12mo ago

Wait, not like that

251 comments

It's not the AC that are incredible. Modern heat pumps are incredible. They are the best thing since the sliced bread. I could talk for hours about heat pumps. They're just so efficient.
Heat pumps - they pump my heat.
Did I mention I like heat pumps?
- It's literally the same machine
  
  Non-native English speaker, but I looked it up the other day and it seems that pedantically an A/C only cools things down and heat pumps can both heat and cool.
  
  Well… Kind of. Heat pumps are a more modern iteration, which can both heat or cool a room. And they’re not like a traditional central AC system, where you have a central compressor and ducts running to each vent. Instead, you run refrigerant lines to each room, then the individual room unit actually does the cooling locally. It’s the same basic principle (using refrigerant to move heat outside, thus cooling the air,) but heat pumps are a more modern take.
  And as an added bonus, a heat pump can also be used as a heater (and be much more efficient than a traditional heating coil.) Because it’s just moving heat around from the interior and exterior, and that can include moving heat indoors to warm the interior. And since they’re just moving heat (instead of using a coil to generate it) they can be over 100% efficient when you’re measuring wattage consumed vs heat produced.
  
  AC is a version of heatpump that cools your house. Refridgerator is a heatpump that keeps your food cool. Freezer is a heatpump wäthat freezes things.
  AC is not the same thing as heatpump. AC is just one application of an heatpump.
- You've surely seen one of the many videos from Technology Connections, then?
  
  Of course I have. Matt Ferrell has some nice videos too.
- Im gonna have a nice long wank listening to this user passionately talk about heat pumps
  
  You meant walk, right? Right?????
- The refrigeration cycle is humanity’s greatest invention.
  
  I have that ingrained in my brain.
- Are the twin of Technology Connections?
- We’ve got a ground source heat pump with underfloor heating and cooling since two years. It’s always a comfortable 19-22 degrees Celsius inside (66-72 Fahrenheit) and we’d never want anything else.
- Tell that to the vast majority of Germans. They'd rather throw their relatives into the furnace for heating than buying a heat pump. That's all thanks to far right populism by the way.
  
  They'd rather throw their relatives into the furnace for heating than buying a heat pump.
  Sounds more like a german tradition.

Guns are fun as hell, it’s true. Unfortunately as with most things in the world, shit gets ruined because people don’t know how to act right
- Hopefully OOP lives in a country that has good gun laws - like Czechia.
- I'm Australian and guns are really strictly regulated here, I also believe that guns are FUCKING FUN. Sometimes I get shitty about how hard it is to own a gun for recreational shooting then I see a smackhead at the supermarket screaming at random people and how unlikely it is that they have a gun and I think "Yep, Ill take that trade".

At 40 cents / kwh you learn to tolerate heat very quickly.
- Heat is quickly becoming deadly around the globe. Better figure out how to budget that cost, asap.
  
  Keep yourself cool to worsen the problem? sounds like a great plan! /s
  AC users anywhere in the world where temperatures / humidity are in a range that humans can adapt to are morons.
- At 40 cents/kWh I would buy a solar array.
  
  Gotta buy a house first!
  
  I can barely afford food. a solar array is super luxury. plus i don't have place for it anyway.
- Or get solar on your roof. Usually when it's hot enough outside to need AC, then that means the sun is shining
- That's fucking nuts; the only time my power bill gets anywhere close to being that high is for three hours a day in June and July (34¢/kwh). For most of the year it's only 9¢/kwh.
  Don't know how other countries do it, but in the US the home energy sector is highly regulated. Probably one of the only things we do right; but we soon as lawmakers try to propose similar regulations to healthcare and the internet, suddenly it's "SoCiAlIsM"
- Or, you know, buy a solar array. I hear it's windy in the UK too. 🙄🙄🙄🙄
- Jesus, where is this?
  
