places that reach that point), the quite effective human cooling system is not able to catch up anymore (I think somewhere around 50+C IIRC).
25º during summer nights either already was or is going to become normal around gigantic areas of the world. Getting all Indians to just live anywhere else is never going to be plausible.
I didn’t say it’s realistic to move that much people around the globe, it did grow like that historically, but I do think, that migration because of this is becoming a sociodemographic and political problem in somewhere near the future. And is already somewhat in areas that are less wealthy and instable politically (e.g. northern Africa).
26? It’s pretty warm, but not too hot.
Over night, with 80% humidity? Are you sure? I’d be close to hospital with that temperature without some kind of AC, or at the very least ventilation… (I’m sensitive to heat). And sleeping with that temperature even with ventilation is going to be very uncomfortable and not relaxing…
Also we’re talking about lows, so this is likely not the temperature inside when there’s no AC, more like 30+C
https://meteoinfo.ru/pogoda/russia/moscow-area/moscow
80%, 20°C at 10.07 01:00
I’d be close to hospital with that temperature without some kind of AC, or at the very least ventilation… (I’m sensitive to heat).
Then you certanly need ventilation or AC. I just have window open.
The temperature is not a big problem imo. The humidity though.
Temperature is absolutely a problem. Without getting too deeply technical, a heat index above 99F/37C is dangerous even for healthy adults. Las Vegas this week has seen temperatures up to 120F. The forecast today is for a temperature high of 118F/48C (low of 90F/32C overnight), with a relative humidity of 8%. That works out to be a heat index of 111F/44C.
Where I am, today’s high will be 82F, but humidity is sitting at 90%, which is a heat index of 92F.
You can also look at wet bulb temperatures; at a certain point, your body can’t cool fast enough through evaporative cooling, and you’ll die from heat.
I lived through dry summers around 40°C without ACs without a problem my whole 40+ years of life. But 30°C with a high humidity is a different thing. Much comes down to being accustomed to things though naturally. I have friends who grew up in southern China who get problems when the heat is dry.
But people live in areas that get 35+°C every year for several month since the beginning of humanity itself.
deleted by creator
Air condition decreases humidity.
Yeah and that is my problem with them. I often get a sore throat when in airconditioned rooms, especially in smaller rooms. But it is not as bad as it used to be. Don’t know if my body changed or the ACs became better.
Then you can add humidity
Oh? My workplace has one of these that you fill with water that then cools the water and very slowly sprays it into the air, mixed with air of course. Works well to make the room cooler, but even in the manual it says that it shouldn’t be running all the time because the increased humidity can cause mold.
So which kind of air conditioning are you using?
(and even when it decreases humidity the other reasons still stand)
Also if room is too humid it stops working
That’s not air con, that’s a swamp cooler. Air-conditioning works by the same mechanism your fridge does. And the cool coils condense water vapour in the air, thus reducing humidity.
Haha holy shit…they thought THAT WAS AC?
This right here is the bare minimum as to why education is so important.
Just so you know, there are places where people live differently from you.
Would you expect the same level of knowledge about keeping a house warm at the equator? Because I’d argue you need to better your education if you do.
I’m living in an area where AC is completely unnecessary. About +15°C in warm summer nights (that’s when I open my windows to let fresh air in), +30°C peak but all houses here are well-insulated (they have to be because of winter).
Of course it’s different in the USA, you have higher temperatures and don’t insulate your houses (a well-insulated house keeps its temperature: it stays warm in winter and cool in summer).
Interesting, thanks.
Air-conditioning works by the same mechanism your fridge does.
Boiling-cold)
I just got hit by beryl, it is hell on earth here right now. Now power for two days so far with temps arouns 90-95 f andn%100 humidity. Sleeping is now considered a water sport and no ac in sight.
The worst part? You cant cool off even with a fan, there’s too much humidity forntour sweat to evaporate and cool you. I wish i at least had cold drinks
Leave
Easier said than done for most
Yeah, some parts of the US recently experienced something called a wet bulb event. Basically, that’s a phenomenon where the heat and humidity are both so high that your body’s natural cooling mechanism (sweating) stops working entirely and people will overheat simply by being outside. No amount of shade or cool drinks will help, because your body’s primary cooling mechanism has been defeated.
Basically, sweat works by evaporating. When water evaporates, it takes heat with it. This allows sweat to cool you down as it dries. To be able to accurately determine what the temperature feels like, you can’t just use a regular dry thermometer. You need to use something called a wet bulb thermometer. This is basically a thermometer with some wet cotton wrapped around it, to simulate sweat. As the wet cotton dries, it creates a more accurate gauge of what the ambient temperature feels like, the same way sweat cools you.
But a wet bulb event is when the wet bulb thermometer reads above 95°F. At that point, it means the cotton isn’t drying fast enough to cool a person down. At this point, the temperatures are dangerous even to fit and healthy individuals in the shade with fans and cool drinks. Because a breeze won’t even cool you down when it’s that hot outside; A fan will actually heat you up even faster, because the air is adding heat faster than evaporative cooling can remove it.
