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Comment by anakaine | Hacker News Reader

I dont get this.

In Australia we have had reverse cycle air conditioning for decades. These are heat pumps that both heat and cool. I have 15kW of installed heat pump tech at home and run my whole house off grid, despite mainta8ning a grid connection. The systems run as heaters in winter, and air conditioning in summer. They are very efficient, enough so that I dont worry about our solar and battery being able to keep up.

The appliances are very common, and Ive seen them throughout much of Asia, too. Its like Europe and the US are just discovering this tech, yet its been reachable by half the world's population for 30+ years, and continues to improve.

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To be honest I suspect the tech has been available here too, but the marketing is just confusing. But again, "cooling your house to survive summer" is, for real, a pretty recent concern to have in Europe, as opposed to "heating and insulating your house to survive winter".

It's almost as if the climate is warming in accordance to what physicist have been saying for 30 years.

"Qui aurait pu prévoir ?", as the other one would have said (sorry for the franco-french reference. And I know we'll "regret" the guy next year...)

It is also a construction thing. Air ducting is very rare in German homes. AC is also rare because frowned upon. And heating is usually provided by warm-water radiators or in-floor loops. But those radiators and in-floor loops are usually unsuited for cooling.

What's more, most heating techs only know about water heating and are unable to solder a refrigerant pipe. So it is hard to find someone to install a split AC or split heatpump, and your average heating tech won't even mention anything about cooling because he can't install it and your existing setup might have to be redone anyways.

>The appliances are very common, and Ive seen them throughout much of Asia, too. Its like Europe and the US are just discovering this tech

It's almost as if the Australian and Asian climate are different from the European one...

Fontainebleau forest, vs. the Australian Outback, what's the difference, really?

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