  California

I am at this point considered liberal, but I have to say that I do like guns. Range shooting is super fun. If I could I would take up competitive Three Gun as a hobby, but I don't have a course in my area.
Also, I hike with either my 45-70 ammunition rifle or my .45acp pistol with high grain ammo. Why? I live in Wyoming where we are definitely not on the top of the food chain. Even my pistol is liable to just piss off a bear if it really means business.
- Yeah, I would definitely carry a .44 magnum in grizzly country.
  Man, if you think target shooting is fun, wait until you go skeet or trap shooting! That's the most fun shooting there is IMO. Give it a try if you haven't already. I just bought a really nice Franchi over-under 20 gauge specifically for trap and skeet. It would make a great upland game bird gun too, but I don't really have any interest in that.
  
  Bear spray is usually a better choice, on account of a whole lot of factors. At the very least you should bring both and issue a warning with bear spray.
  Edit: how to use bear spray
  Also, be aware that the weather is orders of magnitude more likely to kill you than a bear, and avoiding bear encounters is usually fairly easy to begin with. If you're carrying a gun but not a compass, your risk assessment is WAY off.
- I hate guns, but alas there’s just no practical alternative for fulfilling my daily quota of wanton destruction.
  
  I do some wonton destruction at the Chinese buffet.
  
  Bombs aren't that hard to make. Nor are molotov cocktails.
  You're just lazy.
  
  Get yourself a bat and a hollow core door.
  
  I like the cut of your jib, good sir (or madam).
- Lol yeah I'm a Southern progressive, and I love guns just to do range practice. But absolutely understand why they're hard to get/going away. People suck and it's why we can't have nice things.
  
  Guns are hard to get and going away? Clearly there've been some changes in the South since I was last there.
- Wow, you’re describing use cases we can all agree are legitimate and you didn’t say anything about being careless or reckless, or trigger happy, nor express an impulse to “mag dump” someone. Yeah, that’ll piss off fellow liberals
- .357 lever actions are neat.
- I love target shooting and do conceal carry, but it does get a bit ridiculous around here. After leaving the Army, it took a lot of training and rigid selfcontrol to call it a "clip" again, just to troll the gravy seals down at the range. I laugh as they correct me, and the owner, who knows me, just shakes his head and calls me an ass.
- Guns are amazing when they're collector items made by Holland & Holland to your custom spec. When they're mass produced crap, they're not much different from air soft guns at the shooting range. At least air soft guns don't kill people.

I'm a US electrician who may move to Scotland within a decade. I'll hook up some mini splits for yall. Just gimme that NHS.
- About to move to France, no one has AC there either but EVERYONE is about to buy them in huge numbers. Anyone know what manufacturers have the largest residential AC marketshare? That looks like a Mitsubishi. Definitely going to invest in those companies they're gonna explode.
  I am not a financial advisor
  
  the last time I looked into this I ran into the problem that most of the publicly traded heat pump manufacturers are huge conglomerates that produce just about every appliance under the sun. I don't want to invest in that. do you have any recommendations?
  
  Japan makes amazing heat pumps and knows how to deal with high humidity and large temp changes. (See Tokyo, winter and summer)
  
  The Mitsubishi ones are really popular and work well from what I know. But lots of folks make em - it's just a matter of getting them to make enough of them for 220VAC 50hz or whatever
- That's right, a lifestyle trade. Give them a reason to live and the NHS will give you a way to stay alive.

How is AC being a game changer surprising?? When it is hot I see my contacts in the UK sitting with icepacks in their laps or with fans all around them spraying themselves with water. Imagine if the whole room was just a tolerable temperature, it isn't hard to picture. Seems odd.
(Yes I get it just isn't a thing there and they have buildings older than time itself...but still....)
- I just got hit by beryl, it is hell on earth here right now. Now power for two days so far with temps arouns 90-95 f andn%100 humidity. Sleeping is now considered a water sport and no ac in sight.
  The worst part? You cant cool off even with a fan, there's too much humidity forntour sweat to evaporate and cool you. I wish i at least had cold drinks
  
