How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America | Hacker News Reader

How the Air Conditioner Made Modern America

theatlantic.com

89 pointsmattraibert56 comments

I live in Tucson, Arizona, and I own a few houses built before A/C became common. I have one house (a rental) made of mud adobe, which is essentially mudbricks made into 14" thick walls. It was built in 1919 and has the interesting feature that it takes a few days to change temperature. There is always a week here that it changes from a nice spring to a hot summer and the house takes a long time to make the transition. It also stays cool pretty effectively with only a small window A/C unit. My current residence is a 50 yr old double brick wall house that doesn't do as well, but better than you might think for a house with zero insulation in the walls. Average bill in the summer was $300 before I put solar in this year (3300 ft house).

I definitely agree with the article - this city would look a lot different without A/C. But the mud adobe and high ceilings work surprisingly well. The heat isn't as bad as you might think either - as one of my wife's colleagues remarked "It is a city that you can eat at least one meal a day outside" which means breakfast or dinner in the summer and lunch in the winter.

Its a dry heat. I live in the Tampa, Florida area, and once it gets past 84 degrees, I feel quite miserable.

My current dwelling is a 50s ranchette with concrete block walls. The orginal Jalousie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalousie_window) windows have been replaced, but the house has no insulation in the attic.

The house had several window A/Cs, one was from the early 80s. I replaced them with a 3-zone minisplit.

I cannot recommend the minisplit enough. Of course, this house is less than 1,000 sqft of A/C'ed space.

You're lucky, you can just use swampcoolers. We have to use electricity to keep cool.

I've been to Arizona in the summer and prefer that kind of heat.

So why don't you insulate the attic?

I am waiting to have spray-foam insulation installed. If I use traditional fiberglass and a radiant heat barrier, I will then have to pay to have it removed and disposed of, prior to the spray foam insulation.

There is a soy-based spray foam insulation I plan on having installed.

http://soythane.mybigcommerce.com/

http://www.biobased.net/

A bit more expensive, but I believe it is worth it.

I grew up in a house like that, in El Paso. Old adobe houses are basically caves: dark, quiet, and much cooler than you expect.

You mentioned caves and I found this... http://thecavehouse.com/

>Minneapolis seems like an odd place for the first home air conditioner, but, hey, if you've got the cash, who's to stop you?

I'm guessing the author hasn't lived in Minnesota. For one thing, the temperature differential is much higher than in Southern States. It may reach 110 degrees F in Phoenix, but it almost never drops below 32 F. In contrast, Minnesota gets temperatures from 0 F to 90 F.

There's also the question of energy use. The Minnesotan winter makes a huge amount of energy (for heating) an absolute need for survival. When you're used to expending all that energy 4-6 months out of the year, using a much smaller amount to stay comfortable when the temperature peaks above 80 F or so is not an incredibly noticeable loss.

When some sort of active climate control is a requirement for life, it's unsurprising that Minnesota did it first - since AC is more a luxury in the Southern states, even though the heat can kill you if you don't have some sort of effective cooling.

Correction. Minnesota gets temperatures from -20 to 100. Tomorrow has a high of 97. Definitely not an odd place for AC.

0 deg F is a t-shirt jog here in Minnesota during the winter. Cold is -20 to -40 range. And within the last few weeks, we've had several days 90+ and 100+ deg F. There's a reason lots of the old people migrate with the ducks down south for winter.

Pretty much... I like to tell people that it's not really cold here until your snot starts freezing the instant you go outside. That tends to happen at 10-15 below zero (Fahrenheit).

97 is not that hot. I've spent months in those temperatures without AC just drinking water.

Almost everywhere, AC is truly a luxury.

I just Googled 97 degrees, expecting some large temperature, and it's only 36 degrees! For comparison, it's 40 C here today.

Stay out of the sun, sweat a little, you'll be fine. Arabs have it much worse.

The point about humidity has already been made. I was astonished at how comfortable 115 degrees was in Phoenix. I went on a hike, no problem... Except that I carried a huge water bottle and the bottle ran out in an hour, so there's that.

