The politics of air conditioning in Switzerland

comrade1234•about 2 hours ago

I'm in Zurich in modern construction - all cement with stressed cement panel cladding too on the outside. 8 apartments. Triple pane windows. Heat-pump with ground temp heating/cooling that is practically free in price. The ground temp is too cold and we'd get condensation if the brine wasn't warmed up a bit. The apartment is 24c to 26c depending on the room. A bit chilly to me.

My neighborhood (wollishofen) is a bit infamous for all of the old construction being torn down and being replaced with buildings like ours. But those old places are heated with oil, they're leaky wood construction, they have no option for cooling because there are no vents. Think buildings from the 1800s to early 1950s.

I didn't read the article - tired of all the American articles in the press promoting ac for some reason.

happytoexplain•about 1 hour ago

As an American, I can't understand a few of these sentences. I am mostly confused that you say you have a heat pump that cools, and you are sick of AC promotion. There is some kind of disconnect here, because in the US, a heat pump is AC.

Separately, everybody I personally know (Northeast US) considers 26 C indoors to be hot (not warm - hot). It's amazing to me that people can feel temperature so differently.

comrade1234•44 minutes ago

Doesn't AC mean air? Air conditioning? There's no air involved here - it's basically antifreeze pumped through the floors/ceilings. The heat exchanger is an enclosed chamber where warm molecules exchange across into a cool chamber, in summer it's warm molecules from the brine that was in our floors/ceilings and the cool air is the 11c brine that runs through pipes in the ground. across a fin/radiator. It's all completely enclosed. The only "AC" is in the enclosed heat exchanger where warm and cold air molecules move between chambers.

comrade1234•29 minutes ago

Oh I should mention though, there is a compressor that compresses a volatile gas that is the carrier of the heat from the warm to the cold chambers. But it's so efficient that it's pretty much free to cool kostenlos/free cooling) using ground temp (11c here). Heating in winter does cost something because we like to be warmer than 11c.

mathisfun123•44 minutes ago

It's because it's humid af in the northeast (and all through the East Coast). I moved to CA last year from FL and 75/78 here feels perfectly fine (I can sleep just fine) because it's completely dry. We literally have our windows open all day every day except today when it was like 90 (and tonight it'll be back down to 70 so we'll be able to sleep without AC).

jameshilliard•about 1 hour ago

> But those old places are heated with oil, they're leaky wood construction, they have no option for cooling because there are no vents.

Ductless mini split style heat pumps are a common retrofit option for older buildings without vents aren't they?

> I didn't read the article - tired of all the American articles in the press promoting ac for some reason.

When a heat pump is used for cooling it's effectively the same as an AC. The main difference AFAIU is that a heat pump can reverse for heating as well. I think when Americans promote AC they probably consider a heat pump to be just another AC variant.

comrade1234•27 minutes ago

There's no air involved. It's a completely enclosed system. Unless you count the cool/heat of the floors/ceilings affecting the air...

manwe150•10 minutes ago

That seems likely normally not viable in most warm places because the humidity would quickly rot out the floors. Part of the ‘conditioning’ in the name is that quite a lot of water will ideally get removed from the air to control humidity too, and that needs to be drained away

jameshilliard•9 minutes ago

> There's no air involved. It's a completely enclosed system.

So it's actually a hydronic heating/cooling system? I don't think those systems are typically referred to as heat pumps generally.

erelong•about 1 hour ago

seems like the wrong thing to target for the good of the environment as this gets in the way of people's possible legitimate health needs

jameshilliard•6 minutes ago

> this gets in the way of people's possible legitimate health needs

Less people alive being good for the environment is maybe their logic?

arealaccount•about 2 hours ago

Seems like these folks won’t be enjoying fat piles of data center tax revenues any time soon

The politics of air conditioning in Switzerland

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