  Yeah, some parts of the US recently experienced something called a wet bulb event. Basically, that’s a phenomenon where the heat and humidity are both so high that your body’s natural cooling mechanism (sweating) stops working entirely and people will overheat simply by being outside. No amount of shade or cool drinks will help, because your body’s primary cooling mechanism has been defeated.
  Basically, sweat works by evaporating. When water evaporates, it takes heat with it. This allows sweat to cool you down as it dries. To be able to accurately determine what the temperature feels like, you can’t just use a regular dry thermometer. You need to use something called a wet bulb thermometer. This is basically a thermometer with some wet cotton wrapped around it, to simulate sweat. As the wet cotton dries, it creates a more accurate gauge of what the ambient temperature feels like, the same way sweat cools you.
  But a wet bulb event is when the wet bulb thermometer reads above 95°F. At that point, it means the cotton isn’t drying fast enough to cool a person down. At this point, the temperatures are dangerous even to fit and healthy individuals in the shade with fans and cool drinks. Because a breeze won’t even cool you down when it’s that hot outside; A fan will actually heat you up even faster, because the air is adding heat faster than evaporative cooling can remove it.
  
  Leave
- The other thing in the UK is that screen doors and windows are non-existent so if you want to open them for fresh air you're inviting all the bugs in as well
  
  There are nets with velcro tape.
  https://www.amazon.co.uk/tesa-insect-net/s?k=tesa+insect+net
  
  They don't even have screening? Guys wtf get a hardware store that's worth a shit.
- My house always is cool anyway - it's well-insulated so heat doesn't come in unless I open a window, and I open the windows every evening when it's cool outside.
  Air conditioning would just waste energy and increase humidity
  
  Air condition decreases humidity.
  
  Lots of places in the US don't even get to a comfortable temperature at night. Right now I'm in Pennsylvania which is pretty far north and the lowest it's going to get tonight is 80F with 80% humidity. It was 100F today with the same humidity. I actually got sick at work from it.

I'm pretty sure that access to guns would instantly end my depression.

Honestly it's not that bad if the building is made right. Especially old stone houses that also happen to be surrounded by trees are absolutely godly in these scenarios (the down side is the heating bill in the winter :P or rather that used to be the downside...). I honestly wouldn't have ever considered an AC a couple years ago, but now that summer means a constant 30°C I'm reconsidering. Like bro, 30°C used to be a HOT exceptional couple days, not the entire summer!
- You are absolutely right about old stone houses. I live in an old stone cottage surrounded by trees and it's amazing in the summer. We turn our ac on a few weeks to a month after everyone else does(in the US).
  The winters aren't too bad either. We have a tiny wood stove and even when using the oil furnace it holds heat in pretty well.
  Side bonus! Home owners insurance gives us a break because the risk of fires goes way down when the outside is made of rocks.
  
  Trees are OP. Please nerf.

AC always gives me a sore throat after couple of days, is that just me?
- Air's dry. Try a humidifier
- Fyi it could be filters need changing. Right now if we turn on the aircon at work, I get terribly sore throat that would last for days. Turns out they change/clean the filters only once a year, and it's even worse in some other rooms where it also smells bad.
- Slap a humidifier in your room. Air conditioning is by its nature also a dehumidifier, so some people end up with overly dry and therfore eventually soar throats.
  
  Came to say the same thing. I sleep like a baby next to my humidifier, dreaming of a way out of this hot hellhole
- Found someone not living in 100 degree heat 90% of the year...
- Not just you. I hate AC. Awful being in hotel rooms where it's AC all the way and you can't even really open a window in the room. I get sore throat and usually they're really noisy too, so I can't sleep without earplugs. I very much prefer opening a window and airing thoroughly in the evening and then during the night leaving window on kip. Travelling many days or weeks in AC vehicles really makes me sick.
- Like someone else mentioned, the cool side heat exhangers condense water out of the air.
- They have A/Cs that recycle the condensation that they remove back into the air, but not every unit does this (usually the moisture is just dumped somewhere outside). But yours probably doesn't do this so like everyone else said, you need a humidifier.
  Don't get one if those crappy little 1 gallon ones that create big clouds of steam; you have to use distilled water or all the junk that's in your water will get atomized and into your lungs. Buy a basic evaporative humidifier instead (the kind that use a wick), one of those giant 6 gallon ones and set it to 40-50% RH. It'll keep your entire home nice and comfortable and you can just use water straight from the sink. And you only have to refill them about once a week instead of every single day. Just make sure you don't skimp out on the bacteriostat cause they will get nasty quick if you cheap out.
  Alternatively the budget option is just to take showers with the bathroom door open and the vent off. Just make sure that you're monitoring the humidity levels in your home should you go this route; keep RH below 65% or you're going to have mold. If your A/Cs thermostat doesn't report humidity levels, then you can just buy a cheap meter. They're under $10 in most parts of the world.
- You're running it too cold. I have the same if I set it to 21/22 celcius. Set it to 24/25. That's still amazing in summer and yet no sore throat or getting sick.