That is basically life down here from may to september lol
Nah, true wet bulb events are pretty rare. With a wet bulb event, you overheat even while sitting still in the shade with a breeze. Because again, you’ve reached the point where a breeze is actually warming you up instead of cooling you down. They’re becoming more common nowadays due to global warming, but they still only happen occasionally. Again, a wet bulb thermometer will typically read significantly lower than the ambient temperature, because it’s being cooled by evaporation.
At wet bulb temps in the 90’s, construction crews start delaying, school athletics aren’t allowed to practice outdoors, cities start setting up pop-up cooling centers for the homeless, etc… Even the army limits outdoor work to 10 minutes per hour, because the risk of heat stroke is too high. Wet bulb temps above ~87 are rare, so when it reaches the 90’s emergency management crews go into full blown crisis mode as people start getting heat exhaustion just from walking around the block.
The other thing in the UK is that screen doors and windows are non-existent so if you want to open them for fresh air you’re inviting all the bugs in as well
They don’t even have screening? Guys wtf get a hardware store that’s worth a shit.
I wish we did in Sweden as well. Parts of the country has a fuck ton of mosquitos during summer.
Inward opening windows are unfortunately not uncommon which makes screens a pain.
Newer windows can usually do that fancy flip trick and a bunch of other fancy stuff though.
Inward opening windows are the standard in Germany and nearly everyone just buys a cheap bug-screen set that you can simply wedge into the window frame. They cost like 20€ a pop. There are all kinds of solutions for this.
There are nets with velcro tape.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/tesa-insect-net/s?k=tesa+insect+net
till
American checks out.
Middle English til, tille “(going) onward to and into; (extending) as far as; (in time) continuing up to;” from Old English til (Northumbrian) “to,” and from Old Norse til “to, until,” both from Proto-Germanic *tilan (source also of Danish til, Old Frisian til “to, till,” Gothic tils “convenient,” German Ziel “limit, end, goal”).
A common preposition in Scandinavian, serving in the place of English to, probably originally the accusative case of a noun otherwise lost but preserved in Icelandic tili “scope,” the noun used to express aim, direction, purpose (as in aldrtili “death,” literally “end of life”). Also compare German Ziel “end, limit, point aimed at, goal,” and till (v.).
As a conjunction, “until, to the time that or when,” from late Old English.
Guns are fun as hell, it’s true. Unfortunately as with most things in the world, shit gets ruined because people don’t know how to act right
I’m Australian and guns are really strictly regulated here, I also believe that guns are FUCKING FUN. Sometimes I get shitty about how hard it is to own a gun for recreational shooting then I see a smackhead at the supermarket screaming at random people and how unlikely it is that they have a gun and I think “Yep, Ill take that trade”.
Hopefully OOP lives in a country that has good gun laws - like Czechia.
I’m pretty sure that access to guns would instantly end my depression.
But America is DC, Europe is already AC!
America is AC…
My bad. I only remember something about them using DC to electrocute an elephant to prove how much better it was.
It is 60Hz tho (instead of 50) which is stoopid. So you were on the right track.
1.0 cycle a second > 0.8 cycles a second.
Also fuck 25fps TV
50Hz is 50 cycles per second, and 60Hz is 60 cycles a second. Nothing is using as slow as 1 cycle per second.
deleted by creator
Why is 60hz stupid? The US was ahead of Europe in terms of electrical development last century and 50hz generators were bigger and more expensive than 60hz generators at the time.
“Imperial existed since before metric and was more usable at the time so we should use it forever.”
Just stop trying to be the “im not like the other girls” of the world and join the blue world.
Seems like a waste of money to replace, and this is coming from someone that wouldn’t mind if we switched to metric here in the states. The Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion is the only one that fucks me up
Oh and Japan uses both 50 and 60, so we’re not even the craziest grid setup
Yeah ofc now its kinda too late. But there was a time where it was easily foreseeable that it would make sense to switch, but wasnt done.
I think that was Edison using AC. Apparently it was not part of the war of the currents. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocuting_an_Elephant
They’ll say “aw, Topsy” at my autopsy, but no one will be more shocked than me.
That was actually to prove how “dangerous” it was. This was when Edison and Tesla were duking it out, trying to get their respective electricity types established as the standard. Edison and JP Morgan decided it would be a good promotion for alternating current if they publicly electrocuted an elephant with direct current to demonstrate how dangerous it was. Obviously they knew that both modes are dangerous with that much current, but when has marketing ever been about honesty?
But the whole idea of electrocuting mammals caught on, so there is that!
Explain Washington then
I heard he could not tell a lie; he gnawed down a cherry tree with his wooden teeth and then threw it all the way across the Potomac, then told everybody about it.
Crossed the Delaware
This is an impossible feat.