In humid places, however, sweating is almost useless and you can suffer in mere 90F heat.

The other important point is that somehow folks in Singapore manage to survive, but in Singapore there's never any winter. I once heard a physiologist remark that humans can adjust to a wide range of temperatures, but it takes a few days for the body to reprogram itself for freezing ambient temperatures after spending months in roasting ambient temperatures. That's why the first few days of cold weather in the fall and winter feel really cold and everyone dons parkas, but when spring rolls around the exact same weather feels really warm and everyone puts on their shorts.

So maybe if I set out to live without A/C I'd get more used to it after a while. But the first few days are a killer, and at some point one just gets sick of being listless and warm and starts subconsciously looking for excuses to visit nice air-conditioned buildings.

it takes a few days for the body to reprogram itself for freezing ambient temperatures after spending months in roasting ambient temperatures

I noticed this empirically with myself whenever I traveled from California to Sweden in the winter. Coming to Sweden, I'd be cold all the time for the first couple of days, and then back in CA, I'd have hot flashes for a few days there. Nice to know that I wasn't imagining things. :)

I always assumed the heat-capacity of my bones took much longer to change temperature than the muscles and flesh of my body, but once it does, it lasts longer too.

The problem for most of us in the US is that we can't control how much they refrigerate moste public places. We keep our home ~80F(it makes going outside in south Texas much more comfortable), but that makes my office very uncomfortable at 74F.

You are making an assumption that the Middle East is nothing but a dry desert; the forecast for tomorrow afternoon in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is 101 degrees with a 29% humidity.

Humidity's usually a bigger problem that the actual temperature. 100 degrees in drier parts of the southern US doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as 85 degrees in rainy towns up north.

Ah, yes, that would complicate matters somewhat... High humidity is unbearable in the heat.

It is approximately human body temperature. By design it should be slightly less, Farady intended 100 degrees to be the human body temperature but obviously suffered a light fever the day he took the measurment, so these days the human body has 96 degrees. 0 degrees Fahrenheit is defined to be the coldest it could conceivably ever be on the outside in winter, according to Faradays intuition when he decided that this is the coldest day ever. I don't know if he caught the fever during that measurement.

> Faraday

Fahrenheit. (It doesn't seem to be true that he intended 100 degrees to be human body temperature. It's possible that he specifically wanted the difference between body temperature and freezing point to be (a power of 2) degrees.)

Farenheit's "body temperature" was the axillary (armpit) temperature, and he set it to 96 degrees (on average) when creating his scale. And yes, your supposition about the divisibility of key numbers is right.

D'oh, stupid thinko, sorry for the confusion. (And Faraday and Fahrenheit don't even share the same soundex...).

Fahrenheit was invented by a guy named Fahrenheit, not Faraday.

The difference that humidity makes cannot be overstated. When it's hot but not humid, sitting in the shade makes a big difference. When it's hot and humid, sitting in the shade just means its not as bright.

I was just about to call "BS" on that wimpy zero. Zero is brisk compared to some of the lows in and around Minnesota, and pushing near 100 isn't uncommon. Not every year, but many, certainly.

It's absolutely not a luxury in the south. You can stand up and walk around with the humidity, but you'll need a steady stream of fresh clothes if you sit to do anything without AC.

This is why I love living in Michigan. Like Minnesota, we get temps from well below freezing up to 100F. Real winters. Real summers. Crisp frost and gorgeous colors in the fall. Spring is worth celebrating.

I won't trade it for Phoenix until I turn 65. But yes, it does make heating, cooling, clothes shopping, and a host of other things a little more difficult than the southern states.

The view of HVAC varies wildly depending on where you live. It's similar to big trucks, guns, and heavy machinery. In suburbia, these things are pure decadence and waste. In the outback they are tools of the trade, no different from the briefcase a businessman carries.

Can you rephrase your last sentence? I've reread it a few times, and I just can't make heads or tails of it.

