British Homes Have Air Conditioning ?

I was reading about the heat wave in the UK, and someone said "British homes don't have air conditioning".

I thought this surely must be a mistake, but then again I am ignorant of the climate across the lake.

It is hot where I live (the Mid-South) in the summer months, and we seldom have much if any snow.

One really does not survive around here without airconditioning in the house and autos.

My house has a 5 ton unit, downstairs, and a 2 ton unit upstairs.

It has been as hot as 110 F (43.3 C) here in the summer.

We have had a stretch in the last two weeks in the high 90's F to 102 F.

I do remember a time when I was growing up when air conditioning systems in houses and cars were the exception, rather than the rule.

The old houses here have very tall ceilings, and every house had a large fan in the hallway, which pulled air out of the house and up into the attic, and then out vents in the gables. Everyone just opened the windows in the summer, and ran their fans.

I remember not having airconditioning in the car until I was perhaps 12 years old, and my first car did not have airconditioning.

Our humidity here in the summer is generally around 70%, which exacerbates the hot feeling.

My wife and I traveled out west, and the humidity was very low, perhaps 20%.

People were complaining about the terrible heat, but at 20% humidity, it felt cool to my wife and I, and we did not bother to even get out of the sunlight. "Heat ?, What heat ?" we said.

So what it is?

You guys got air ? or no ?

.

Edited By PatJ on 20/07/2022 07:16:33

The only air conditioning my house has is to open the windows except this last few days where every window has been shut and curtains closed, only one of my cars has aircon.

You can buy portable aircon units but it seems a waste of time when you have to shove the exhaust hose out of an open window.

Martin P

I'm not sure if we're a hardy bunch or just cheapskates. I do have a/c but it’s not that common here (yet).

I can recall my dad building his own house back in the early 60’s and folk being amazed that he installed central heating but even he didn't put in double glazing back then - it just wasn't that available.

I didn't own a car with a/c until the late 80's and that was less common too but ubiquitous now. The take-up on automatic transmission was also slow over here. It wasn't until I was your side of the pond in the late 60's and early 70's that I was in a car with that and about mid 80’s before I could afford that over here. The first time I saw colour TV was the movie 'The Graduate' (1967) and the first one I owned was in 1975.

I was privileged with job and salary - most folk would have to wait another decade for prices to come down. A/C is relatively cheap here now and since air source heat pumps have green credentials they will become commonplace - assuming one can afford to run them.

I came across a wonderful autocorrect blunder recently "it was so hot I lurked in the child section of the food store"

Edited By pgk pgk on 20/07/2022 07:39:32

AC in the UK is I would suggest the exception rather than the rule, the weather generally isn’t hot enough and it has been stated that people can’t pay their heating bills so adding AC would be just too much money

Tony

With England's weather being more on par with New England's than Florida's, and Scotland's with Nova Scotia, probably not a big demand for aircon, even on those three days a year when it would be nice, most years. Maybe that is changing though, with the well documented global heating trends.

Hi PatJ, the only air con I have is to open windows and off hand I don't know anyone who has it in their homes. My current car has air con and so did my previous one and I have driven a few works vehicles that had it, but that was a few years ago now.

Regards Nick.

My UK home has an air to air heat pump that gives the option of summer cooling so I have it, but that is a rare thing. I only feel the need to use it about 5 days each year (I've used it for 3 days in this peak heat period). The average high temperature at this time of year is about 21°C (70°F) and drops to about 14°C (58°F) at night. What we have had in the past two days is a high of 40.3°C (104.5°F) and a low of about 21°C at night. If you live in the continental USA what you should realise is that if you draw a line from Seattle to Anchorage then about half way along it is where the UK is in terms of how far north we are. I don't know if it is the case but would it surprise you if few homes in Alaska had air conditioning to cool them in summer? The continental USA is as far north as the northern Mediterranean and as far south as northern Africa. A completely different climate from the UK.

As Martin P pointed out, usually opening the windows gives cost free and simple to operate air conditioning with very little to go wrong with it. These past two days were unusual because opening the windows let in air that was hotter than what it would be replacing.

Martin C

I don't recall ever being in a house here in the UK that had aircon. I can see it being like most other "luxuries" us Brits turn our noses up at. 100% unnecessary until we have it, then we wonder how on Earth we lived without it. I remember about 50 years ago we used to rent our television from a shop. When we had a new tele delivered the shop rep started to show us how to use the remote (connected by a cable) control. My mother stopped him saying we can get up press a button on the television if we want to change channels. She made him take the remote back! A week or so later she allowed the remote into the house. You've made me wonder how much an aircon would cost to run at least at night to make sleeping more comfortable. Hmmm.......

PatJ

I live in a mild and slightly wet part of the UK. Our summers are not HOT, yet, and there is little snow in winter. We do get Atlantic storms, though. Investing in air conditioning would be a real waste of money that would be better spent on winter heating.

I do not know anyone who has home air conditioning although most could afford it. OK we had it at work and I do like it in the car.

Quite simply, we don't need it.

I like your questions. They are from another "world" (and to another "world".

JA

Edited By JA on 20/07/2022 08:37:23

How do I get rid of that Immything (it seems to be produced by a combination of keys)?

Edited By JA on 20/07/2022 08:39:02

The British wear special clothing when it gets hot

So, burn carbon fuels > CO2 level rises > global warming makes it too hot > install aircon everywhere > uses more energy > generates more CO2 > gets hotter. Apparently in Dubai there is an outdoor shopping mall with aircon!

