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Cold is objectively better than heat. There are many cheap and easy ways to heat yourself up that can be applied in most situations, compared to cooling yourself down where you’re basically down to an AC or a fan.
Yeah, I live in the southern US where it gets proper hot, and I definitely prefer the cold. You can always put more layers on. Generating heat is extremely easy from an engineering standpoint. There are even ways to do it chemically for things like reusable hand warmers.
But holy hell, when it’s hot hot, there are only so many things you can do to avoid it. Unlike the cold, there is a limit to how many layers you can take off. And if you’re in the sun, taking off layers may actually make you hotter in the long term.
And SWEAT!!!
This means that safety from extreme heat is a privilege not a right.
Access to A/C for everyone is a progressive measure.
Sounds like “the plan” is working then. The poors die of heat stroke, dehydration, or other ill effects of climate change so the rich have a smaller population to subdue.
Ventilation shutdown - not just for chickens and pigs anymore
A/C for everyone is not a need. I live in a considerably warmer place than England, never had an A/C and never desired one. I live just fine and don’t feel the need for an extra appliance cluttering my home. Most people around here do just fine without A/C.
Houses are built according to the needs of the place where they are built.
This is indeed a problem happening right now, this is a good temporary solution. I do believe a better structural solution to this problem may be required, but I don’t think that would be to add A/C to all houses.
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As an Aussie visiting Europe that regularly deals with these temperatures… This is so much more uncomfortable than an Aussie summer. But it’s an easy fix: make AC a standard measure (the amount of shops and restaurants here that are high 30s INSIDE is something I’ve never seen before), make free drinking water a legal requirement, and make public toilets a thing too (so people don’t need to worry about hydrating!)
Most places where I lived in Europe do have drinking fountains spread around and public toilets. Regarding A/C… I have never seen it as something required, a bit of a luxury to me. And I did live in places over 50°C without A/C.
Always wonder what would have happened if the government put the energy it put into arresting people for demanding better insulation, into better insulation instead of arresting them.
That’s commie talk, son.
just wait until data centers 1. take all the electricity 2. cause heat islands 3. make utility bill go up 4x
American Southerner, here, and I feel for y’all. Be safe.
And people wonder why the birth rate is falling. You gotta spend extra money just to keep your children from overheating from global warming.
no one is wondering
it’s all corporate fud trying to keep the plates spinning
Stories like this make me wish I knew how to make people care as much about things that actually matter as they do about whatever mean thing a politician said the other day.
TBF the mean politicians are often climate change deniers as well.
*Rich parents
You can book a cheap premier inn for about £45 a night in the UK.
Sure it’s still expensive, but the occasional splurge to get a comfortable nights sleep seems more cost effective than buying and running your own air con
A small window air conditioner is something like $200 here in the US.
hits Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Frigidaire-FHWC063TC1-Conditioner-Electronic-Controls/dp/B0CFYG2511
I mean, I’m not saying that a hotel room is unreasonable as a last minute thing — like, it’s a heatwave and I want to be in a cool environment within the hour — but in all seriousness, an air conditioner is gonna pay for itself pretty quickly if all you want is a cool room to sleep in and not the other things a hotel provides.
That style probably won’t fit in a window throughout much of Europe. Portable A/Cs can be used with a window adapter, but I think they’re usually more expensive. Also the efficiency tanks.
And when it’s your child’s well being in play, you may spend a bit more than you otherwise would
Does the UK not even sell window unit acs? Or are they like super expensive over there? In the states you can buy a small one for like $200.
Window unit ACs work well when your windows open by sliding. Most US windows are that way, but UK windows are almost always hinged at the sides or tops which makes mounting a window unit effectively impossible.
So either you have to get an expensive fully plumbed-in unit, or a portable unit that stays inside the room and has vent hoses going out your window. Which are not ideal either.
It’s been the case to now that extreme heat has been rare enough and short enough in duration that everyone has simply dealt with it. When it’s 5 days in a year then you suffer a bit but quickly forget about it afterwards.
But times are changing, and we will have to soon change the way our homes are designed too.
I know homes were built to hold in heat over there. I never thought about their being a different style of window.
Sounds like it’s simply an engineering issue that nobody has bothered to solve. You could 100% design a window unit that would fit a hinged window. But no company has bothered to do so.
You could always do a heat pump mini-split system instead. Those only require a single hole drilled to the exterior, which then gets used to run hoses into the house from the head unit. The whole thing can usually be installed in a few hours, because it’s basically “drill hole, bolt everything down where it needs to go, run hoses and power, seal hole with expanding foam”
Well sleeping babies have a dramatically higher chance of sudden death above a certain temperature. So yeah, keep your newborns cool.
The WHO regional director for Europe stated that over 200000 people died from heat (and mostly preventably) in the last four years.
SUBSIDIZE HEATPUMPS!
You don’t need to. In Spain you can buy air source heat pumps split units that cost less than the installation, and that will heat in the winter for 1/3-1/4 the cost of any other heating method.
What’s Spain got to do with it though?
Costs should be in the same range. Also, in the UK, heat pumps have an immense advantage in the UK. They can double as a dehumidifier.
Neoliberalism at its peak
hot enough to cook eggs in the heat.
Wouldn’t buying an air conditioner be cheaper?
So get planning consent, find someone who has a conditioner in stock, find an engineer to install it, all in a few hours?
I’m guessing window units are not common then? Or you have different windows.
Nah, they have these skinny ones that are mounted on walls near the ceiling.
That’s a mini-split, which is technically a heat pump instead of an air conditioner. They can be extremely energy efficient for heating (they can easily reach above 100% efficiency in terms of power usage vs heat production) because you’re not actually generating heat, you’re just moving it around. If you want to cool a room, you pump it outside. And if you want to heat a room, you pump heat in from outside. You can even bury the heat lines if you have the yard for it, and (as long as you bury deeper than the local frost line) you’ll be able to use geothermal to get efficient heating even when it’s frigid outside.
Yeah that sounds right. I’m not totally sure about the UK but in Spain, Italy, and Ireland they have those mini splits instead of air conditioners in a lot of places. I know because it was something I specifically verified they had in all hotels I stayed in as a wimpy American that needs his cold air!
I also owned a condo in Spain for a bit, (lost it in it in a divorce) and we had one installed along with a dryer since those are fairly uncommon in Spain. It’s like a skinny ass thing towards the top of usually high sealing with a small duct installed behind it and much less powerful than your run of the mill window AC in the US. It did the trick when it was around 85 degrees F outside but just barely.
We have windows that open out.
You guys need an engineer to install a basic wall mounted AC with a small duct or even better one that doesn’t require a duct at all and is just mountable? Or better yet, the various portable AC units you can buy that come on wheels and follow you into every room… I get the availability factor I guess.
This comment is hilarious because a heat pump and mini-split system can be installed by basically anyone in a few hours. It only requires a single hole drilled through an exterior wall, to reach the outside where your heat pump goes. After that, it’s just a matter of running hoses to the various mini-splits that are bolted to the walls in your various rooms. And if you really want to be economical, you can strategically cool certain rooms (like the bedrooms and office) while leaving the rest of the house hot. That way you’re not needing to cool the entire house, you’re just creating a few safe havens where you’ll spend most of your time.
a window unit can be installed in less than 5 minutes, no engineer necessary and because its a window unit it’s easily removed so you shouldn’t need planning permission
Few houses have compatible windows.
