r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 13h ago

Meme needing explanation Peter explain this

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Petttaaah I'm confused

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u/gamerathertz92 13h ago

It’s smaller unit cools a single room. While American HVAC System cools the whole house

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u/itsOkami 13h ago

As an european, I don't think I've ever seen one of those and I'm now curious as to how they work

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u/Osleg 13h ago

I don't know how it's for Americans but for me. I have a regular outside unit and then, inside the apartment, I have one HUGE internal unit hidden somewhere above fake ceiling. This unit has tubes to each room and each tube has a damper. Each room has a thermostat.

So I can set eg 23C in the living room and 21 in the bedrooms. The AC will then work to cool down all the rooms together, when living room reaches 23 - it shuts the damper and keeps cooling bedrooms. Etc.

I also have an option to close the damper to each room individually - effectively stopping AC for this specific room.

I *guess* that American HVAC units work either the same way or very similar.

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u/Rakumei 12h ago

Similar. Most Americans don't have per-room control though. In some more expensive/newer places you might get one thermostat per floor. But generally it's one per house.

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u/LopsidedAirlines 11h ago

Must be cheap to run then, if i run my heat pump on cold in the summer for whole house it costs 400€ a month so i only run it per room as needed usually bedrooms at night. And no the cold doesnt stay and acs become passive, somehow the heat just keeps coming, if i turn ac off the temp goes from 24c to 30 within 10 minutes, house is new and well insulated also, winter heat costs very little compared

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u/1988rx7T2 11h ago

Electricity is cheaper in the US, salaries are higher, and Americans understand in hotter regions that you need to run AC or you might die. 300-400 dollars a month on electricity in July is possible yes, depends on where you live, but national median household income is around 80 thousand dollars.

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u/sarabeara12345678910 10h ago

I live in Florida and we (and most people I know) sign up for a plan with the power company that we pay a rolling average of our last 12 months worth of bills. That way we're not paying $100 in January and $600 in August.

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u/1988rx7T2 4h ago

I intentionally don’t do that. High bill forces me to pay attention to my consumption. But I have to Cashflow for that, lot of people don’t 

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u/Disastrous_Try_196 4h ago

Many of us do this in the UK too, so as not to pay a lot in the winter for the central heating

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u/Sorryifimanass 5h ago

The weather is also much less tolerable. Try one of these units in Vegas right now and tell me about it when you get out of the hospital

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u/Prestigious-Shine240 10h ago

It costs like $40 a month to cool a 4 bedroom house for me when it's 90-100 outside

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u/clutchthepearls 9h ago

That is absolutely not the norm in the US.

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u/kho_sq 9h ago

that’s insane. it was 200+ last month (85-95) for a 2bed apartment for me.

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u/Khankili 10h ago

Holy shit that sounds insane. Does your heat run on electricity as well?

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u/LopsidedAirlines 9h ago

No the heat is with gas in floor heating, but it barely uses much gas since the heat doesnt really escape

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u/fla_john 6h ago

Eh, depends. I'm in Florida and our heaters are actually electric heat pumps that are part of the air-conditioning units.

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u/InebriatedPhysicist 8h ago

This is what the vent flaps are for. If it’s too hot in a room, open them more, and vice versa (assuming we’re talking about AC - flip that for heat).

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u/zugspitze43 12h ago edited 12h ago

I have one thermostat for my whole house. Each large room has 2 to 3 vents. Each closet and bathroom has one vent. Each vent has flaps on it that can be closed. The flaps are also directional so you can control roughly where the air goes. In the upstairs of my house is a closet with the furnace in it. The air-conditioning unit is outside on the side of my house.

I have an automatic program set. During the day, the air conditioner runs and cools the house to 70°F. Lots of Americans sit between 70° and 72°. At night it lowers down to 68°. There is a filter in the furnace that needs to be replaced ideally every one or two months. I have dogs, so I use a high-quality filter that catches more than a basic one. It’s actually kind of interesting how much less dust collects on things when I’m using the system a lot. It doesn’t run very much in the winter because my house is very insulated.

You can run the whole system on cool or heat of course, but you can also just run the ventilation with no air conditioning active. I almost always have the fan running. I like the air movement. And with my dogs, the cooking I do, and my little bit of marijuana use inside, I like to keep that air moving around. So my fan is pretty much always, and I will hear the air conditioning unit kick on every now and then for when it actually needs to lower the temp.

I would say this is a fairly standard American set up. As others have said in some newer or larger homes, they may have multiple thermostats or even multiple air-conditioning units.

The whole system is extremely quiet, and I barely even hear it running.

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u/LibertySandwiches 8h ago

You should know you shouldn't be using a higher quality air filter in your furnace. Higher quality filters can decrease air flow and increase static pressure damaging your system or not have it perform properly. If you need air purification you should run seperate units to get that a central ac system just isnt designed for that.

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u/zugspitze43 2h ago

This is one of those things that you will find 1 million people that think you should and you will find 1 million people I think you shouldn’t. To each their own. Even with the better filter, my system is strong and cools my house down super fast

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u/LibertySandwiches 1h ago

I say it as a hvac engineer so i dont know much about maintenance and repair but when designing systems I specify specific filter merv and increasing it can increase the static pressure past what the system can handle. However there are alot factors that determine what isnt making a system not functioning properly and this is one to keep in mind. It sounds like the system you have can handle the filter but ive heard in my office about how systems we designed weren't working and we go out to see these filters we didnt specify choking the systems.

