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a modern tragedy
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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just people memeing about how Europe doesn't have air conditioning (Europe has ac but not as much as the us)
there's a deadly heatwave
Yeah and the general superiority stuff going on about it.
Until recently it largely wasn't needed in many places that do now, owner-occupiers are rare comparatively, old buildings are hard to refit, electricity is quite costly. All that made it a luxury item with few installers. Reverse cycle heatpumps aren't even that common in many places vs unidirectional ones and gas was relatively cheap so the heating side of the value wasn't great.
No great mystery, no stupidity required.
Obviously in countries where heat, and especially humid heat, is common it's extremely attractive and there's been wide adoption. If you also get cold winters it's a no brainer to go reverse cycle.
old buildings are pretty easy to refit, as long as you dont give a shit how the building is gonna look. it's gonna have the external units hanging off the side, and it's gonna be ugly.
but seriously, installing a minisplit requires you to drill one (1) hole in the wall, stick the refrigerant and condensation lines through it and screw two boxes up on walls. one outside, one inside.
But intact art nouveau fascades are way more important then whether the people living in the buildings survive the summer or how much they spend on heating in the winter.
AC heating isn't exactly cheap. I'm in Australia and it costs me around 300 aud a month in winter to keep the house around 21 about half of every day. I often wake up to a house that's between 4 and 10 degrees celcius. I have rooftop solar too. Heating in general is expensive.
Until gas prices went nuts it made way more sense to use gas for heating. We didn't even bother with AC prior because even when it hits 50C I'm cruising, a cold shower and a nap sets you right if you're used to it.
Yeah, I lived in a double brick 2 storey terrace house in NSW, and it was difficult to control the temperature without spending a lot of money.
Well, as one of the end houses anyway. For the terrace houses sandwiched between the others, they have the benefit of having very little surface area exposed to the elements
I always assumed the verticality of terrace houses would allow for evaporative coolers to work, but I never did get a chance to try.
I was thinking about thermal isolation when I mentioned the fascades.
Some buildings need very little energy to stay at comfortable temperatures.
True, building codes are hard to change because moneied interests like building shitboxes and like the entire landlord philosophy is spend nothing take everything.
Everyone should be building passive solar homes where possible though
They are building new buildings like this but those are getting talked to shit. Too blocky, concrete desert (bushes and lawns next to every building but who's counting). Then you walk inside and it has 25° during the hottest day of the summer even though the floor cooling hasn't even been connected yet.
Vexing.
My dream is a concrete home half dug into the earth with bushfire shutters. Would be pretty chill being comfortable year round and not having to evacuate every couple of years.
People whinge about functional houses a lot.
yeah, there's some of that. i dont know what the law is around here, but either we have very few protected buildings or the government just decided to look the other way while people install their illegal AC units. cos it doesnt look like anyone cares, every house has a ton of them hanging off the outside now and they drip on you as you walk along the sidewalk.
Are you under the impression that most Europeans live in historical buildings?
In my city, yes.
Kinda. Except if everyone is doing it in say an apartment building you have to plan for the increased electrical load and in older structures particularly with like plaster electrical retrofits are difficult. In certain wall structures it's not always easy to know where drilling wont mess with wiring or plumbing too.
There are also often laws trying to restrict appearance from the street from changing too much so that's another barrier. And of course you need your landlord to agree, and agree to the ongoing maintenance. They'll also jack the rent.
well yes, when i had my AC installed, they drilled into the conduit that had my wires inside. but they're prepared for that sort of thing and stopped in time, so they only damaged the conduit, not the wires inside.
Not that recently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heatwave
Was not considered new norm. It isn't worth getting AC for once in a decade or rarer events.
That's true but there has an increasing number of natural disasters since. Also the flooding the year before. Shit has been fucked for decades
And social change is slow /shrug. You need companies marketing units, tradies trained in installation. Creates a market, lowers prices, improves uptake. A feedback loop.
And like a looooot of people in Europe rent. Makes it harder.
Places like Spain have better uptake cause the economics were just easier to justify since you're using it often.
God, yeah. We need rental reform just as much as AC.