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As this keeps happening I continue to wonder when Europe and the UK will finally realize how badly they need to air conditioning. The units are (or were in the past year or 3)b way more expensive there than here in America. I dunno about current costs. It's worth it though, even if you only need it for like 1 month out of the year.
In France the government is helping people get Aircon by subsidising heatpumps, also way more carbon efficient than Gaz or fioul based central heating.
It depends on the kind of heatpumps, in a lot of cases the heatpump is installed to replace a boiler, reusing the radiators and hot water circulation already available.
Unfortunately in this case the heatpump cannot be used as AC.
Not as AC, but a reversible heat pump can use the heating system for cold water circulation.
It's rather limited, because you run into condensation concerns, but it's still a possibility. A place I used to work at did this. It wasn't perfect, but took some of the edge off.
On the other hand reversible heatpumps work great with floor heating.
Having a cool floor during a heatwave is amazing, plus no noise,
Does that work for ground source heat pumps too? Like could I literally cool my floor with one? For summer and light winter, my air to air unit is fine and air to water is great too, but when it's like -25 or -30 out, the air source units start getting pretty inefficient.
Probably, it should be quite efficient as well.
How does this subsidy work? Asking for my dad, who lives in France.
They are trying to push people to heat pumps (basically air conditioners tech wise)
They are also moving towards building/efficiency regs that require completely sealed houses and forced air systems in new builds.
So new houses will effectively be required/encouraged to have an air con capable houses.
The old housing stock though? Oof. I'm on a private estate that even bans that kind of stuff!
You can get a grant to install heat pumps, but ONLY if they can't be reversed and used as air conditioning.
Also, I'm keeping my combi-boiler until they literally stop pumping gas to homes. Fuck water tanks.
I guess that's to stop people from using it to get air-con when it's mean to help people move away from gas. A bit silly though.
.....I suspect there are a few models that only need 1 part switched for it to be possible....
Looking further into it, the "heat pumps" we've been pushing seem just for the ones that heat water, and then pump that round your radiators/out your taps.
The exclusion is for anything that moves air.
Do you have a link for the exclusion bit?
I think this is the official bit.
https://www.gov.uk/apply-boiler-upgrade-scheme/what-you-can-get
It must replace an existing fossil fuel system, and you can't be left with a hybrid system (e.g. heat source plus boiler)
Meaning it must heat water somewhere, using the heat pump. Can you even get a system that heats water and air? And would that be included in this scheme? Some guy on reddit says they're excluded, he may be full of shit.
I'm assuming there's a much more detailed guide than this for installers, full of technical jargon about what is and isn't included, but I can't find that.
I think it just requires you to have a heat pump for all your water and heating. There appears to be pumps that do both, (mentioned in this article) but that's more research than I can get away with while 'working'.
We're very aware in the UK but it's not too easy. We have some the oldest housing stock in the world. We don't have central air with no real way to retrofit so it would have to be one room at a time. Our windows aren't designed to house those units I see in NY. We have to rely on very inefficient portable units so I only use it on the really hot days. Energy prices are still high after Russia's invasion. People are adding proper units when extending but only the rich can really afford that.
Add to that, that all these old UK houses have about as much insulation as a cereal box.
Split heat pumps are very common in Southern Europe. Modern units have insane efficiency, in the order of 4 units of heat or cold per unit of energy expended, and can be installed almost anywhere, in contrast to central units. The only downside is that they don't provide hot water.
I live in Spain, and since temperatures are now reaching 39°C in my area, I ordered two AC units for the most used rooms in my house (living room and bedroom).
With installation it costed 1300€. A months salary basically. In my area the cheapest unit with installation was 450€, but it didn't look very reliable.
I ordered it 11 days ago, and I'm scheduled to receive it and installed either this week or the next. AC installers are oversaturated with orders this time of the year. It's insane.
How badly we need AC?
How about “how badly we need to get our shit together to stop human caused climate change”?
It'll be both, even a very aggressive response will take decades for it to Stop getting hotter then at best it will not get hotter. It will be 4-5 decades at best before it gets cooler.
Methane adds some uncertainty to that though. If you were to stop using gas it might cool off after it disappears in a decade in the atmosphere.
But it will keep getting hotter in every circumstance even if we act aggressively on climate change.
You can just say Europe.
Ik Dutch, and have airco in every room in the house that isnt a bathroom or toilet. It's awesome. Also have 30+ solar panels so whenever I use the airco, it's run on solar power.
My living room is around 36 square meters and the cheapest AC unit for that area was 650 - 850 euros. You also have to pay a certified company to install it, which cost another 200 - 300 euros.
The median salary is like 900 euros, which makes it out of reach for a large portion of the population.
I wonder what's the cost for them to install one. I got mine installed and it cost around €350(rm1600 in my currency), everything included, for a japanese brand(Daikin). shouldn't be too horribly expensive for european country, especially when people started to adopt it.
Edit: but honestly, i wonder how well aircond would work in 40°c+ temperature, it relies on pumping heat away from the room, and if outside is so hot it wouldn't able to effectively cool the refrigerant. Still better than nothing.
Air conditioning works just like a refrigerator in that the cooling is accomplished by the compression and decompression of gas. The outside temperature has no effect on the ability of the unit to cool the inside space. Air conditioning just vents to outside, it doesnt use outside air. The same is true for a window unit as it is for a central system
to a point. It still relies on radiating the heat produced at the compression stage outside to the outside air. Due to how thermodynamics work this becomes less efficient or even impossible once the outside air approaches the same temperature as the compressed gas. Once the gas can't cool down after the compressing step the ac starts to lose effectiveness fast
Bingo!
For new buildings that is already case. For older buildings there is limits to how well you can retrofit them with new heating/cooling/insulation systems. Lots of building are messed up, because changes to insulation and heating/cooling lead to humidity and mold or worse mushrooms.