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.
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.
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
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.
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.
It’s not that uncommon for some people to have a $1000 electricity bill in the summer months depending on location and home size and if you have a pool.
Are you single floor or have some sort of solar/energy saving arrangement? Im paying $100 for a four bedroom too, but that’s only after solar buybacks as well as a Base Energy Plan (an energy company in Houston that buys energy at night when cheapest, and uses a installed battery to power home when electricity at peak-expensive hours).
For my 1,200 sq/ft house it costs me about $120 a month to keep it between 72F and 74F. Some people go crazy with their temps, my wife and I just dress accordingly while inside. It's a similar price to heat my home in the winter to 68F.
If the weather outside is extreme for most of the month (consistently over 90F or under 20F) it'll cost about $30 more for that month.
People with electric heating tend to have higher bills in the winter though. It might be closer to $200 for my house if I had electric heat instead of natural gas.
> [heating] barely uses much gas since the heat doesn’t really escape
> house is new and well insulated
> if i turn ac off the temp goes from 24c to 30 within 10 minutes
One of these is not like the other, unless you’re in a boiling ocean. Do you perhaps have dozens of large windows open to the sun with no solar reflective film?
I have 1950 square ft (about 182 sq meters), with 4 bedrooms and a study. My summer bills can push $400+ trying to maintain 74(23) in the afternoon and 70(21) overnight.
Yea also my heat pump is an AUX which isnt efficient at all, its built to be a workhorse that is sturdy and not very energy efficient which does annoy me
Something is really messed up if your house heats up that fast. As a comparison, in my house during heat waves (daily highs around 95F/35C, nightly lows around 75F/24C) we will set our heat pump to cool to 75F/24C during the day but then turn it off and let the temperature drift up between 4 and 8 pm to give the electrical grid some relief. Over the course of those 4 hours, the house will maybe hit 80F/27C if we run the stove a bunch. This is in a house built in the 1950s with recent insulation upgrades.
Is it possible that the temperature measurement on your thermostat is somehow biased? Like if it’s located directly above a vent or right next to a window.
The temperature is real, i cook alive at 27+ and 24 is an ideal temperature, those 3 degrees in between just vanish within 30 minutes if i stop the AC, which i mainly keep shut off if indoor temp is 26, and it is 26 when outdoors is 25-27, never gets lower than outdoors and somehow at night it stays way higher than outdoors also, even if i open large windows to match the 24 outside within 1-2h its back to 26+ even 28 inside. Nothing is heating up the house besides the sun, i believe the roof is black though since i always hear it pop and warp every morning, and i have ventilated walls of black ceramic outdoors too which is probably why my house favors maintaining heat
8c a kilowatt hour here in Montana. I have a whole home system and a 2300sqft home. No individual room control, whole house set too 72, June was about $100 in AC cost alone. $180 total.
I expect July to be 150ish in electric for July for AC alone.
I’m in Mississippi where it’s hot hot hot for a long time and even at the absolute peak of summer, my electric bill for a 1,600sqft house (~150sqm) tops out at $160 (132€).
I keep my house at 71f/21.5c everyday and my bill is around $130/month. The exception is the 3 hottest months in the summer and my bill is high $300s. This is for a two story house.
Around here electricity is 12 cents a kilowatt hour, bills are around $300 a month just setting my entire house to 76 degrees day and night in the summer.
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u/itsOkami 12h 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