Home air con

How many of you ballers have this? Surely it’s the way forward with increasing temperatures? 

Hargreaves you apartment never goes below 20C in winter in Zurich without heating?   You are chinning us on, unless you are benefitting from heat from apartments below you which actually suggests individual apartments are not that well insulated. 

Think HVAC companies will be good investments. Tens of millions of homes in Europe going to be installing in the next few years. Yes of course this ratchets up electricity consumption, we’re nosediving into the mountain.

In two bedrooms only. Installed by the people before us.

This is actually a cool house, well insulated. But converting the roof space and building out over a bay in a different room with huge glass windows is not great - hot in summer and cold in winter.

modern design not matching the Victorian in efficiency

I've got air con in the gym and in the garden office.  As said above, hardly ever used but we all slept in the gym recently when it hit 40 degrees during the day and it was awesome.

Might get one of those little £300 ones you put water in if I get to a more cash positive position but tbh the days like a few weeks ago when it is really hard to manage without are going to be few and far between even after decades of climate change. I foresee the average going up and up but extreme temps will most likely hit a ceiling around 42C and rarely go above 35C as to do so requires a specific set up which will remain rare. Cooler and wetter years will still be mixed in.

Expect they will be a middle class luxury item rather than an essential. As recently as the 1987 Greek heatwave most Greeks didn't have them and said heatwave was grisly and disastrous (maxima well into 40s and minima above 30C for 10 days!!)

I remember being in Athens in those kinds of temperatures in a hotel room with no aircon and we used to fill the bath with cold water to go to sleep.  You'd get in, naked, soak yourself and try to get to sleep before it evaporated.

We have a portable one that's mainly used for the office, where the temp is usually at least 5 degrees higher than outside.  Otherwise, Vornados at the way to go.

If you're going to spend £300 on a portable evaporative unit you may as well make it £400 on a proper portable aircon. We've got one which vents out of a screen in the kitchen door and cools the kitchen and dining room where 'zette tends to work.  I swelter working away upstairs in 35 degree heat.

Guy you'd be surprised.  My place is a compromise by virtue of being listed but unlike old houses the temperature doesn't drop at night and I don't think the heating has come on in the upstairs bedrooms in the three years I've been there apart from a short period when it was -7C with an easterly wind.  If we all lived in modern insulated houses the demand for gas in the winter would be far lower than it is now.

Mr Hargreaves, sorry but I just dont understand how the temperature could remain at 20C all winter without heating with sub zero temperatures outside.    I dont care how well insulated the building is you still have to open doors etc and no insulation is 100 per cent (if it was you would run out of oxygen), it is just not physically possible unless you are getting a heat source from somewhere. 

It could be December 2015 when even the badly insulated flat I then lived in  needed no heating due to average temperatures being warmer than those of an average April

lordgaga11 Aug 22 09:39

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Tom Fun

You are literally describing the sleeping regime of my pot plants atm

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lordgaga11 Aug 22 09:40

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Surely a drowning risk?

 

Sorry I should have mentioned we got OUT of the bath and INTO bed (wet) to try to drop off.  Usually took a few goes.

Guy you fail to understand how effective good insulation and airtightness can be. A Passivhaus needs no heating because the activities in the house and mechanical heat recovery mean there is zero heat loss. Passivhauses need forced ventilation because they are so airtight, but a heat exchanger avoids what most British houses do which is have massive open holes in the side of the house ventilating boilers/bathrooms etc. 

UK building regs only require a U value of 0.3 in new houses' walls, whereas passivhauses will get it down to a third of that. In addition, UK builders will pay no attention to sealing around holes in the insulation e.g. where pipes go in and out, and they are allowed to get away with cheap roof construction that means loads of heat is still lost through them. 

The former Chateau Coffee was insulated to a very high standard - triple glazing, 10 inches of external thermal cladding etc.

It kept the heat in extremely efficiently in winter, where overnight temps could reach double figures below zero.

And for the first day or two of a heatwave (a fair number of mid-high 30s every summer), it kept the heat out very efficiently.  But when it got hot - fook me it would roast.  And all that wonderful insulation meant it wouldn't cool down for an eternity.

But wait to see what putting a 10kw aircon in every second house does to the power grid.  When they all turn on at the same time, on just a few days a year, there will be chaos.

I've got a 4.7kw ducted system. It's amazing but faark me it doesn't half cost a pretty penny to run. 

The design of our house means that it really does get quite uncomfortable without it. Given that, as I have mentioned before, I get dynamic electricity pricing, in the summer I tend to crank it in the late morning to early afternoon and then leave it off and be careful to shut the doors in the afternoons. Most summers we will get at least a handful of days where it breaks 40° and on those days it's very windy. It's horrible actually. 

I’ve got it in most rooms.  Used for about three days in 2020, not at all last year and three to four days this year.  Can’t say it was worth the cost based on that usage, but the relief on those days was huge.  
 

Also inherited an air source heat pump, which was a massive pain in the arse and ended up getting rid of it.  I hear they’re better now.

In addition, UK builders will pay no attention to sealing around holes in the insulation e.g. where pipes go in and out,

In my experience they'll empty three cans of expanding foam into any gap that they think might let cold air in.

My place is phenomenal in that it requires 40% of the heating of the similar sized old house next door and when the heating goes off the temperature is largely static unlike the house next door where the hot air immediately leaks out.  Even in the beast from the east it didn't drop below 16C and at any time and that was while I was still getting the hang of the underfloor heating.  This is a house as well which is not as efficient as it could be because of the compromises that come from it being listed.  Also surprisingly cool in the summer given that it's wooden weatherboard on top of six inches of insulation.

Meanwhile, the current Chateau Coffee is pleasantly cool downstairs in summer, and even cooler downstairs in winter.

While upstairs has 6m ceilings and is fooking hot in summer and fooking cold in winter.  But it's worth it because it's awesome.  How many of you khunts have a roof so high you've never been able to hit it with a champagne cork?  

I mostly use wood heating but I've got a 3.5kw reverse cycle system which is surprisingly quick to heat and cool when needed. Given the volume it has to deal with, I'm amazed.

Kitchen Cottage is cool in summer and warm in winter.  Combination of Thatch and 5 layers of insulation in the walls helps.  I'm looking at shutters to increase the thermal efficiency of the windows.

At the moment though I have underfloor heating,  I'll be able to judge better when my primary heat is the wood burning stove.  It's located at the centre of the house and should radiate the heat.

My ceilings are low.  Living room is 2 metres and the upstairs eave is probably 3.  It's the efficiency of the thatch that helps.

 

 

Expanding foam isn't airtight so there's part of the problem.

Large housebuilders don't GAF as the BR inspector is in their pocket and people are so obsessed with countertops they don't bother to check/pay someone competent to check for the botches hidden behind lots of plastic trims and plasterboard. Lots of builders will not care about things you can't see e.g. insulation upstands to stop thermal bridging where the walls meet the floor, thermal breaks around doors and windows, unwrapped structural steels etc. 

No ok, fair enough, but it is an expensive thing that presumably requires some energy to run and so it is more than just great insulation that keeps a house 20c in winter.

Not so long ago, I viewed a a development of flats, which was a large house converted in to flats. It had proper air con. It was a delight. My next place will have it. That aside, I am sure it adds value.

Two apartments that we had in Hong Kong had centralised zircon that could run in reverse for heating.  We only used them in that mode once or twice.  Presumably air source heat pumps could have  the same capability.