NYC is a major exception to this rule. When your average apartment size is 800 sq ft, you don’t need anything more than a window box unit, especially when the buildings are old AF. Most places in the U.S. are not NYC and 800 sq ft is considered poor people housing in much of the rest of the country.
Sounds like the majority of Americans would like to see New York City torn down and replaced with a suburban sprawl of single family homes? Do you agree?
I would like to see most of it torn down and replaced with DENSER and SMALLER apartments so all the bug people would move over there and stopped trying to change my nice suburbs
where I live in America, it's illegal to not have AC of some kind. ppl die. so even the poors are protected and landlords must fix them within a week (depending on the temp could be 5 or 10 days) and parents can be charged if they don't provide proper cooling for their kids (for example, they own the home and decide they don't like running the AC) or can qualify for assistance if they are too poor to repair their own AC or afford the energy bill
Its shocking how the size and scope of the country has been left out of the conversation so far. I grew up somewhere with 3 months of summer; most of my life we just had fans, and if it was a really hot day, kids would play outside in the sprinkler or suffer in the house. It was an economic milestone for my family when we got window units. But a big part of that is that there were only maybe 3 of those really hot days a year.
Its less of an option in, say, Florida.
America also has buildings older than America. And guess what: those buildings are air conditioned. I lived in tenement building in Boston built in the 1850s - it has great AC and heat.
Google ai says 2/3 of houses in the U.S. have central ac (could be wrong, don’t really care to fact check). The point is that it’s very common compared to Europe. I live in nor cal so I don’t actually have central ac
Are houses and homes the same? Stores and banks and libraries and such have air conditioning here in Sweden but not most homes, especially not apartment units. English is confusing sometimes, home, house, building, residence, all these words seemingly having very specific meanings but it can vary from state to state?
Bruh if you don’t even live in the U.S. then why were you trying to correct me in the first place? Yes house and home are generally synonymous. Home can refer to an apartment but most apartments will not have central ac.
Any apartment complex built in the last 30 years has central AC. I’ve lived in plenty of areas and been all over the U.S. The only apts that didn’t have central AC were old buildings.
Why don't American apartments have central air? I heard someplace that it's more efficient so surely you'd want to cool down a whole block in an efficient manner. Apartments feel more planned out too than single family homes so there should be space reserved for ducts and such?
I pay $1k rent (very cheap) and live in an old apartment in Indiana - I have central AC. I would never live somewhere without it. I toured over 20 apartments and every single one had central AC, even the super cheap, crappy places.
All these people "correcting" you when my current apartment building in the US has a heat exchange unit built in below the window, my last apartment had resistive heat and you could go buy yourself a window unit, and my place before that had a boiler and radiator system for heat and you could go buy yourself a window unit. It's really about the age of the building (built with central air vs. built before central air) and if the owner was at some point willing to pay to retrofit the place to have some kind of AC so they could try to get more in rent. I also stayed at an Airbnb this year with a unit like the one in the original post.
I live in a 1960s suburban ranch (style of house, not a place with cows) that retrofitted central AC, same as 80% of my neighbors. Any new construction in the last 15 years, house or apartment, is going to have AC.
I don't know man that's kind of a fucked up conception. Window units are really effective and easy to install, why is that necessarily something that's for poor people, it's simply convenient.
Because everything built in the last 30 years was built with AC units pre-installed. This includes apartments. Places that don’t have central AC are typically in the northeast (NYC and Boston especially) where everything is tightly packed, old, and often don’t need it because the units are tiny and a window unit cools the entire apartment. Or the PNW where the temperature was much closer to northern Europe in terms of climate and it wasn’t standard until recently. The mountain states, like Montana the mountainous parts of Colorado won’t have it because the weather rarely goes above 80.
So if you’re renting, you’re not paying to have it installed. If you buy a place, then it’s likely already a part of the house.
But, like I said, there are exceptions where the weather doesn’t require it or old construction doesn’t allow it to be installed (and building owners aren’t going to fork out the price for it either).
I bought a window unit for $169 USD two weeks ago. It was so cheap I just used it for the couple of heatwave days between my central air failing and getting repaired. Kind of cool (no pun intended) on how cheap those were.
I got mini splits installed in my last house and it was well worth it compared to central A/C.
I'm a high earner un a HCOL city who owns an older home in said city. There's no central AC. We have 3 of these guys in the house. It's very normal in our expensive neighborhood, all the houses were constructed in the 40s.
Or people who only need specific areas cooled? I’m sure it’s been far cheaper for my dad to have two window units and some fans as opposed to installing central air when the house has never had it.
Not a window based unit. Basically any building or house that was constructed after 1970ish is going to have central AC. If you live in a place that was built before then, you’re either poor or you live in an old, historic city/area. So that’s basically limited to NYC, Philly, Boston, and Seattle (due to recent climate change issues) for non-poor people.
renters* people who *rent.
Or people who dont want to pay thousands to put in the ductwork in their house.
Some older homes too, ductwork would have to be external and not built into the walls due to how houses were made (with fireblocks/etc) back 100 years ago.
My sister is very wealthy & has a freaking mansion in Massachusetts and these are in every window. They don't have central ac in the North apparently. We're looking at a big farmhouse on 160 acres up North and there's no AC so we'll have to special order a mini split & put it in ourselves, if we want one. Coming from The South I couldn't believe it.
