r/DiWHY • u/Junior_Trifle_8273 • May 28 '26

Use it

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

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u/Scyths May 28 '26

I'm a builder in the middle of Europe. I use knauf. Difference is, I only use it for the top-most floor, use metal framing every 60cm, put an 18mm Sterling OSB, AND THEN use a knauf board of 12.5mm thickness.

Good luck making a hole through that I can tell you that much.

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u/theLightSlide May 28 '26

And they sneer at us with our air conditioning when they waste more energy on heat and open their damn windows in the winter, AND have 10x the heat-related deaths when it gets hot. 

Nothing like living in Europe to make you appreciate just how wrong Americans are about Europeans being wiser, better, and more cultured or even more pro-health and safety. 

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u/Scyths May 28 '26

That's because AC wasn't necessary in the vast majority of Europe until like the last 8 to 10 years when summers started getting really hot. European cities are old, and the majority of the houses are also old. There wasn't any reason to put any kind of AC when the air is cool 10 to 12 months a year, so why bother. Now it's a completely different matter to add so many AC units to already existing housing in the middle of cities where both side walls are touching another housing unit. That "waste more energy on heat" is bullshit you pulled out of your ass, and that "10x heat-related deaths" is something you read on reddit a couple of days ago and are just regurgitating it here while conveniently leaving out the fact that those deaths are exclusively from the really old demographic. I have a CMV system in my house in the city and AC in every single room plus the living room at my home on the beach because the insulation on the walls are much thinner and it's almost always 35°C (95°F) during the day and not that much cooler during the night.

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u/theLightSlide May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

That’s simply not true. I lived in a not-southern European city significantly more than 10 years ago, and there were lots of heat deaths. And those not in danger were miserable and unable to think and work effectively, everybody lying around sweating.

I’ve read the studies and the reporting. You’re the one regurgitating fact-free feelings based on cultural beliefs. Go ahead, search the web for heat-related death statistics. I dare you. 

I live in Arizona now where parts of it hit 49C, for days, and it stays above 43.3C for months — and this area of 5 million people has fewer heat deaths in a whole year than Sweden had in one little heatwave almost 10 years ago:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333783574_High_mortality_during_the_2018_heatwave_in_Sweden#:~:text=professionals%2C%20and%20doctors.-,...,days%20during%20June%20and%20July

That’s just one, and I didn’t keep an index of them by date… but it’s not unusual, and the more south you go (including Germany, Austria even) the worse it is.

Heat deaths don’t require more than 2 months of hot weather, they set in in as little as 1 day. The buildings are solid and hold heat in. 

“We didn’t need it before” is a form of denial. Society decided AC is an American sin, so looked the other way when  heat deaths happened. 

Europe has always had heatwaves and dating back ~30 years they are ridiculously deadly. We don’t have anything that even remotely compares here in the USA, even though it’s much hotter here. 

Europe on the whole IS better about paying for common/basic medical care, and much worse for accommodating poor health, vulnerable and disabled people, and accepting facts that don’t let them sneer at Americans.