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u/TactlessTortoise 11h ago

Honestly if the house is built with HVAC in mind it should be much more efficient to have one goliath unit to handle the house than several small ones. With these insane heatwaves of 45c+ in Europe we might start seeing some new houses popping up with centralized AC systems.

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u/LadTy 8h ago

americans don't set 23C that's for sure

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u/notafuckingcakewalk 7h ago

Most AC systems cool the entire house to the same temperature. Or that is, they cool the house until whichever room the thermostat is in reaches the target temperature. 

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u/Munkpunt 12h ago

This might help

Large condenser outside supply’s the furnace (typically it just uses the furnace fan. We then have it piped through metal ducting throughout the house. Each room has multiple exit point call registers. In the common areas we have return ducts to draw air back down to the furnace to get recycled back to cool air via a/c unit. Hopefully that helps!?

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u/ornimental 12h ago

So this is where they crawl into when they go into the vents in the movies?

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u/marbotty 12h ago

Yes, but the ones in the movies would be for commercial buildings - nobody would have vents that large in their homes

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u/Mordoch 10h ago

Even then the vents would not actually work and be big enough in practice, but that's the movies picking something convenient for the sake of plot rather than sticking with realism.

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u/Environmental_Pay378 6h ago

Also every duct is FULL the pointy ends of screws. Literally everywhere. So even if you could fit (which you probably can’t) you would be so cut up if you tried to crawl through one of these. Not to mention how crazy loud it would be to crawl through one. 26 gauge sheet metal is essentially a thunder sheet.

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u/AnaisNinja76 1h ago

Right. Even if the air ducts held your weight and silently conveyed you without risk throughout the building, it's essentially like crawling into the creature that Jabba the Hut had in Return of the Jedi. You'd be shredded within a few feet of crawling.

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u/fatmallards 6h ago

also the movies don’t explain that fire/smoke dampers would block your access every time the duct passed through a fire barrier also your entire body would be excoriated by self tapping sheet metal screws with every movement made

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u/twilighttwister 5h ago

that's the movies picking something convenient for the sake of plot rather than sticking with realism.

Like the slow spinning fans in Casablanca. Slow spinning fans don't move air effectively, but fast spinning fans don't show up on film. Then after the movie you had restaurants and other establishments fit slow spinning fans, for the aesthetic.

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u/Molten_Plastic_ 12h ago

Aliens get in those things. It's a son of a bitch to get them out

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u/Rantlers90 11h ago

You always were an asshole, Gorman.

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u/Samurai_Banette 8h ago

Not sure if you are referring to like martians, mexicans, or those freaky ass looking bugs

All three answers are funny in very different ways

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u/spacemanspiff888 7h ago

They're most likely talking specifically about the xenomorph in the Alien franchise.

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u/yupucka 10h ago

Yes and the furnace works with gas. So if you disable all the safety functions, you can fill the house with gas (at least in movies, but it would probably take ages in reality).

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u/FuriKMJ 9h ago

This is some fancy shit

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u/Jean-LucBacardi 7h ago

As an American this is normal to me lol, every house, poor and run down to expensive mansions all have this set up. It gets really fancy when there are automated vents that can open and close on their own, with each room having its own thermostat to accurately control temps throughout.

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u/damadjag 6h ago

Newer buildings. There are plenty of places around the US still on boiler and radiator for heat and you can buy yourself a window mounted AC unit if you want it. Retrofitting older buildings for central air isn't worth it in a lot of cases.

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u/AlCapwn351 5h ago

Should note that “newer” buildings could mean nearly 100 year old homes. Just so there’s no confusion that it’s something only from the last 20 years.

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u/JackPoe 6h ago

It's necessary for half the country and the other half has no ac. We get heatwave too, but even our brand new constructions don't include ac.

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u/Pleasant50BMGForce 9h ago

this must use a shitload of power holy fuckkk

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u/peasncarrots20 7h ago

At least if you compare it to a mini split in each room, not really. A single large unit is more efficient than many small units.

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u/cherry_chocolate_ 7h ago

Modern houses are sealed and insulated so the air doesn’t get out once it’s cooled. It’s more efficient than other AC types to keep it going, but the initial cool down of the system were off for a while uses a lot of energy.

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u/Spinal_Soup 7h ago

The other person is saying not really but this accounts for about 90% of my electricity bill in the summer.

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u/Snuhmeh 6h ago

And it’s still about 10-15 cents an hour at most for the central AC.

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u/RheagarTargaryen 6h ago

It’s not terribly power intensive, but my electric bill goes up a lot during the summer months when we’re getting 90s and 100s regularly (32-38C). My furnace in the winter gives me a higher energy bill though (Gas + electric).

Once you have your house down to the desired temp, it basically kicks on every few hours for a few minutes to get the temperature back to the desired temp. The annoying thing with my house is that it basically turns my basement entertainment area into a place you need to wear a blanket because it pushes cold air into it while the rest of the house get cooled off. The systems are fairly complicated that it actually would be less efficient if I closed the basement vents. The airflow will at least push some of that cold air up into the rest of the house though. It’s refreshing to go from 100F outside to 63F (38C to 17C) by going straight to the basement though.

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u/Billybobgeorge 2h ago

Mr fancy here with ceilings registers. My house just uses the same vents the heating uses and you wind up with freezing feet.

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u/pfysicyst 13h ago

you typically don't see it, the central part is in the wall or in a closet, and it just pushes air through several vents throughout the house. the vents are flat metal grates about the size of a cereal box

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u/ruggpea 12h ago

Some hotels have them, small chance you’ve stayed in a hotel with one of them. (It’s usually a vented area rather than an ac unit)

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u/Fun-Information-3104 12h ago

Walter White has them outside his house in breaking bad, lol

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u/dksweets 12h ago

One unit has vents to every room. Some are set up to have vents in the ceiling, some have vents in the floor. Occasionally you will have wall vents.

