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Comment by pmarreck | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how long Europe will continue to maintain the attitude that "air conditioning is a United States thing"

People legitimately can't afford air conditioning..

That's of course before we address the elephant in the room. Using air conditioning increase the outdoor temperature if the power doesn't come from emission free sources.

Technically it increases the outside temperature regardless, though not as significantly.

Indeed, power prices are quite high compared to the United States.

> People legitimately can't afford air conditioning.

A small window unit is ~$160 and will last for years. If it's 5,000 BTU with an EER of 11 we should expect it to draw 454W (5,000 / 11) on a hot day (35C/95F, 50% humidity) when running on high. At 25 c€/kWh that's 11 c€/hr. At temperatures below that it will be cheaper.

That's American prices though for a unit, here window units don't really exist. In Spain the lowest price with installation is 600€ even for a no-name unit, and in Eastern Europe with its skilled worker shortage is around 1500€. The latter is from a friend who is very frugal and excellent in shopping around. There are simply no suppliers for less than that. I do agree that running it, if it's maintained and cleaned, costs really almost nothing. I've actually received a 15% lower electricity bill this month compared to last month and now I've ran my AC all day, every day.

Thanks! Are window units illegal in Europe, or just not popular?

Almost noone here has vertical sliding windows that would allow window AC units. You could use internal ac unit with a pipe that goes to a collar wrapper around a window and that's a thing but they're loud inside so people use those as a last resort, when there's no balcony or anywhere to install AC(like old town buildings that are regulated etc).

Some AC units fit in other kinds of windows, or can be modified to. My bedroom has horizontal sliding windows, and a few years ago I sorted out how to put a 16" unit in: https://www.jefftk.com/p/air-conditioning

We have windows that tilt and turn. Tilting windows are awesome because they can be opened just a little to let some air in and it is "held open" by gravity and a latch. So the window has one more "degree of freedom", making window units unpractical.

Sounds like the time is ripe for a budding importing entrepreneur to strike. Pretty sure you can find airconditioners on Alibaba for dirt cheap.

The cost of AC is more than just "stick a window unit in there".

I live in the States, but in a centennial home within a historic city. The thought of a window unit is downright laughable. The windows are single-paned and unsealed, made of wood planks that are decades old. Given how hot it is here, most people just blast their AC and opt for flat-rate plans on power. Thankfully, the Victorian-style homes here have high ceilings, attics, and crawlspaces, which allows for retroactively installing HVAC.

Now consider Europe, where there are homes that exceed 200 yrs in age, and are sometimes made of difficult materials like stone and clay.

I also live in a "centennial home" (built between 1900 and 1920) in a "historic city" (Boston). Window units are very common here; I don't see what's laughable about them?

How would a masonry building make a window unit more difficult?

Unsealed window units are terribly inefficient to the point of being cost-prohibitive for some. The more windows or rooms, the more it compounds. You develop "heat pockets" in the nooks and crannies furthest from windows. What's more, the air tends to move right back out, "air-conditioning outside" as my elders always called it. In homes with unsealed windows, adding central HVAC (if possible) can at least offer a central point of dispersal, so that as the air quickly disperses through the windows, the cooling effect does too.

In the US, windows sizes are very standardized, and many window units are designed to fit snugly so that some degree of sealing can be achieved. In older wooden homes, you'll sometimes see entire walls replaced to accommodate standard double-pane windows, something very common in my city. With stone buildings, which can be very, very old, windows can often come in non-standard sizes, and may not open vertically or even be a rectangular shape. However, replacing a wall is pretty out-of-reach in that situation, either from difficulty and cost of the job, or municipal protections.

> terribly inefficient to the point of being cost-prohibitive for some

I don't see how? Running a small EER 11 unit all day on a very hot day is $1-$2.

> The more windows or rooms, the more it compounds.

The cost should be proportional to the number of window units you run, so if by compounding you mean it's superlinear I don't see how.

> You develop "heat pockets" in the nooks and crannies furthest from windows.

Ceiling fans work well at avoiding this. (Our house has them in most rooms)

> In the US, windows sizes are very standardized, and many window units are designed to fit snugly so that some degree of sealing can be achieved

I haven't seen this. Around here window sizes are pretty arbitrary, and every window unit has accordion bits on the side to block air exchange.

> In older wooden homes, you'll sometimes see entire walls replaced to accommodate standard double-pane windows

Weird; around here you almost never see that (only with gut renovations) and most houses still have their original arrangement. When they were switched to double pane they were swapped in place (usually with slightly smaller windows so no wall work was required).

I think the point I keep trying to get across here is "a lot of peoples' environments and/or architectures do not accommodate this" and you keep rebuking with "well my environment and architecture accommodate this."

I live in an area much hotter than Boston. ACs do not live long here; the rule of thumb is to expect half the life of that in a temperate climate. This means bigger units to combat the sweltering heat in the summer (90-110 F heat index, extremely humid) that are bought twice as often. Sometimes, it's actually more cost effective to just keep working your ACs to death and replacing them, particularly if you don't intend to live in the home beyond 15 years.

All of this applies to window units as well. As I already said, window units don't install smoothly here - some windows get nailed shut from becoming too delicate. I have a couple that were sealed that way prior, and a couple more I'm planning to do myself. Even if I could get window units into the remaining windows, replacement can be very damaging. (Thankfully, I have central HVAC, like most people here.)