We in EU also have AC, what's the difference?
- Most of my friends in Germany and UK do not have AC, or have such undersized units for their homes it barely makes a difference. Or they don't want to run it because energy costs to utilize it during the day are ridiculous.
  
  What I've learned at least about the houses in the UK is that the homes are old and drafty so it's not about the size of the unit but the insulation being poor.
- North vs South. AC is not very common in homes in countries like Netherlands and Germany. Mostly because it’s only really hot for one or two months and those are the months that Germans and Dutch people are on holiday. So it’s either go on holiday or stay at home for one summer and buy AC.

till
American checks out.
- Middle English til, tille "(going) onward to and into; (extending) as far as; (in time) continuing up to;" from Old English til (Northumbrian) "to," and from Old Norse til "to, until," both from Proto-Germanic *tilan (source also of Danish til, Old Frisian til "to, till," Gothic tils "convenient," German Ziel "limit, end, goal").
  A common preposition in Scandinavian, serving in the place of English to, probably originally the accusative case of a noun otherwise lost but preserved in Icelandic tili "scope," the noun used to express aim, direction, purpose (as in aldrtili "death," literally "end of life"). Also compare German Ziel "end, limit, point aimed at, goal," and till (v.).
  As a conjunction, "until, to the time that or when," from late Old English.

Like an engineer told me recently, the image of AC is biased in most of us towards the electricity-sucking devices of the previous century. Contemporary AC tech is to 1980s-90s AC what LED lightbulbs are to incandescent ones.
- Moreover, the very same units are often also super efficient heating devices that embarrass their gas/oil burning counterparts.
  
  Assuming the manufacturer has bothered to make the tiny modification necessary to turn AC into a heat pump and then not charge you 50% markup for the privilege.
  Heat pumps are still stupid expensive.

Yes. Like that.

I did, they're pretty fun.
- The American pro-gun community calls anything stricter than "fill out a one page form without lying too much" a "gun ban".
  The only exception to this is when they claim "It can't be our permissive gun laws because Switzerland has permissive gun laws and they don't have all the homicides, armed robbery and mass shootings".
  Which is just a lie in the other direction since Switzerland has regulations the pro-gun community staunchly opposes for America, calling them a "gun ban".

Got to shoot an assault rifle in the army. Would definitely buy one if I could.
- The M16 is definitely the best, most fun rifle I've ever shot. Hitting a pop-up target 300 feet out in less than 2 seconds is pretty rewarding.
- Assault rifles are cool and all, but SMGs are just fun. The ugliest but most fun gun I've ever shot was a 9mm Colt SMG. A factory made kludge to fit 9mm into an AR-15 derivative. The weight and overall design being originally for 5.56mm in mind meant that full auto with 9mm had basically zero felt recoil.
  Most fun assault rifle was the Vz. 58. Less controllable than an any kind of full auto 5.56mm AR-15 derivative, but so fun I didn't care. And it reloaded with clips.
- You seem to live in Finland. Owning an AK or AR is highly achievable.

Seems minisplits are becoming more popular. Saw a truckload of them on the interstate a while back
- they are great.
  They are super efficient. They are relatively cheap. and they are super easy to install DIY.
  Plus they are super easy to retrofit into older homes that dont have space for duct work.
  Plus Plus, while the unit can only be in heating or cooling mode (so no heating one room while cooling another), you can control temperatures and even on/off on an individual room basis so you can have your bedroom at a frosty 61f while keeping the livingroom at a more reasonable 74.
  
