The old one also sounds like a running lawnmower, but still.

128 comments

This funny meme is also a good example of survivorship bias. There are both good and shitty ACs from both eras. We're just only comparing to the good old ACs because the shitty ones already broke.
- The same seems to apply for old music as well - only the "good stuff" survives and everything else is forgotten
- While I agree with you past generations weren't swamped with infinite selections of shitty versions of products at their fingertips. Think it feels worse now because it's harder to find the good stuff these days
  
  It's had a lot to do with manufacturers trying to cater to a certain price point where they can maximize sales and profits, rather than simply trying to make the best product they can make. It leads to a lot of cheap garbage.
  
  That's a very valid point. Today's ease of access to a wider variety of sources is vastly different to the pre-internet era of appliance shopping. Back then, we just went to the nearest Sears or some other appliance warehouse to try them out. They'd have just a few different models available, so those were all your options. The other method of purchase was through direct shipping catalogs, where you hoped the product you bought didn't actually suck.
- That is true, although earlier generations didn't have access to as many different variations of a product, most of the ones available to them were the high-end versions. The trade-off is that they costed much more due to being a more premium product and being new on the market.
- Pretty sure all of my old apartments had the shitty window units, none of them ever worked.
- It's true with most appliances.
  The problem is it is difficult to know today which appliances will still be functioning in 20 years.

Air conditioner then: 2 kilowatts / ton
Air conditioner now: 0.4 kilowatts / ton
- Can't we have like .8 kw / ton thats twice as reliable?
  
  Reliability exists, just don’t buy crap. Invest and reap the efficiency. Personally, I’ve spent years with mini-splits and never had this filter problem crap, everything just works and for less than half the cost.
  
  What is planned obsolescence?
  
  You can have a super efficent one that's reliable. Not gonna be super cheap, though. But they exist, as server rooms and critical infrastructure has to be cooled as well. Mitsubishi Heavy makes stuff like that for example.
- can someone explain this for the uneducated?
  
  It's another one of those weird non-metric units. In the world of air conditioning (or cooling in general), a "ton" is the amount of cooling you'd get from melting a ton (a short ton - that is 2000 pounds) of ice that's already near its melting point. Air conditioners are usually rated in tons per day, with 1-5 tons about right for a typical apartment or house, depending on things like square footage and climate.
  
  He's saying they improved in efficiency
  
  In Air Conditioning a "ton" = 12000BTU of heat removal per hour.
  It originates from the amount of heat removal over a period of 24 hours needed to freeze a ton of water at 0C:
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton_of_refrigeration
  A quick idea of what cooling/heating you need is your square footage (assuming 8ft ceilings) x 20.
  So 600 sq ft of area would need a 1 ton AC or 12,000BTU. Again complicated by outdoor temperature, insulation of the home, and other factors.
  Anyway, what the op was saying, for the same tonnage (cooling capacity) old ACs used a ton of electricity. Newer split units are crazy efficient.
  Like in 2000 the new requirement for a home AC was a SEER (cooling vs electric usage) of 10. The higher the rating, the less electricity used for a given cooling capacity.
  Nowadays you can get the cheaper split units which have ratings of 19-23 SEER2. So they use half or less than half the electricity for the same cooling. Also they can work as heaters in a pinch.
  Edit: Quick googling shows that ACs from the 80s could be as inefficient as 6-7 SEER. So a modern 21 SEER2 unit would use 1/3rd the electricity!

You forgot about the part where it is 70% asbestos and radioactive coolant. 10/10 best ACs ever.
- Coolant made of uranium? Where to stuff asbestos in a AC?
  
  Can't imagine the bill to get that sucker recharged.

That old, toxic refrigerant just hit different
- The new stuff just doesn't taste the same.
- You can do a 1:1 swap of refrigerant, and if I remember correctly, the new stuff actually works better.
  
  Heck, early refrigeration systems used friggen ammonia as it's refrigerant of choice. Works good at being compressed and evaporated, shame about it being poison.

Weird my mini split is a workhorse. It doesn't give two shits about dust, dirt, ice, rain, or snow. It has heated the house in single digits and cooled the house in triple digits (both F). 10/10. Best $1800 I ever spent.
- For real, mini splits are insanely powerful. They'll make a room frigidly too cold in nanoseconds if you ask them to.
  
  I wouldn’t say nanoseconds… might be my system with multiple units,but one can take a minute to get its bearings. Once on though I really only need one unit for the whole place despite having 3.

But the first needs at least two power lines to work.
- CoP of negative 10.
- *220V

German here, I don't get that joke. What the fuck's an Air Conditioner? Some time of specail air you put in your hair after using shampoo?
- Yeah, it's for when your air is too flat and frizzy.
- @EmoDuck @ThePicardManeuver
  Don't many German cars have "airco"? 😅
  Anyway, in rare cases it's to moisturize the inside air, some are able to heat, but most of them are used to cool down temperatures in a room or building (like in supermarkets in summer) and are a common thing in resident houses in the hotter parts of the world...
  I think it gets its name from being able to condition the air temperature... 😅
  
  jesus christ, germans know what air conditioning is
  
  Dehumidify
  
  So on the whole somee are able to heat thing is going to be dependent on where you live, put where I love most heatpumps (air conditioners) that are whole home units or minisplits are reversible heatpump meaning they can both heat and cool
- Not sure if this is the correct word for it (really bad at German) but I think the word for it is Klimaanlage.

My old AC works great. I just wish I could hear other things while it's running.

We need to figure out how to retrofit those old machines to be as efficient as the new ones, and be clean and pigeon free. Then we can keep them around.
- They still make those old style ones and they are energy star certified.
  The ones that look like the new one are what's used with heat pumps here.
  
  Is there any reason a window unit couldn’t be a heat pump? My understanding is the difference is just about a single valve to reverse the direction of the coolant.
  
  Uhh, old style is heat pump too. Unlesz you are referring water evaporation.
- The difficulty (just looking at the refrigerant) is the huge differences in pressure needed between refrigerants.
  Then you have to look at the compatibility of the compressor motor oils and the refrigerant.
  One example
  60 PSI to 85 PSI for R-22 and 105 PSI to 143 PSI for R-410A
  Others:
  
  Makes sense. Very different tolerances and tooling required

We missed out on the freon black market that's consumed by cyborg men in vans.
- I understood this reference.
  
  With the high average age and tech fetish inclination of this userbase, I figure there are several folks that have read Snow Crash more than once.

Which air conditioner are you talking about specifically that shuts off when it gets dust on its filter?
- It's not that they shut off, it's that many units are sized so questionable for the square footage they are able to cool that the filter being dusty or clean is the difference between being able to cool the room to the target temperature or not.
  
  Right so people bought cheap and now are upset that it doesn't do the work.

Planned Obsolesce!
- No. Industrial air conditioning units are showing the same thing. They are getting lighter and better at cooling.
  Control panels some times need air conditioners. Old enough companies, like my ex-employer, can even pull up records to show that the shipping weights are going down. Lost a bet with my old boss about this.

Yes the older models are the little engine that could. (come to think of it most of you are too young to get that reference). The expensive big one threw a belt and became useless after four years.
But I moved to a place where I'm on the shady side of the building and as a result all I need are fans.
- There's no belts on ductless mini splits lol
  You might be about 15 years behind technology
  
  Those big ones with the pipe piece, the standing ones, have belts.

I miss my old really noisy air conditioner window unit. I loved the noise from it, it drowned out other sounds and I got better sleep. My room air filters generate some decent white noise effects, but it's just not the same.
- The best part about window units is the dank freezer smell they emit. Sometimes I just stand there and smell it while enjoying the cool air on my face.
  
  Ozon?

Firefox is telling me the link is not secure and redirects me away. Anyone else getting this issue too?
- Jerboa (Android app) fails to load the image and just shows a placeholder.
  
  Mine loaded it just fine.
  Jerboa is finicky when it comes to certain image file types.
  
  Jerboa works for me
- Really? Weird. It's just a directly uploaded image through lemmy.
  Oh wait, maybe it was inaccessible yesterday because my instance was undergoing maintenance.

Central air conditioning system or bust 😂
For real though, never lived in a place that had these window units. Guess these are more common on the east coast.
- As heat waves are becoming more common, lots more people are wanting air conditioning in places where it was previously seen as a waste of money. Retrofitting existing housing with central air generally isn't feasible, so all types of air conditioning have their place. The worst are portable units, but in a lot of places they're the only option that works.
- Mini splits air conditioners (the one on the right) have some major advantages over central air.
  With central air there's one big condenser and evaporator for the whole house and dampers are used to block the chilled/heated air to zones that aren't requesting for air. Since all the zones share the same air source, the more zones that need heated/cooled the slower it'll take. This system also prevents one zone from requesting heating while another requests cooling as the system can only do one at a time.
  Now with mini splits each zone gets it's own condenser and evaporator meaning each zone is free to heat/cool to each zones needs and airflow isn't effected by other zones. The biggest reason why mini splits are better though is because if there is an issue you'll only lose one zone instead of the entire HVAC as you would with a central unit.
- Just move to a temperate climate. I've never had AC and only regret that for about 5 days a year. You learn to plow through that.
  
  With climate change, those regrettable 5 days a year will become months long in the coming years.
  
  As someone that lives in the arctic my AC (Inverter heat pump) has been running daily for over 2 months this year.
  I miss summers where we didn't have two months over 20c, I have no idea where I can move to get away from this fucking unbearable heat at this point.
- Consider a series of smaller units and one outdoor unit. Together they do the exact same thing as your central ac but for 1/4 of the price.
  Imagine 1/4th the electric bill! Then look at your current setup and ask yourself whatever you need about the east coast, as long as you need… everyone else has the same cooling as you with 1/4 the cost. Sooo central or bust amiright? Keep paying / throwing away your money, more than everyone else… and why?
  Look into the engineering of evaporating and condensing a material in a slightly different way than you are used to… it’s not weird.
  Forget the hippy shit. You are paying 4-5x the cost for the same result. Feel free to keep throwing away money. The rest of us don’t care. We’re not on the “east coast” but we pay less than you regardless…