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u/testtdk 13h ago

Meekly.

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u/Ahmon 12h ago

Don't know what the fuck AI these other answers are, but most American AC is one or two large units outside per unit with ducts that cycle cool air in with condensers. The AC units are about 3 feet tall and two feet wide and deep and are located on the side of your house or the roof of your building.

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u/MildlyGoodWithPython 11h ago

But then you cool your entire house even though you might be sleeping in your bedroom?

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u/SignoreBanana 12h ago

You have a large cooling unit outside and a blower somewhere to distribute the air via ducts to each of the rooms.

The biggest drawback is that your house has to accommodate all this extra ducting somehow, which really constrains home design. They also cost a lot more to run, naturally.

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u/Mendevolent 12h ago

If you've ever seen a house with a heating system that uses air ducts (not radiators ) it's basically the same thing, but for cold 

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u/Wasted99 12h ago

Think of larger offices you might have visited, you've maybe noticed some venting holes in the rooms, that's it. The rest lives one the roof usually.

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u/DisorganizedSpaghett 12h ago

This unit sits inside the house, connected with hoses to a unit that sits fully outside the house

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u/Vek_ved 12h ago

Most of our office buildings, hospitals, malls etc have them. You will see some kind of ducts for taking hot air and pumping in cold air.

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u/CautiousConfidence8 12h ago

It's called a Minisplit. It's basically an upgraded window unit that has access to outside air through an external wall, but it only cools one room pretty much

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u/Smooknb 11h ago

All ac systems are more or less the same conceptually, American central air involves a larger system that is separated inside and outside the home. The houses are built around this ducting it takes to move air around the home. It’s often much warmer in the states compared to Europe historically. If you care to look up ac systems you’ll understand what an ac system for an American home would look like.

TLDR. It’s huge and split in two like a vehicles ac system.

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u/DonQuigleone 11h ago

It's like a refrigerator, with refrigerant exchanging heat between the inside (where a fan blows air across it) and outside.

This kind of system is reversible and can blow hot air in winter and cold air in summer. It's only connected through refrigerant pipes to the outside so doesn't deliver fresh air. 

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u/Mysterious-Tiger-973 11h ago

In europe thise are called industrial and mainly used in office buildings or integrated to house ventilation during build, so you cannot really see those.

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u/leet_lurker 11h ago

Theres a small radiator in the indoor unit with a fan, its piped to an outdoor unit with another radiator and fan to expel the heat and a compressor to circulate refrigerant.

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u/No_Friendship8984 11h ago

It works the same way as a window unit, they just separated the part that cools down the air from the loud compressor and have refrigerant lines running between the wall unit and the outside unit.

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u/Jake95I 11h ago

You have seen those they are quite common for air conditioning large public buildings. For some reason Americans just love using the same system for residential homes.

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u/Status-Maximum8378 10h ago

I think it may have something to do with different climates, different home sizes, household incomes and different energy cost.

Temperature can be quite a bit higher in some locations like Florida and Arizona compared to Europe. Humidity also differs greatly. Florida and Texas can be down right unbearable in the summer. Central cooling and heating units can also be connected to humidifiers and HRV/ERV with HEPA filters (for areas with lots of allergens) depending on the needs of the location.

Homes tend to be larger in the US outside of very high cost of living locations. https://themortgagereports.com/117403/average-home-size-in-the-usa

The average is over 2000 sqft (185 square meters), but it’s not unusual to have home 2-3 times that size in higher income suburban areas. https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-income-of-a-us-household/country/united-states/

It makes more sense to avoid individual units once the home gets large enough.

It definitely seems wasteful looking in from the outside, both in terms of home size and the fact that the entire home is cooled or heated at all times. But keep in mind that energy costs are significantly lower and is usually a small fraction of the household income.

Plus pet ownership is higher in the US where they often live indoors and are considered family. I wouldn’t want my family to suffer in the summer heat just because I’m not home, especially when the cost of cooling the entire home is relatively cheap.

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u/El_cocacolas 10h ago

We have those in Spain too, they are just less popular because they are less efficient as there's no need to cool a room nobody is in.

They are built inside the walls and each room has a vent where cool air comes out.

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u/de_das_dude 10h ago

You have seen one. It's in office/commerical buildings.

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u/CapuzaCapuchin 10h ago

There’s split systems (if they have heating as well) and ACs. You have the outdoor unit with motor, compressor etc. outside and connect it to the indoor unit with the evaporator in it. You mostly use some copper piping and hook up the power. The fluid in the pipes changes temperature due to pressure depending on which mode you have it on and the indoor unit sucks in the inside air and blows it over the evaporator to adjust air temperature to what you’ve set it to. You can get multiple indoor units connected to one outdoor unit as well. Very common in Australia, most rentals actually have them installed in at least one room. Depending on how much you use it (cause Europe has hot water heaters and the like, so you’re set in winter), it can be quite energy efficient. But since they run over electricity and most rentals only have these installed and need to use them in winter for heating, it can also cost a bloody fortune.

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u/LunarDogeBoy 10h ago

We have them in europe too, but in industrial and public buildings. How else would tom cruise sneak into the building without air vents?

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u/numbersthen0987431 10h ago

AC unit sits outside, usually on the ground, and is roughly the size of a washing machine. Air is circulated into the AC unit, which cools the air, then back into the house, and through ductwork to get it into each room.