We call it an impossible meatre in Europe
That’s the part before the inverter duh
He had like 30 goddamn dicks…
He’ll save children, but not the British children
He’s coming
T̵̯̟̭̙̓̈́h̵̫͑͒͋ͅͅe̶͉͎̊́̍͜͝͝ ̴̫̖́͐̅̽͗W̶̨͔̃ą̸̖̭͑͗̃̀ͅs̷̛͙͗̎̓͜ḧ̷̼̣̯͕̓i̸̱͛̈́͆n̷̖̿̐̑ͅģ̴͒͛͆͛ţ̸̖̲̟̜͂o̴̞̓ṋ̵̘̗͔͌̔̈́̚,̷̯͇͛̐͒͛̚ ̸̛̥͑͊̏͝h̷̙̦͕̍̀̍͘e̸̟̜͛̋́́ ̴͇͔̅͐̚͝͝ć̵̡̛͔͓̦ͅỏ̶̱̻̝̜̾ͅm̶͖̗̤̳̏̔̓͗̂ĕ̶̢͔͚̺̞s̷͍̈́.̴̝͇̼́̒̓̈
Australia has AC/DC. Can’t beat that.
That… Explains so many things.
deleted by creator
Yeah a lot of houses that are not set up for AC traditionally have normal windows that don’t slide and therefore don’t break every 4 minutes. Outside of that of course is that you can’t have a window box AC and have to go with one fitted into the wall.
AC always gives me a sore throat after couple of days, is that just me?
Not just you. I hate AC. Awful being in hotel rooms where it’s AC all the way and you can’t even really open a window in the room. I get sore throat and usually they’re really noisy too, so I can’t sleep without earplugs. I very much prefer opening a window and airing thoroughly in the evening and then during the night leaving window on kip. Travelling many days or weeks in AC vehicles really makes me sick.
Slap a humidifier in your room. Air conditioning is by its nature also a dehumidifier, so some people end up with overly dry and therfore eventually soar throats.
Came to say the same thing. I sleep like a baby next to my humidifier, dreaming of a way out of this hot hellhole
Like someone else mentioned, the cool side heat exhangers condense water out of the air.
You’re running it too cold. I have the same if I set it to 21/22 celcius. Set it to 24/25. That’s still amazing in summer and yet no sore throat or getting sick.
Fyi it could be filters need changing. Right now if we turn on the aircon at work, I get terribly sore throat that would last for days. Turns out they change/clean the filters only once a year, and it’s even worse in some other rooms where it also smells bad.
Found someone not living in 100 degree heat 90% of the year…
They have A/Cs that recycle the condensation that they remove back into the air, but not every unit does this (usually the moisture is just dumped somewhere outside). But yours probably doesn’t do this so like everyone else said, you need a humidifier.
Don’t get one if those crappy little 1 gallon ones that create big clouds of steam; you have to use distilled water or all the junk that’s in your water will get atomized and into your lungs. Buy a basic evaporative humidifier instead (the kind that use a wick), one of those giant 6 gallon ones and set it to 40-50% RH. It’ll keep your entire home nice and comfortable and you can just use water straight from the sink. And you only have to refill them about once a week instead of every single day. Just make sure you don’t skimp out on the bacteriostat cause they will get nasty quick if you cheap out.
Alternatively the budget option is just to take showers with the bathroom door open and the vent off. Just make sure that you’re monitoring the humidity levels in your home should you go this route; keep RH below 65% or you’re going to have mold. If your A/Cs thermostat doesn’t report humidity levels, then you can just buy a cheap meter. They’re under $10 in most parts of the world.
Air’s dry. Try a humidifier
We tried guns 90 years ago, and found the results not to our liking.
Yeah but guns have become so much more efficient since then!
Take it to the next level and just fire off a few rounds from your recliner
this escalated so quickly
Weird, AC is very popular in many parts of Europe.
Just like it’s not popular in Alaska…
It must get humid in those igloos tho. Do people who live in igloos have fires inside?
I think some of them
That would be an awesome night out!
I wonder why Euros always get these weird little AC units. Where the hell is the rest of it? I’d it some kind of centralized air refit for their ancient-ass brick houses? So they even make timber framed houses there for normal central ventilation, or ever use wall units? AC in Europe (and GB) is fucking weird.
These are actually pretty awesome units, we got them for a previous house that didn’t have central air / heat originally (baseboard heat / window units) and it was sooooo nice.
Upstairs we ran normal ducts, the basement we had these units.
What’s in the picture is pretty standard for where I live, this is the indoor unit, and there will be an outdoor unit that contains the actual compressor etc. An outdoor unit will sometimes run multiple indoor ones.
A unit for each room is also standard practice.
It’s a ductless mini split and it’s WAY more efficient than the old ducted centralized A/C. Newer homes in the US are getting these too. They’re incredible.
The irony being that my favorite designs are foreign.
Mikhail Kalashnikov is one of my engineering heroes. He designed for real world use cases and changed the world.
AKs are cool and all, but I simp for Czechnology. The short stroke piston like a Vz.58 is just my jam when it comes to rifle systems.
AKs are cool to me for the AKM overcoming the engineering hurdle of making stamped rifles that held up to mass production.
Yes. Like that.
