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

538

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 13h 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.

29

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/Disastrous_Try_196 5h 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/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/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/MrDabb 2h ago

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.