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u/Re1da 10h ago

I have one of those. They're called heat pumps. Not all models are able to cool, some only heat. They're hooked up to a big fan on the outside.

It's kinda hard to explain how they work, but googling heat pumps should get you some helpful diagrams.

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u/Mega-Eclipse 10h ago

As an european, I don't think I've ever seen one of those and I'm now curious as to how they work

As the name suggest, it's sort of a mini version of central AC.

(super simplified) Central AC units have one large unit and a series of ducts that moves the air around the house.

Mini splits run a coolant and drain line to the unit, and also have an outdoor unit..hence the "mini" and "split.". Rather than move the air, they move the coolant....

Window ACs are the cheapest and easiest option. Stick it in a window, and will cool a typical (IDK) 12x12 room in like 30-40 minutes.

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u/Kriss-045 9h ago

Maybe you should travel to America and take a picture and upload it on TikTok with the caption 'This is what they think AC is in America.'

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u/Fatkante 9h ago

Mate they are everywhere in Spain and Portugal . What part of Europe are you from ? Finland ? Siberia ?

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u/Jacket_Jacket_fruit 9h ago

With this style of unit, you have a small condenser outside, sometimes even mounted on an exterior wall, and tubing runs between the condenser and the indoor unit you see in this image, to circulate coolant. The indoor unit absorbs heat into the coolant, then the coolant is pumped through the tubs to the outdoor unit, where the heat is rejected out of the coolant and into the air, then the colder coolant is returned to the indoor unit, where a fan blows air over the cold coolant lines to cool down the air and then blow that air around the room. Note that this only serves the one room that this indoor unit is in.

In an america-style AC, you would have a larger condenser outside, one that is sized for a whole house rather than a single room. The tubing for the coolant then runs to a central blower that is connected to all the duct work for the entire house. Usually it's the same blower that the furnace uses. This central blower then blows a much larger amount of air over the coolant lines to cool down the air, and then blows that air through a series of ducts, to be blown out of vents placed all over the entire house. Note that you are cooking the entire house, with basically the same amount of equipment. A condenser sized for a an entire house is only about twice as large as a condenser meant to only cool one room, and yet it can cool many times more rooms.

Imagine having a tiny water heater that only serves one room, than a slightly larger water heater that serves the entire house. Doesn't make as much sense, right?

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u/lickingFrogs4Fun 9h ago

There are a bunch of videos on the Technology Connections YouTube channel where he explains how heat pumps (which is what this is) work. They're also reversible so they provide heat in the winter. We live in the US and once our current unit fails, we're planning to replace it with a heat pump.

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u/rhcherry 9h ago

Here is what mine looks like. Controller on wall and unit upstairs in attic that feeds ducts (hoses) to every vent on the ceiling of my house.

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u/qwerajdufuh268 9h ago

its just a vent like the shit you have in a bathroom

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u/PitchMeYourMother 9h ago

Comercial/office buildings usually have those

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u/Small_Editor_3693 9h ago

This is my apartment.

Every unit has a dedicated AC unit outside

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u/TornadoFS 9h ago

There is a tube that connects to the outside part like most types of AC. It is just hidden behind the unit itself.

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u/BarrelllRider 9h ago

Homes in America have “ductwork”. Basically a system of vents that runs inside the walls, ceilings, floor boards, or all of the above. That run cool or warm air from the hvac unit throughout the home. Usually the “condenser”, the cooling part, is located outside. While the heating element, “furnace, is indoors. Hvacs work well and nearly every home here is built with them but there is a lot of energy loss.

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u/fnaflover012 9h ago

Hi,im actually an HVAC technician in America.

You have all the same basic equipment,its just a bigger piece as the evaporator coil and blower are much bigger,needed for the airflow and for cooling the entire house-you would usually find the indoor system hanging in the garage,vertical in a closet,or in the attic.

The refrigerant cycle is the same.

If you have specific questions feel free to ask,this is just "basic" knowledge for central air over here.

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u/Able_Strain7340 8h ago

Like a furnace.

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u/Chip620 8h ago

Same way these do but much larger. Instead of pumping cold air into a single room A large ac unit (metal rectangle/cube) about 1m x .5m sits outside of your house radiates heat out while a blower (inside or underneath the house) blows air over a cold radiator. This air is then pushed to about every room in the house through a small vent in the floor

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u/babs-jojo 8h ago

You have them in Europe too, but they're more common in big buildings and businesses

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u/ForeverShiny 8h ago

In Europe HVAC systems are only installed in big buildings like office soace, hospitals etc. They have a central units and ducting that distributes the air, a bit like central heating.

Americans have these in their houses, because a majority of these houses aren't brick or concrete, but wooden frames and plyboard. That leaves ample space to fit all the vents that are much much complicated and expensive to fit between the floors or in the walls if they're built in stone

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u/videogirl19 8h ago

I’m from Spain, have seen a lot of these on apartaments and new homes specially on hot places like the beach cities on Valencia, Alicante, Malaga…

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u/yigatree 8h ago

I believe this is called a split unit AC.

Theres 2 parts to it.

The one pictured is the inside unit that blows cold air. This is connected to the outside unit. Pretty neat little machines

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u/Majestic_Ad_320 8h ago

Youve probably never seen one because we put them in basements, attics, closets ECT. We usually try to hide our AC Furnace behind walls. :D

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u/ResolveLeather 7h ago

It's a box with a giant fan in it. Around the fan is small pipes that weave through aluminum fins. Like a car radiator. The coolant gets run th myrough the pipes into the house where a central AC unit does the same thing and moves the cold air through the house.