Thanks!

Powered heating is a fundamental human need in Minnesota. You cannot survive without it. Even in antiquity I can't imagine people surviving without fire.

Passive cooling, by contrast, is pretty much adequate (though that's not to say the heat can't kill you if you're out in the sun.) But in any case, when you look at the amount of energy expended on heating, the modest amount expended on cooling is a natural expenditure. I think in general that's why a lot of colder countries like Norway are more rich and prosperous than their warmer counterparts. When it costs $30,000/year just to survive, luxuries start to become a lot less costly as a percentage of income.

Can passive cooling remove moisture from the air? That's essential for anything that wants to replace powered cooling in the southern US.

The journalist completely misses the point: high level of urbanisation, high population density was allowed by skyscrapers. To have skyscrapers, you famously had to have 2-3 conditions:

- solid rock for the base to hold the structure (hence no marsh, see NYC)

- steel, steel concrete (look at any skyscraper photos) for the structure

- no open windows above the hight of 2-3 floors because of the wind etc. (neither below, because of the smog) -> hence AC. And elevator.

AC was a key building block for the hubs of "Modern North America". The other key was feeding (artificial fertilisers and huge mechanised farms). And an Empire to finance it (just lift the debt ceiling PR euphemism in today's economics terms).

You can open windows in apartments higher than 3 stories. I remember opening windows on the 12th floor of apartments.

You can open windows on the 35th floor of my apartment building here in NYC. It was built in the early 1900s, so perhaps it's related to architecture choices / liability issues which weren't around back then.

Our family lives in San Antonio, TX where we are obviously dependent on air conditioning during at least 9 months of the year, but we typically keep our temps at about 76-78 degrees. I cannot even imagine keep our place at 72 degrees since the kiddos would complain it is cold and I would receive a $700 electric bill. Yes, electricity is very expensive in Texas.

However, we have a second home in Montana where we spend our summer away from the heat and humidity of South Texas. It has no air conditioning and, some summer days get well into the upper 90's here. It is amazing the techniques we'll employ to keep the place cool during the hot days, and they always keep the place in the 70's. We close certain blinds, open the upper windows and lower windows at night. When it cools off we will allow the cool air to pool in our downstairs areas and then close it off and "save" it. We will alternate between upstairs and downstairs sleeping based on the weather.

Being from New Orleans, I treasure cool air, and being in Montana right now I realize how cool it is. No pun intended :)

Why not use that sunshine to generate power?

Solar panels are expensive and not very efficient and require a decent amount of square footage. Plus, batteries are expensive too and can take up a decent amount of space.

Probably some kind of absorption chiller like this is a more sensible idea for solar powered airconditioning: http://www.solarpanelsplus.com/yazaki-solar-HVAC/

Good link. I have been looking for something like this?

I've heard that air conditioning had an effect on culture, too. Before A/C, you'd sit out on your porch to cool off and as a consequence get to know your neighbors. After A/C, you'd retreat indoors and live a socially isolated life.

Most of Houston was without electrical power during the week following Hurricane Ike (and for many Houstonians it was even longer). Our house has a backyard gas grill that's hooked into the natural gas line, and we never lost gas. Pretty much every evening during that week, the neighbors gathered to grill stuff, with everyone sharing. Then we sat around on the patio and 'visited' until bedtime, lighting candles when it got dark. We have fond memories of those times.

I live in a relatively wealthy part of Mexico City. I don't know my neighbors, and, for the most part, I don't think that they know each other either.

Nobody here has air conditioning or proper heating. The climate is very benign, rarely getting hot or cold. There's little need for interior climate control, and even less insulation: windows are paper thin and don't shut very tight, among other things. (However, a lot of people do have small portable electric heaters, which are very inefficient to begin with and made more so by the lack of insulation.)

Maybe having or not having AC plays a role as to whether you get to know your neighbors, but it's not the only and certainly not the defining one. Television and not working where you live are, I suspect, far more important.

