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Comment by jameshilliard | Hacker News Reader

> But those old places are heated with oil, they're leaky wood construction, they have no option for cooling because there are no vents.

Ductless mini split style heat pumps are a common retrofit option for older buildings without vents aren't they?

> I didn't read the article - tired of all the American articles in the press promoting ac for some reason.

When a heat pump is used for cooling it's effectively the same as an AC. The main difference AFAIU is that a heat pump can reverse for heating as well. I think when Americans promote AC they probably consider a heat pump to be just another AC variant.

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There's no air involved. It's a completely enclosed system. Unless you count the cool/heat of the floors/ceilings affecting the air...

That seems likely normally not viable in most warm places because the humidity would quickly rot out the floors. Part of the ‘conditioning’ in the name is that quite a lot of water will ideally get removed from the air to control humidity too, and that needs to be drained away

Maybe it works in Switzerland due to high altitude reducing humidity?

I have a gas fired hydronic heating system but I still need AC for cooling(mixture of traditional and mini-split style units due to retrofitting requirements).

I'm also located in a high altitude location but for AC alternatives here we would typically see something like a swamp cooler.

The brine is at a temperature where there is no condensation. The ground temp is 11c but the brine is higher than that. Also there is an air circulation system that passes over the cooling fins to remove moisture, but it's nothing like using a dehumidifier, because I have a dehumidifier in my cellar and it takes out plenty of water.

Plus no one has wooden floors. We have cement/epoxy floors. Some neighbors have a wood laminate that's probably mostly epoxy. I don't think you can even get wood floors anymore here. Walls are cement/plaster. Ceilings too.i guess the doors are wood.

This is a very odd setup because you can never cool lower than the current dew point and cannot reduce humidity which is a very important function of AC as it makes air far more comfortable even at the same temperature. Any error will cause condensation to form. This is why AC is normally done in a way where the water in the air will condense on the cold coils and be collected and drained safely. In hot, humid conditions, a typical central air system can extract 5 to 20 gallons of water a day from the air.

That dehumidifier is also AC, just done much more wastefully (because it dumps the waste heat into your house instead of outside the house)

> There's no air involved. It's a completely enclosed system.

So it's actually a hydronic heating/cooling system? I don't think those systems are typically referred to as heat pumps generally.

It sounds like they are using radiant flooring for cooling and keeping the temperature above the dew point but this would only work if the humidity is always naturally low or you have a separate dedicated dehumidifier

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