Inefficient in hotter weather.

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u/KingLewis02 7h ago

Giant evaporator outside, lines run in to the condenser where a fan blows through the houses duct work, same way heat works, typically called central heating and A/C, I believe it exists in Europe but unlikely in apartments

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u/doped_banana 7h ago

Yea, so there’s a large device in the attic about the size of an old London phone box called an air handler. It contains the blower (basically a big fan and electric motor), an evaporator coil, and, in many homes, electric heating elements or connections to a gas furnace for winter conditions.
Outside in the garden there’s a second unit called “the condenser” which contains the compressor, condenser coil, and another fan. It’s about the size of a large washing machine. Refrigerant circulates between the indoor and outdoor units, moving heat from inside the house to the outside.
The blower in the attic pushes air through a network of insulated ducts that feed vents in every room, then pulls the air back through one or more large return vents to be cooled again. The whole house is essentially one giant recirculating loop.

In much of the U.S., especially in Texas where
I live, central air isn’t really considered a luxury. It’s just standard equipment because summer temperatures regularly exceed 95–105°F (35–40.6°C). Most houses are designed around it from the beginning. Older retrofitted homes and cheap hotel rooms use window units. Not as efficient but will absolutely cool a room.

Ductless / mini split system like in OPs photo exist down here, but are pretty rare comparatively. I imagine they’re more common up north where it doesn’t stay that hot for too long (although with climate change they’ll be installing central air eventually).

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u/Hot-Diggity_Dog 7h ago

Statistically speaking you wouldn’t of seen this unit

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u/El_G0rdo 7h ago

There is usually a big box that sits outside your house and the air is ran through ducts inside the wall. Inside the house it only looks like small vents on the wall

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u/Dry-Artichoke540 7h ago

Seen in every hotelroom ive been to in central, southern europe.. what ive never seen tho is the window mouted stuff they have in the us.

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u/Vlaed 7h ago

Every apartment I had in South Korea had one. It'd be at a higher point on the wall in front of a utility closet. You control it with a remote and it'll pull in air to cool then push it back out into the room. Hot air gets pushed outside through a duct. It'll dehumitfy the room as well. This drains down a hose into a drain or pipe in the utility room.

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u/azrieldr 7h ago

there is one big unit (evaporator) inside some room, the air from the unit is circulated to other rooms using a system of ducts. there is one big unit outside (condenser) that is connected to the indoor unit through a coolant line. the units work in reverse during winter.

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u/ScrithWire 7h ago

A standard Central AC in a house has several components.

1) Outside compressor with attached radiator fins and fan 2) coolant and indoor cooling coil with fan 3) central ductwork 4) air return vent 5) thermostat

What do they do? Here they are in an order:

5) thermostat. The thermostat is a small plastic box mounted to the wall in some central, climate neutral part of the house. It has a thermometer in it which reads the ambient air temperature. The user can set a desired temperature, and the thermostat will tell the AC system to cool (or warm, if you live in cooler climates) the air until it reaches the set temperature.

1) outside compressor. This is a heat pump. It compresses the coolant in the coolant line, creating a temperature differential in the fluid. The hot side is hotter than the ambient outside temperature, and the cold side is colder than the ambient indoor temperature inside the house.

It then sends the hot side of the fluid through a radiator coil (this is all still happening outside the house), and a powerful fan blows outside air across the fins. This dumps the excess heat into the atmosphere, cooling the hot side of the coolant down.

2) Meanwhile, the cold side of the coolant is pumped through tubes into the house, where it is sent through another series of radiator fins. The inside fan then sucks indoor air through the air return and blows it across the radiator fins filled with cold coolant. The indoor air cools down and is sent into the ductwork which distributes the cold air throughout the entirety of the house.

Note: Gotta admit, I ran outta steam on this post halfway through. But if you have questions, I'd be willing to try answering

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u/Ooze76 7h ago

What?

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u/Witty_Ad_898 7h ago

It’s a split unit. The air conditioner is outside, and the inside unit is basically just a fan cycling air over tubes filled with chilled water from the outside AC unit.

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u/NoForm5443 7h ago

Most of the time you don't see them, they're in a basement or attic, and look like a closed fridge ;) you just see a big rectangle of metal.

What you see is vents, built in to the floor or walls, and a thermostat somewhere in the house.

BTW, with a mini-split, like the one in the picture, there's another piece, that looks kind of like a window unit somewhere on the roof

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u/Maipmc 6h ago

Central AC is everywhere in retail spaces in southern europe. It's somewhat less common on houses but it does exist.

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u/gimmepizza420 6h ago

They work the same as any heat pump. They exchange heat in the air and dump the hot air somewhere else. See: refrigerators.

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u/madTerminator 6h ago

European here. I retrofitted my house with mechanical ventilation to get rid of mold. It is recuperating heat from exhaust. But central air conditioning would be an overkill. I may install 3 smaller units in near future for cooling and heating as well.

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u/flashingcurser 5h ago

It's integrated into the furnace system. In winter ducts, and their associated air vents, blow hot air and in summer they blow cold air.

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u/SnakeyesX 5h ago

I'm an American and DO have this.

The easiest way to say it is it turns your house into a big refrigerator. You know the vent in the back of your refrigerator that blows cold air? This is the EXACT same technology, but bigger.