I agree we're talking past each other somewhat. Taking a step back, Europe is a large area representing many different building traditions and climates. I'd find it very surprising if window units were uniformly a bad option across all of Europe.

Your example of a place much hotter than Boston isn't that helpful here: the main question is what to do about occasional heatwaves in Europe, thinking about cooling options for places that are almost always tolerable without AC.

(I also interpreted you as saying "The thought of a window unit is downright laughable" in a pretty broad context, but now maybe I think you were trying to say that specifically about in your city?)

You're getting the gist of my point. I bring up being in a place hotter than Boston to point out that it's high temperatures that strain the value of a window unit, not mild or cold temperatures. A lot of Europeans defined by the context of this post are dealing with rapidly rising temperatures. Combine their generally unaccomodating architecture (very prevalent on the quite ancient Mediterranean coast) and rising temperatures put them in a place that window units do little to solve. That's not to say they're uniformly useless, but that certain groups of people are going to gain little from adopting them.

Air conditioning is already widespread in Greece.

Also, I dont think 40°C is that uncommon for Greece.

Switzerland is literally the worst.

Homes and hospitals are forbidden from having A/C.

Shopping centers are allowed.

They are forbidden from installing split units, but you can have monoblocs as long as they are not fixed. So there is some relief.

You are not forbidden at the Federal level to have fixed units.

But many states do indeed requires a permit to install fixed units. And have strict regulations such as self producing half of the electricity required by the installation.

Here are a few examples of such regulations:

- Geneva (the most strict state): https://www.ge.ch/installations-techniques-rafraichissement/...

- Fribourg: https://bdlf.fr.ch/app/fr/texts_of_law/770.1/art/16

- Vaud: https://www.vd.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/themes/environnement...

One of the side effect of such regulation is that many business and houses will use cheap non-fixed units with open door and windows instead of installing proper reversible heat pumps.

Forbidden, as in, illegal? How did that came to be?

Green ideology? Degrowth mindset? The Swiss are very “save energy” oriented.

Apparently some people have a hard time understanding that A/C use coincides perfectly with solar power generation.

That region of the world has some weird laws for sure. Just today I read about someone who was fined for leaving his car windows rolled down parked on the street.

Actual article (in German) https://www.bild.de/regional/muenchen/muenchen-aktuell/rosen...

I worked several years designing and installing commercial hvac systems in Switzerland. Plenty of offices, banks, museums etc. have ACs. It’s definitely allowed. But you will need a permit to install a fixed system if it affect/changes the building facade.

The reason why most homes don’t have one is that it’s too expensive for the 3-5 days a year you need it. Especially the new minergy houses can keep cool very well even during summer without an AC.

> Especially the new minergy houses can keep cool very well even during summer without an AC.

Your mileage might vary.

I've personally lived in 2 different "minergie" apartments over the past 2 years (3 summers) and one of them (large, facing away from the sun) was mostly bearable (though I'd still prefer A/C), whereas the other (smaller, facing midday sun) was really hot.

In London they've built a bunch of towers near me (a few over 20 stories) with no AC. Apparently the apartments were absolutely dire dure last year's heatwave. I'd say a wee while yet.

London is not a nice place > 30C.

A small south-facing bedroom in a tower block without A/C is no joke. Especially when you've got those windows that only tilt inwards by about four inches.

Hopefully permanently if heat pumps catch on as well as they have been.

Edit: are heat pumps considered A/C?

Only if they produce cold (and dry) air, I guess. In general, with an air to water or ground to water heat pump you can technically cool your floor, but that won’t help much (you can’t go very low, to avoid condensation problems)

FWIW with underfloor heating you can reduce the room temperature by a few degrees compared to the outside temperature but this is also generally the recommendation for A/C (which of course doesn't stop people from setting it way lower than that because they can).

True. Even at the same temperature A/C does have the added benefit of removing humidity, which leads to more… tolerable heat.

Heat pumps are technically inverted A/Cs and can usually be put in inverted mode to act as regular A/Cs but they're often used to warm up / cool down water whereas a conventional A/C pumps the cooled air directly into the rooms. Heat pumps that work the same way are also sometimes called air-air heat pumps (contrasted with air-water, which in turn are contrasted with water heat pumps which pump brine into a network of underground pipes to create the heat differential).

When picking a heating system my wife and I did look into air-air heat pumps but as we live in Central Europe and thus need the system for heating as much if not more than cooling and the building's insulation and rooftop solar panels already reduce the need for cooling outside very long and extreme heatwaves, we decided against it (and went with a more common air-water heat pump with underfloor heating) because they're not very efficient for heating.

As I understand it, while underfloor heating retains heat at a stable level even when venting, airflow heating loses heat considerably more rapidly. To compensate, in order to heat up the room more rapidly, air-air heat pump systems often have electric heaters at the vents. These essentially work like an electric hair dryer and consume a lot of energy. On the other hand, underfloor heating is worse at cooling.

Anecdotal reports seem to be mixed on both systems with the only consensus generally being that if you want either system to be more efficient you should look into insulation above all else.

A/C are heat pumps. They pump inside heat to the outside, and any modern A/C that isn't a mobile unit can also reverse its mode of operation and pump heat from outside to inside. Heat, not air, you still need to maintain an healthy air balance inside (CO2, humidity).

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