On the other hand you can have a properly designed house that needs little or no energy for winter heating and keeps cool in summer.

I can remember seeing blokes working on the roads when I was a kid wearing their knotted handkerchiefs like that. So it must work.

I think they drew the line at rolling their trousers up though.

My larger AC unit is supposed to have 6kw equivalent heat output. When it was installed a clamp meter showed it pulling 3amps at full chat so running costs are going to depend on you leccy cost. The smaller bedroom version obviously cheaper. I only use it for heating in winter prior to getting into bed. These few hot nights I set it for 23C and I'd guess the running cost at less than 0.5KW per hour... well worth it for a good kip.

I do hate places that run ac at silly cold. Coming in from a hot outdoors doesn't need a blast of 18C air unless you're working out in a gym. A couple of degrees and dehumidified is fine.

We don't have AC everywhere because there's approximately 15 days a year when it would actually be of any benefit. If we get five of days in a row(like now) over 30° we call it a heatwave, and imply that the world is about to end in a hellish fireball. The other ten days will be randomly scattered between the beginning of May and the middle of October.

We do a similar thing when the temperature drops below freezing for a week and we get a few cm of snow. There's not enough of it that stays as snow to treat it like countries that will have it for the entire winter.

The efficient thing to do in both situations is to modify our normal behaviour slightly - mostly by not going out much for a few days - and moan a lot.

It makes far more sense to have buildings that are suited to the cool, damp, breezy weather that is our annual climate. Which, funnily enough, is what we've done for centuries.....

Edited By Nicholas Wheeler 1 on 20/07/2022 10:02:12

Bear in mind that UK is classed as being in temperate zone, so extremes of temperature are the exception.

In winter, temperatures below -10C are unusual, and in summer, 30C is exceptional, so what we are experiencing now is most unusual. (Probably not helped by the air flow bringing hair not only hot from Saharan regions, but inflated temperatures from the wild fires in Spain, Portugal, and France.

Also, Etheread the Unready was our ancestor, and his genes linger on, so few expect or prepare for it to be exceptionally cold in winter or hot in summer!!

Howard

We've actually got it easy because we're an island and the temperature variation is minimised by the sea

Edinburgh is on the same Latitude as Moscow which is continental inland

Moscow varies from minus 40 to plus 50 centigrade

Britain would fall apart at the seams if we got those temperature variations

England lies further north than the whole of the USA apart from Alaska. Juneau (the state capital of Alaska) is slightly south of Thurso in Scotland. Should be much colder here except we're kept warm by the Gulf Stream.

The Gulf Stream keeps UK weather mild and moderate, though it's very changeable and on the wet side, usually cloudy. British snow is nasty stuff: heavy falls are rare enough to discourage keeping clearance machines on hand, and falls are generally mushy wet and very slippery. Forget skis and sno-mobiles!

Every so often the UK gets a dose of extreme continental weather from the North Pole, Sahara, or the East. Most of our infrastructure isn't designed to cope with rare extremes. We're better prepared for cold rain than blizzards and hot-spells.

Unfortunately, due to climate change, the UK's comfy average weather is moving. Severe weather that should only occur once per century is now happening a few times per decade. Record breaking events of all types: high and low temperatures, downpours and droughts, more storms that are more violent. Like the rest of the world, Britain's 'normal' is changing. The process is slow enough not to be obvious to casual observers, but it's happening.

Dave

I doubt much of it because anyone who disagrees gets excommunicated from the money tree

If you are in the scientific community and you want those nice easy free handouts then you have to sing from the government global warming policy hymn sheet

Anyone who expresses any doubts gets the heave-ho

So it's not real science IMO, it's government funded scientific propaganda

John, your comment about aircon in an outside shopping mall in Dubai doesn’t surprise me, I was out there 55 years ago, before it was the Emirates and was known as Trucial Oman, it was completely undeveloped at that time. Our accommodation on Sharjah airbase was air conditioned to 72F which when you have been working outside in temperatures well over 100F was like walking into deep freeze, it felt as though the sweat froze on your body. Our highest recorded temperature at that time was 128F, I can see where they are coming from with the air on at an outside mall, just think what that does to carbon levels, makes you think why we should sacrifice in our country when others are being so flippant about their carbon emissions. Dave W

Air-conditioning is common now in British factories and office-blocks but a lot of the latter especially is necessitated by the 1960s-70s mania for building them more or less as greenhouses. They were incredibly wasteful at the time, even frequently leaving all the lights on day and night irrespective of need.

It has never been needed in British homes though. That may change if spells of unusually hot weather become much more frequent, but to be any use they would be expensive to install and run.

We do hear lots of curious tips people have developed, fondly imagining they work, like hanging up wet washing indoors to dry. It reminds me of some nonsense I read in a magazine from which I would have expected better, about putting a big bottle of cold tap-water in the fridge to "help it generate cold". Some show only how little basic science their proponents remember from school, such as the differences between heat and temperature, and between energy and power.

The one that is fairly effective is to open the windows at night, too cool the interior, then close them and draw the curtains first thing in the morning. It relies on decent insulation and double-glazing but most homes here now have the latter at least. It also helps moderate the home's internal temperature anyway.

.

An important point that some architects have shown but largely ignored by the property-speculators, is that for centuries homes have always been built in ways that help cope with their usual regional climate and other physical-geographical controls. That is changing, in some ways at least, in Britain, if only to cope with environmental laws including a drive to run the whole country on electricity alone; but how effectively - and economically for home-owners - remains to be seen.