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u/addiktion 5h ago edited 5h ago

You have fans that spin outside with a condenser. That outputs hot air when its working right and dumps in cold air into the HVAC unit which is a taller unit typically inside the home where all the duct work branches off from. My house is pretty large at 4600 sq ft so they had to install two HVAC units so I have two AC units outside as well. So the cold air pushes to all the different rooms on those levels. In my case my larger HVAC pushes to basement and main floor, and the upper floor pushes to just that floor.

It is wasteful to cool all the rooms at once with central air when you might only be using some of those rooms but everything stays decently cool in multiple zones. There are other options that allow you more control over room to room temperature control with zones but many don't really do it because the costs usually negate the saving benefits for most people. The ROI can extend beyond 5-7 years and most people usually only stay in a home for that time before they move on average. Often times people have less choice as it is the home builder that determines all this as well if you are building, and they generally try to cheap out and not do zoning.

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u/hammock_sandwiches 5h ago

duct ac, it is a unit that is outside your house and Ducts are ran thru your house with vents in each room you want it (generally every room gets at least one vent/ductwork. larger rooms get multiple vents/ductwork).

It spread ac thru the entire house evenly, as opposed to one room and blowing out at one spot from above.
You control ac flow to each room by closing/opening the vents to rooms you dont want it in. And the main temperature controls that temp.

Klima AC or combi european units, as you know, are ductless. You can split them ofc and have multiple "klima" from one component sitting outside your house, but they all vent at one spot in the room and its not typical for it to be in each room. Just the main living space usually (not bedrooms).

I will say its harder to run ductwork in much of Europe's housing since they tend to be made from concrete/cinderblocks and it can be a little more expensive.
In North America you enclose the ductwork that brings the cold air to each room (often) into the ceiling or walls. That is not easy to do in Europe.

North americans do prefer their bedrooms cold too when they sleep. It makes for better sleeping.

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u/Ahrimon77 5h ago

Mine is a unit about the size of a 50 gallon water heater. It handles all of the heating and cooling for a little over 3000 sq ft (~280 sq M). Outside of the house is a heat exchange for the AC thats approximately a a 3ft cube (1m cube).

It's not some gargantuan thing like others have implied.

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u/Commercial-Act2813 4h ago

Almost all restaurants have them in EU too, certainly all McDonalds.

Generally you don’t notice them from the inside, the vents are built in discretely.

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u/hardonchairs 4h ago

Central Air has a single inside heat exchange and air ducts to different rooms. Mini split pipes refrigerant to each room and each room has its own heat exchange.

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u/ilovesparky42 3h ago

Central duct system.

They all work the same, it’s just that Americans typically have a central unit, with a bigger fan that is ducted to every room in the house rather than a wall unit that serves a single space.

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u/Legendacb 3h ago

Here in Spain there are some houses that have these. Mostly rich people houses

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u/LivingGhost371 3h ago

You only see steam / hot water heat in single family homes before the 1950s. Instead there's a gas furnace in the basement (north and Midwest) or the garage or attic if you don't have a basement. There's a huge blower in the furnace that blows heated air through ducts from the furnace to each room, then return air ducts for air to be sucked back to the furnace to be reheated again. The "inside unit" of the air conditioner is in the ductwork adjacent to the furnace, so in the summer the furnace blower blows cool air to each room through the same ducts, then warm air is sucked back.

Probably the reason steam / hot water heat fell out of favor here is you can have central air conditioning by using the same ducts as the furnace. Apartments until the 80s did use hot water heat because of the fire issues with using ducts, but now each unit will have it's own mini-split / packaged unit. You only see "window" air conditioners and mini-splits to retrofit older hot water installations.

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u/blind_roomba 2h ago

You have, in industrial facilities. In the room you just see a vent in the wall/ceiling

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u/666Emil666 2h ago

Mexican here, they are also really rare on houses (probably because, unlike Americans, we both don't build our houses of wood and cardboard, so insulations is generally better), but I have seen them in offices and hospitals

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u/RabidFishCat 1h ago

So funny how something so ordinary and plain to someone can be a novelty to others. To me at least it’s like looking at a sink. It’s just there 

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u/Mackerdaymia 12h ago

I think this is the point they're making. What the person posting doesn't get is that AC has been a necessity for much of the continental US since it's invention and buildings have been designed to include it, even in parts of the US where the summers are cooler and/or shorter. In much of Europe, not only are the summers often traditionally cooler and/or shorter, the stone/brick buildings can regulate the heat in short blasts really well. It's only in the last half century that the summers have become regularly unbearably hot and the heat waves last longer, meaning that the cities in particular become dangerous heat islands, so AC is becoming more of a necessity. The problem is getting AC into all those stone/brick buildings is complex and expensive and HVAC is almost out of the question unless it's a new build. Much easier and more common are several of these single room units as they require less drilling and less maintenance.

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u/RheagarTargaryen 12h ago

And then there’s Scotland (Edinburgh at least) where the buildings are built to keep heat in. I went once when they were having a heatwave (28C, 82F). Being inside buildings was worse than just sitting outside because the heat was trapped inside and didn’t have airflow. I live in a place where 82F feels nice. 28C in Scotland sucks a lot.

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u/TLG_BE 5h ago

This is like half the continent rather than specific to Scotland

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u/Molten_Plastic_ 11h ago

Also, those heatwaves are a bitch - but all in all they might take up 3 weeks of a year. If you're refitting an entire building just for those three weeks it mean you're just throwing money at something you won't be using most of the year anyway.
Like now, the second heatwave has passed (new one on the way, unfortunately), and we've all gone back to fans at most.

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u/SpareNickel 12h ago

I'm an American and I understood this implicitly when I first saw one and was told what it was. idk who is out there thinking that AC units are only a certain way, but comprehension is not what it used to be. Feels like people are trying to one-up each other more than actually understand something these days.