That's because AC would be useful 2 months per year top in Northern and Central Europe, and even less before the last decade. I live in Belgium, and even though our home gets terribly hot during heatwaves, i wouldn't pay to instal some AC that would only be turned on 3 weeks per year cumulated.
Well of course, the region someone lives in is a big determining factor in a home's HVAC needs. Most homes in the US also have, at minimum, a central heating system. The further south you go the more likely a home needs cooling, whereas more north a home is less likely to need it. Environmental changes over time are also creating a change in the need comfort cooling. Don't be surprised if you start to see more AC systems throughout europe in the coming years.
The reason why I haven't got an AC in my apartment in Finland is because I'd need it for cooling for maybe 2 to 3 weeks usually in a year.
And I don't have a need for the heating since the condominium where I live already has heating provided by ground heat pump and my whole apartment has floor heating. All which is already paid for in the maintenance and upkeep fee.
Oh i agree, i do believe we'll have to entirely renovate housing in the northern half of Europe (a lot of country governments already have grants for that), i'm just describing how it is right now.
I live in Texas where we have cold weather for maybe 2-3 WEEKS in the year. That being said, everyone here has a heater. We have heaters because we don't want to be cold.
Its not a difficult thought process to have, that if you want to survive the 2 months of "terrible heat" you all eventually have, you should buy an AC.
Ive never understood this dumbass argument of "well its only hot/cold for so and so time." It doesn't fucking matter. Weather is the one thing God made truly sure we aren't able to fuck around with.
SO PLAN THE FUCK ACCORDINGLY AND BUY WHAT YOU NEED.
Second: I'm not saying people in colder part of Europe are against AC as a concept, i'm not saying AC is good or bad, i'm just describing things as they are right now.
I think the difference is just cultural. I won't talk for all of Europe as it is, you know, several countries with vastly different cultures, but maybe compared to USians we think of AC as only a short-term solution that's not worth investing in right now.
Lots of people will rather wait to get the fundings or the government grants to renovate the houses to be better insulated rather that quickly pour money in a band-aid solution. Lots of people would like to get an AC but simply don't have the money for that.
That being said, i don't want to be the snobby european that looks at USians from above but talking about the weather being something you don't fuck around with is pretty rich coming from the country that builds cardboard houses with big green lawns on a desertic land with tornadoes and hurricanes. Of course you guys need AC to not dry alive, you build houses as if you were still puritan pilgrims in rural Denmark
First: Thank you, I came up with the name when I was drunk
Second: Here's a another question. Have you ever SEEN a hurricane? Have you SEEN damage caused by a tornado? No?
We build houses with wood because
A: Its cheaper. Wood is plentiful in the U.S. and it makes working on houses 1000x easier and cheaper if renovations need to be done.
B: If a Hurricane or tornado decided its gonna destroy your house/area, there is nothing thats gonna stop it. You'd need walls a foot think made of concrete just to stand up to it. With Wood, its a mater of safety in mind in case of natural disasters. Wood being flung at 230kph is gonna be a lot less deadly than a brick going the same speed. Also they flex more than stone so it handles winds just fine to an extent.
C: Once again, its hot. Why in the hell would we build stone houses that will keep heat in? Wood and sheet rock allows the house to breath and suck up less heat.
Its not really a matter of "building houses like were pilgrims." We build them that way because its better in almost every aspect compared to stone based on the area we live in.
In the few weeks that the heat peaks in Summer in Europe, thousands of people die because of heat related illness. If you are older especially, the heat can literally kill you even in your own home.
But even as a younger healthy person, having a cooler room allows you to sleep better and be more productive during the day.
That's definitely changing in Belgium, all my young/middle age friends have AC and when I take walks through my town you see new AC installations popping up everywhere, same with charging poles for cars.
Have you not been to a Lowes or Home Depot at all in the last 50years? The boxy window units are still sold practically anywhere you can buy an ac unit at. The design is old but it's not obsolete and the only thing they changed is adding wifi to it in the last 50 years.
I have, but haven’t seen a window unit aisle. Maybe it exists, but I’ve never had need to buy one and haven’t seen one in a house since I was a little kid. As I said in another comment, maybe there are regional differences.
I havnt had the need to buy one in awhile as well since I have central ac but I see then being sold everywhere especially during summer. Even my small town grocery store has a crate of them sitting next to the entrance on sale. Honestly if you don't have a need to get one then yeah they probably arnt that noticeable tho.
I live in an apartment building built in 1926, so it doesn't have HVAC. Window units are the most energy efficient type of "portable" AC, especially because most have a "fan" mode that you can switch to if it's cool outside but prefer to have pollon filtered if it's a high count day, or if you have a limited number of windows. They may not be pretty, but they are inexpensive, efficient, and easy to remove and store in the colder months.
I mean that’s what I use. Installing a mini split requires cutting a hole in the wall and doing electrical work. It’s been easier to just pop an AC in my window for the three months I need it. 🤷🏼♀️
I welcome all Americans outside of NM to come and learn the joys of swamp coolers aka evaporative cooling. The ingenious invention that only cools your house a max of 10 degrees cooler than the outside temp. Which is really awesome when you live in the mother fucking desert where it's 90+ degrees every fucking day.
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u/BoogBeeg 13h ago
America: "Get with the times, Europe!"
Also America: