cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1225516/very-hard-choice
It costs like £2,500 minimum per room.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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Do your rooms not have windows? Window and portable units are a lot cheaper than 2500
What I do is close my blinds. That blocks most of my heat into my house
Memes like this are dumb.
As a non-European living in Europe, I have to agree with the Europeans on this one. It's hard to justify dropping 1000+ EUR on something you would get to use only for about a week every year. It's more economical to just suffer.
This gets worse every year and you reverse them and get heat that's 3 times as power efficient.
You are objectively wrong. Subsidize heatpumps EU. Now. Everywhere.
Reverse cycle systems. Pretty common in Australia, you get heating AND cooling.
Speaking as someone who lives in Germany, this is a common sentiment from old timey Germans that hasn't been true for awhile. It's far more than a week every year and it'll only get worse.
It's like the memory of the past is so strong it overwrites the present day experience. I think the truth of the matter is home ownership is so low that installing AC is never even considered by the owning class. Germans definitely have a culture of not needing AC and like superstitiously not liking them, but honestly California had similar beliefs when I lived there but they had just started to cave to the present reality. I think Germany is a decade behind on this matter and in 10 years 80% of the population will have AC and the last 20% will be the people whose landlords refuse to invest in their properties and blame it on the infrastructure not being built for AC.
Everyone should be installing heat pumps for winter, too. The ability to cool in the summer is basically a bonus, that they can run the system in reverse.
A week this year will turn to 3 weeks in five years.
It’s going to get worse. Start planning for that.
Having 50mil+ households install and run a/c (they won't save it for just the heatwaves, not to mention production, delivery, installation factors), will kick out a fuck tonne more carbon & result in those hotter weeks being hotter and longer even sooner....soooo...are we meant to doom ourselves?! Then there's the issue of increased crop failures, droughts & wildfires etc. all adding to the cost of living.
How should we plan for all that? And the rest - more & heavier flooding etc.
will kick out a fuck tonne more carbon
Not if that installed A/C also functions as a heat pump that reduces gas furnace use in the winter. Especially if decent cooling also incentivizes better insulation (which would further reduce energy use at both extremes).
Carbon emissions from heating account for about 4 times as much as carbon emissions from cooling, worldwide. Replacing gas furnaces with heat pumps will greatly improve overall annual carbon emissions, even if they blast the A/C all summer.
Okay. You fix it your way.
No no no, you don't understand, the American said to just do what you want, obviously there's no need to think about it or apply logic if there's something out there you can have but don't currently own. OBVIOUSLY the American has thought ahead about the consequences for their actions and would never do anything to contribute to climate change
Okay. You fix it your way.
Sorry, were you fixing it?
On a micro level yes. None of us on lemmy are going to fix the macro issue. Nobody is out there doing a things to stop what we all know is coming. So just make yourself comfortable until the end.
Good luck.
What a defeatist viewpoint, but you're certainly welcome to it
Forgive me. You’re right. I just saw the news and I see now that you all are protesting by the tens of millions all of the stupid climate policies that led to this and are demanding change.
How dare and American suggest air conditioning.
As an European, we need to realise that AC also throws hot air if needed, it can be used as a substitute for radiators.
Technically it is more energy efficient that radiators at heating the place, so if you are mainly in a single room its cheaper to switch on the AC than the heating.
I'd argue about the cheaper point as that depends heavily on how the standard heating is organized.
Like living in an apartment complex with central heating and paying for it based on m² regardless of how much it's used and that isn't that rare based on multiple rental apartments I've rented over the years before buying my own apartment.
That system is mostly still done to force sharing of the heating load, because with a system that measures how much heating is used, it's completely possible for middle apartments to completely turn off heating and rely on surrounding apartments to keep them near 16-20c, depending on outer insulation of the apartment complex. Anything above 18c is comfortable and 16 is already tolerable if heating is expensive. While outer apartments need to compensate to keep their temperature in livable range.
Heating with AC would just add on top of already existing heating bill with a centralized heating system that cant be regulated.
ACs are very common in Norway, primarily for heating during winter. Also really nice to have during heatwaves too of course
AC in the US aren't (usually) heat pumps. The most common setup here is a furnace for heating (usually natural gas) plus AC, connected to the same central air unit. Heat pumps are pretty common, but not nearly as universal.
Just mentioning it because "AC" isn't usually used to refer to heat pumps here.
Also the entire electricity grid would explode if every household suddenly gained a 3kW load thats on half the day.
Most AC units are reversible these days, so they can also be used to heat your home in the winter, with energy use efficiencies unattainable by other means such as regular electric heating or fossil fuels. A good heatpump can heat for 5x as much energy as you put in. So you get 1000W of heat for every 200W you use. Besides, depending on your country's energy mix, it's probably also a lot less pollution and irritating gases sent in the atmosphere. It's an investment, sure, but one that would eventually pay off.
It's pretty common for people to already have a heating solution in place that can't practically be replaced with a reversible heat pump. District heating being a primary example here.
5000+
This is assuming that installing an AC is an alternative.
I can't install one in my apartment, there's just no way to set up the outdoor unit for the bedroom. Our windows don't accommodate window units, being casement windows. That leaves portable units, which are not particularly effective, and on top of that forces a serious amount of sunlight into the bedroom, hence ruining the whole thing. Dawn is at 02:04 here, fwiw.
My only hope really is that my apartment building would install some kind of central cooling solution, which is an incredibly expensive endeavour.
My only hope really is that my apartment building would install some kind of central cooling solution, which is an incredibly expensive endeavour.
This comment got me wondering how apartments can retrofit their central heat into some kind of climate control that goes both ways.
For apartments with ducts and forced air, it seems like the central furnace/boiler can probably be replaced with some kind of heat pump setup for more efficient heating in the winters, and reversed to provide cooling in the summers, through the same air ducts. The total cost/complexity would probably depend heavily on the space for the furnace and its service/maintenance, I imagine.
With steam/hot water radiators, though, I imagine it's even harder. Can these systems safely be modified to pump cold water?
Or, if they need to add ducts where none currently exist, that seems like it would be unbelievably complex and expensive, if people are going to be living there the whole time. Seems like a real challenge.
I'd be curious why it's impossible to set up a mini-split in your bedroom. That seems... Illogical. They are surface mounted pretty much anywhere externally, require a small hole to be drilled for the fluid exchange, and the mini split can fit inside any room on the wall or ceiling. Power shouldn't be a problem either as that's easy to wire through the same hole as the fluid exchange if need be.
Idk, I'm not an installer but the tech seems like you could make it work on a barn in the country or in the non-sensical backrooms - it's not very demanding.
You can mod the portable ones to be basically as efficient as the proper units by installing a second hose over the hot side intake and adding that to your window seal kit so there are two hoses. The only inefficiency left then is the exhaust hose acting as a bit of a radiator but especially if you place it by the window and keep the hose short, that's not really that big of a deal.
They are bloody noisy though. There are some properly split window units finally coming onto the European market that will be better for that but still very expensive
Get one of the portable ones and get one of those kits that seal around the hose to the window and then get some curtains.
There is not a single one in stock in the entire UK, plus dual hose versions are basically non existent here too.
Trying to buy an air conditioner mid heatwave probably won't work too well but if youplan ahead then maybe next year you'll have one ready instead of needing one and not having it
What if I invest money in AC and it will never be this hot again?
Look up split unit portable heat pumps such as the Midea PortaSplit or similar. They fix a lot of the issues with regular portable units and can also heat. They are however quite a bit more expensive.
Temperatures are breaking all-time records and our infrastructure isn't ready for that? What a shocking surprise!
I moved into a traditional farmhouse in winter and thought it was rather strange that whoever built the house had built it right over a stream that flows all winter till way into April through the 'loja' (a kind of half cellar built into the slope). Now I know it's a natural AC, the room remains cool even though the sun is hitting the front wall all morning. So luckily I won't have to make that kind of investment any time soon.
(In winter the stream probably kept the animals clean-ish by permanently floating some of the piss and shit layer out of the stable, while plant matter kept being added on top. The fermenting mass would keep stable and top floor warm.)
I had seen a few of these houses and had my doubts that people would just be so stupid as to accidentally build on a water line. Thanks for coming to my info dump.
Tldr: evaporation cooling good.
I'm having trouble to understand how it really looks but in my head, I'm picturing such a weird and awesome place, a bit like the one I Lakentown from the hobbit.
A literal stream directly in your living room :D
Would be kind of peak to have.
In some parts of Europe, we have many ways of mitigating heat that don't cost as much and work well enough to a point.
Shutters will reflect heat before it gets into the home, which can keep the temperature as low as 10 degrees cooler than outside, cieling standing and desk fans can help cool you down in 20-30 degree weather. Dehumidifiers can help in humid heat.
Beyond a certain point, you do have to use air conditioning to lower the temperature, but that's when you get to 35deg and above, and that typically been pretty rare until now, and most of the above still help.
I think if I did have the money I would probably install a heat pump + air conditioner combo and I believe there should be grants available for those.
If you're a renter it sucks though because you have very few options. "Portable" air conditioning is ok but not very effective and very expensive to run.
portable air conditioners can be very effective..
VSauce music que
I was hoping for Technology Connections
I was hoping for two of them.
Wish granted :P
Split ones are, using one right now. 3-5kWh per day depending on outside temperature and target temperature. We set ours to 24-26 degs and it reaches it even now with 40 degs outside.
I read that if the AMOC fails, Western Europe will be like central Siberia. That is to say -30 in the winter, and 40 in the summer.
Also desk fans are ok, i have one pointed at me rn
It's not like we don't have AC, most people here have it