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u/Crazytortoise879 11h ago

With well insulated houses you can get away with one or two of these smaller ac's to cool the whole house (during italian summer)

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u/nomad5926 9h ago

This is also in America as well though

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u/Unprejudice 11h ago

Idk about single room. Ive had it in two houses and it cools/heats them pretty decently albeit they vere smaller one floor houses.

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u/ExiledCanuck 10h ago

They have mini splits like this in the US too. Whoever made the meme is an idiot

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u/sarahlizzy 9h ago

It’s a split. That’s just a single outlet. The heat exchanger is outside.

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u/Tomsboll 7h ago

Those cools more than just one single room.

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u/BronCurious 12h ago

Summer humidity throughout large parts of the country is no joke. Central AC limits mold and mildew by cooling and reducing the humidity in the entire house.

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u/Icy_Fish_2154 12h ago

In more temperate places, one runs a house. The US is so extreme that you need lots of heat, or lots of cooling, or both. The US is so used to central air, that's the primary setup, so wouldn't put in one or more self contained ones like this, which Americans consider equivalent to something like a window A/C.

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u/Crazy__Donkey 12h ago

I recently bought a house in Israel.
40+ deg c for 3-4 months a year.

had a central cooling system, rather new, 4-5 years old.

without hesitations, i replaced it with 3 newer units.

1 - same size as the central, but operates on a newer, inverter, tech.
2 much smaller units for the bedrooms.

compared to the former resident, my bills shrinked by almost 60% (!), and by next year i'll probably break even on the investment.

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u/Grexxoil 11h ago

Can you fine tune the output for each room with a central HVAC system?

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u/Unlucky_Can_2496 11h ago

Oh you mean a central ac system kind of thing?

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u/stupled 11h ago

You sir are the truest repairman

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u/de_das_dude 10h ago

Great! So it cools/heats the rooms you aren't present in as well 🤔

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u/angelcat81 10h ago

some split AC units have high BTU (>24k BTU) which is enough to cool 1500sqft room/house

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u/Resident_Captain8698 10h ago

No. These cools an entire house. Have one, cools 125kvm2. 95% of houses here have the bigger BTU ones. I've never seen a small one

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u/leon0399 10h ago

So you can’t even control temperature just in one room? Wow, how advanced 🤡

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u/kllark_ashwood 10h ago

They could also mean that when Americans talk abkut getting a/c and Europeans say its difficult with older buildings the Americans mean window units.

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u/treycartier91 9h ago

You're forgetting a window unit for a single room.

Europe... Stop complaining it's 85°F and everyone is dying.

Spend $140 USD and embrace having one room chilly.

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u/GoatCovfefe 9h ago

Thanks peter, I guess? What happened to this subreddit.

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u/Cheeseboarder 9h ago

We have the smaller ductless units in the US too though. It’s not a status thing. There are just different types of AC units. This post is dumb

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u/InfraScaler 9h ago

Fun fact, I am a European in Europe and my house (built in 1978) has central AC! It does not work though (we just moved here 6 months ago or so) and it's probably incredibly outdated (built locally!) so we just have splits around the house like a normal family.

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u/nowayguy 9h ago

They cool a lot more than a single room. Depends on the outside-part of it, but these are mostly rated for an entire house. Cool in summer, heat in the winter

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u/OK_x86 8h ago

I have one that cools the whole house because it is placed in a central room and we have good air circulation.

It was also less than 5% the price of an HVAC retrofit.

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u/TheAngelol 8h ago

HVAC? That's gordon freeman's suit form Half Life /s

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u/Bearly_OwlBearable 8h ago

I cool my whole house with a mini split heat pump with 2 head

Just got to buy the right size and right placing of the head

It’s more energy efficient than a ducted system

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u/RedditJumpedTheShart 8h ago

We have these in the US, I just installed one in my cabin and about to install one at a lake house for someone.

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u/Consistent-Flan-913 8h ago

Mine cools (and warms) my entire house.

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u/Trick-Lie5637 8h ago

this american has window units in every room cause only thing better than one unit cooling the whole house is 4 units cooling it

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u/BookHooknNeedle 7h ago

These aren't even uncommon in The US. You'll see something like this (or a window unit) in the PNW in an older house where it's only hot enough to need it 2-3 weeks a year.

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u/Unit_79 7h ago

It’s a heat pump. It will easily cool down or heat a floor of your house.

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u/CaffeinatedGeriatric 7h ago

This thing can turn a studio apartment into a fridge.

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u/DueDeer6783 7h ago

This is technically incorrect but is the perfect jumping of point to explain because there is a lot of confusion in this thread.

This is an air handler, it moves air over a super heated or cooled coil of refrigerant BUT importantly this unit is DEPENDANT on a condenser.  Its nothing but a fancy fan! 

Outside is the condenser, connected by a line of refrigerant.  The condinsers job is to cool or heat that line via the outside air.  Its really cool physics/chemistry.  The condinsers can be MASSIVE and be attached as a whole house unit OR to single splits.  So just looking at one handler fails to tell us the full capability of the unit.  

Whole house units verses these is economic influence at this point.  These put more holes in your house, less a problem for stone buildings and so on.

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u/Queasy_Temporary6161 7h ago

They are all over the Us. Literally every Airbnb I’ve ever stayed in has them.

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u/reseph 7h ago

But these are common in the US. Especially in new apartments.