  Plus Plus, while the unit can only be in heating or cooling mode (so no heating one room while cooling another)
  Some manufacturers are actually working to change that. It’s just a heat pump. Meaning it moves heat from one place to another. That’s how they can be over 100% efficient, because they’re not using power to generate heat; They’re just moving the existing heat around. And that can absolutely include moving heat from one interior room to another.

Wait, what? Guns can be used for cooling too?
/s
- Yea when you shoot people with them they definitely get colder.
- Yeah you just use it to add ventilation holes

I'm just over here looking at that lineset cover wondering how in the hell whoever installed that is expecting the condensate drain to go up.
- Maybe this is a through wall system and that's covering the power cable?
  
  You might be right, but it sure looks like a mini split to me.
- That's the output of a split system, the part doing the actual condensing and fuckery with the air is outside, that's just a box that can output the cool air. Some are extra fancy and do fan control to move it across the room better.
  The only thing in that box is some wires, some fans, and a control board for everything to run off of
  
  That's only partially true. The evaporator is located on the indoor unit, and that's the part that gets cold and generates all the condensation. There is a drain hose on the indoor unit that has to be directed outside, and the condensate water will only flow downhill. Up is not an option. This is what makes installing a mini split on an interior wall such a hassle.
  So that's why I'm wondering why the lineset cover goes up in that picture. I guess it's possible there is another hole punched in the wall behind the unit for the condensate line, which is the normal way to do it. But I have absolutely no idea why, if there is exterior access like that, anyone would not also run the rest of the lineset through the same hole...

We tried guns 90 years ago, and found the results not to our liking.
- Yeah but guns have become so much more efficient since then!

The irony being that my favorite designs are foreign.
- Mikhail Kalashnikov is one of my engineering heroes. He designed for real world use cases and changed the world.
  
  AKs are cool and all, but I simp for Czechnology. The short stroke piston like a Vz.58 is just my jam when it comes to rifle systems.
  AKs are cool to me for the AKM overcoming the engineering hurdle of making stamped rifles that held up to mass production.

Doubly amazing due to these crazy heat waves.
- Lived in Europe and US and building and landscape design play a big part on how much you really need AC, well at least they used to. Now I would say for the most part living in either place AC is an important quality of life option as it's just getting gross everywhere with crazy high temps.
  
  Europeans be like "I live in a 500 years old house! That's freaking sweet!"
  They also be like "Help, I'm dying in my house that has no insulation!"

Weird, AC is very popular in many parts of Europe.
- Just like it's not popular in Alaska...
  
  It must get humid in those igloos tho. Do people who live in igloos have fires inside?

Take it to the next level and just fire off a few rounds from your recliner

AC is great, but have you ever had DC?
- Put them together and you've been, thunderstruck.
  
  You understood! Hahahaha!!
  
  Ah

I want to buy one of these when Midea sells them to the public. A portable heat pump that doesn't kill the very little sunlight I get seems like a godsend for apartment living

this escalated so quickly

literally me now that summer's getting real annoying here

We could use AC over here by now, it gets unbearably hot...but man those fuckers use a solid amount of energy and everything is already expensive as hell...so suffering through the heat it is.
- I don’t even care about the cost, it’s so hot and humid. We can deal with that once we live through this

ac is fine i guess
- It's like money: Having it isn't everything, but not having it is.

I wonder why Euros always get these weird little AC units. Where the hell is the rest of it? I'd it some kind of centralized air refit for their ancient-ass brick houses? So they even make timber framed houses there for normal central ventilation, or ever use wall units? AC in Europe (and GB) is fucking weird.
- What's in the picture is pretty standard for where I live, this is the indoor unit, and there will be an outdoor unit that contains the actual compressor etc. An outdoor unit will sometimes run multiple indoor ones.
  A unit for each room is also standard practice.
- It's a ductless mini split and it's WAY more efficient than the old ducted centralized A/C. Newer homes in the US are getting these too. They're incredible.
- These are actually pretty awesome units, we got them for a previous house that didn’t have central air / heat originally (baseboard heat / window units) and it was sooooo nice.
  Upstairs we ran normal ducts, the basement we had these units.

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