What type of internet connectivity is available in your area? How much is housing/cost-of-living expenses?

It's adequate to work remotely, at least if you don't need to upload large amounts of data often.

As to cost of living in general, that's the kind of question that sounds very simple but turns out to have a rather complex answer. Get in touch (see the contact info in my profile) you're interested.

When I lived in Colonia Roma (not wealthy but higher than average Mexico City income), I knew all my neighbors and I'm a typical programmer introvert. The air conditioning and heating situation was the same.

Knowing your neighbors has less to do with air conditioning and more to do with personal motorcar ownership. None of my neighbors owned cars.

Of course, really wealthy neighborhoods in Mexico have tall concrete walls with broken glass embedded in the top around every house. That keeps the neighbors from getting too friendly.

Air conditioners and automobiles--isolating Americans from each other.

I definitely agree with author's point about how A/C has shaped American life - not necessarily for the better and perhaps with significant downsides, most notably at a social level.

However, I feel like this section (which I consider beneficial without question) was glossed over.

And hubs of business and technology in hot regions of the globe, such as Dubai, may never have taken off... Computers throw off a lot of heat, too. The development of the entire IT industry might not have happened without cooling technologies first pioneered by air conditioning.

That said, I'm just as guilty as the next American. Living in Boston, there's not much I can do about avoiding snow, so at least I have the comfort of my A/C if it gets really bad in the summer. Though I do try to be responsible and limit use to primarily Air Conditioning (eliminating humidity) vs. Air Cooling unit.

[update] As a follow up for anyone in climates which experience hot days but cool nights: if you own a house with an attic, a whole-house fan is a great investment vs. central A/C. In a matter of minutes a whole-house fan can create massive delta temp if it's cool outside at night. It's actually quite shocking how effective it is.

If you're home all day then perhaps not for you, since the best use is to get home from work and turn it on around dusk, turn off overnight (I have a timer set on mine) and next day close up all the windows first thing before work.

We're using the window procedure to keep our house near Boston cool, and it definitely works. Most of the time it's sufficient (except when I turn on the 3x24" monitors...), but when there's a heat spell and nighttime temps don't drop below 22C or so, it heats up to a very uncomfortable level over a few days and we have to use the AC at least to keep the bedroom at a reasonable temperature.

It would be cool if you could automate a system like that with window sensors, multiple temperature sensors around the house, and the ability to automatically enable/disable the A/C and the attic fan.

It could text/email/call you to open the windows, and not stop bothering you until it detects the windows are open.

I've lived in the two heat extremes in Texas. Dry Dallas and humid Houston. A/C is definitely important but I've always found myself needing to use it less in Dallas. I can open the window in the evening and let the breeze blow into my room and close it before I leave to class in the morning. In Houston A/C is necessary even into the night as the heat in water vapor lingers around.

As a point of note, domestic air conditioning is close to universal in Japan ... but in the UK, less than 3% of dwellings have a/c. Even in parts of southern Europe that get pretty hot, such as Italy and Greece, domestic a/c is relatively uncommon (with penetration in the 20-40% level despite regular 32-42 celsius temperatures on summer).

The nature of the housing stock is partly responsible, of course. The average British dwelling is 75 years old; retrofitting central aircon to a cramped dwelling with stone or brick walls that wasn't designed for it is a lot hairier than installing pipes for hot water radiator driven central heating.

>Even in parts of southern Europe that get pretty hot

Mediterranean climate - dry heat, nothing like the American South.

As someone who grew up near the Mediterranean shore I assure you it's not dry heat, at least not close (tens of kilometers) to the sea (which is where most people live).

Tel Aviv has a similar climate to Atlanta only with less rain (which doesn't mean it doesn't get extremely humid, just doesn't rain as often).

As someone who lived outside the 10 kilometer radius, but did vacation there, I agree with you. I forgot about those last kilometers.

A thought just occurred to me: instead of bailing out Europe's Southern countries, why don't we just install airco instead?

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