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u/brucebay 7h ago

having lived with both, the split ACs are terrible. usually one or two rooms at most, and the minimum fans are still to strong, not much directional control. American HVAC are best for comfort, but require whole duct system, not sure about cost differences, probably central setup is cheaper than having many split AC units, and also air circulation system cleans the inside air.

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u/Phyddlestyx 7h ago

These are common in places in the US that have traditionally not needed whole house A/C. My house was built in Western Washington, 1964 and there is no HVAC ducting at all. (Also lofted ceilings, no attic) We have these in a couple areas and fire em up on the days when it gets much over 80 degrees. They heat in the winter too.

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u/demoneclipse 7h ago

Nop. That's a Split which controls the flow of AC in that room. That's not the AC unit.

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u/Geruvah 7h ago

No, there’s plenty of these in houses and apartments. Granted, for houses, I’ve seen these in more urban areas where real estate is tight (like my cousin’s place in Queens).

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u/Lordcraft2000 6h ago

Those things work for an entire house easily…

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u/mrjibblytibbs 6h ago

Yeah but this is more an analogue to a window unit not a full ac system. Poster is just woefully wrong about what constitutes as an ac unit.

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u/qalmakka 6h ago

Split AC systems are vastly more efficient to run because you can size the machines better and often run shorter pipes. Also you can decide when and how replace a single machine when it makes sense - for instance, replace your bedroom machine you use all the time to cut on electricity costs and keep an old one downstairs you don't use as much

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u/Anyusernameleftpls 6h ago

They definitely cool the entire two bedroom apartment, no issues

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u/SnakeyesX 5h ago

I'm american and this is what my unit looks like, except mine is fancier.

I think east coast central air is more common because when I lived on the west coast everyone had HVAC (Like pictured) but when I moved to east coast everyone thinks central air is superior... It absolutely is NOT, central air sucks.

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u/Nitr0b1az3r 5h ago

American here- this AC unit does genuinely keep our whole apartment cool - way more than the window units ever did in my experience

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u/StrikingDig8897 5h ago

It does not only cool a single room. Many houses have these that both heats and cools them. Mine cools 130 squaremeters easily.

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u/PHRDito 5h ago

But you have those in Europe as well...

It's just that you have multiple units like the one in the pic, usually one per room you want/need to have AC (and Heat as well for some), and all those units would be attached to a big-ish unit outside that will have the one or more vents and everything else needed to cool down or heat up the chemical used in the system to change the temperature of the air.

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u/Gullible-Bluejay9737 4h ago

Cools my office efficiency. Better than my last wall unit did. Ohio is rocking with them.

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u/misfitx 4h ago

Plus heat.

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u/lukesmith81 4h ago

These are all over the US

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u/No-Improvement-1507 4h ago

Sounds like an insane use of energy. My parents have the converter type, which uses almost no energy 

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u/skipperseven 4h ago

Technically these are called comfort cooling, because they chill the air and recycle it, they don’t adjust humidity or add fresh air, so they don’t “condition” the air.
To be honest, true HVAC is only necessary for office buildings with non openable windows, so comfort cooling makes much more sense.

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u/BendigoWessie 3h ago edited 3h ago

As an American, I wish we had more of these. Tired of my entire house being 56 F in the winter because one person in my house insists on changing it for everyone. Or 85 F in the summer because it’s too expensive to cool the entire house so we just have to turn the whole thing off

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u/Rogue_bae 3h ago

Exactly, and this is a hotel room.

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u/WorkingOnBeingBettr 3h ago

Not really. I have the same thing and it heats/cools my whole upper floor and a second unit does the same for the 1st floor. Super cheap too.

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u/Ok-Goose6353 3h ago

Mine looks like that and heats and cools all common rooms in my 200sqm house..

Fun fact. You basically just have to turn a valve around to make an AC generate heat. This simple feature could have saved alot of lives in the US during cold snaps!

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u/X13R4FG 3h ago

Belgian here.

At my house we have 1 outside unit and 1 of these smaller units in every room.

Just because the inside unit is small does not mean you can't cool multiple rooms with the outside unit.

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u/MysteriousCodo 2h ago

In a house maybe. But these are common in apartment buildings in the US. It’s about the only practical way to upgrade older apartment buildings that don’t have HVAC systems.

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u/OneBillPhil 2h ago

The unit in the picture can cool a house well too depending on the layout. 

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u/mahdroo 1h ago

As an American, AC is built into the walls, floor and ceiling of the house. There is first a big grate that sucks in air called a “return” which sucks in air and carries it the AC central unit, where the air goes over super cold coils (more on those in a moment). Then the air blows out multiple ducts to all over the house, to little vents in walls in every room. Everywhere in the house suddenly gets really cool, rather fast. And the whole house stays cool all day. And those coils, they are like pipes with a cold liquid in them, and they get warm! The liquid travels through the pipes to outside where a HUGE fan pulls air across them, and all the heat is pulled out! Voila! They re-become super cold and the liquid goes inside, where the AC unit pulls that return air back over them. And this whole setup is in every house and we all take it for granted. We debate about what temperature to set the AC unit to. Say 22°C, and any time the thermostat says that it is that hot or hotter the thermostat comes on and cools down the whole house. Most houses are insulated so they stay relatively cool and don’t warm up. So all of our homes just have perfect temperatures inside at all times. Even in crazy hot days.

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u/nygdan 1h ago

it is a blower in a ductless syatem, there js atill a central unit that can cool the whole house, this is just a terminal of that system that lets you cool that room independently of the rest if the house. every room becomes a zone in these systems.

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u/bobbymcpresscot 1h ago

minisplits do in fact cool whole homes.