For sure.
I'm from Germany (but with an AC) as well and am always amazed when people tell me that AC makes you sick. Even young people sometimes replicate this "Oh you gotta be careful not to get sick" and would rather be in 30+°C indoors.
How come Germans get sick while the rest of the world seems to be doing fine and is even productive during summer (it feels like Germany grinds to a halt during heatwaves).
danek_szy · 2026-08-27 12:27:21 UTC
AC dries the air out and your respiratory system basically depends on moisture to catch air particles and pathogens in your respiratory tract.
Nothing unique about Germans in this case, sorry. ;)
ranger_danger · 2026-08-27 12:35:43 UTC
You could run a humidifier as well to offset that if you're really affected by it, but most people seem to be fine.
rvz · 2026-08-27 12:33:11 UTC
Exactly. It is like never turning the heater on once the temperature drops to -10°C (then catching a cold and getting sick).
So once it is too hot, just turn the AC on and you won't get sick or risk a heat stroke either.
We'll come back to this in several months for a winter freeze to see if Europe has basic heating to keep themselves warm (or will they not turn the heaters on for some reason) and in a year, to see if the rest of Europe have learned their lesson to just have basic AC installed for the next heatwave.
ranger_danger · 2026-08-27 12:36:55 UTC
In Japan people often claim to be "allergic" to AC too for some reason, and there have been many stories I've heard from foreigners whose Japanese wives refuse to let them run the AC during the night either.
Personally I think their "allergy" is just because most AC units in Japan are disgustingly moldy and never cleaned regularly.
the_mitsuhiko · 2026-08-27 12:06:06 UTC
> Several countries require AC installation to be approved by the equivalent of a homeowners association or impose noise ordinances that increase compliance costs and paperwork.
This is not unique to ACs. Anything on the outside of a building requires your co-owners to agree.
margor · 2026-08-27 12:10:12 UTC
Don't get me started on how it works in my country.
People who don't have a balcony are screwed and are entirely dependent on homeowners association which arbitrarily can agree or not, or they can stay indecisive about it and not let you do anything.
Well, if you have a balcony? you just put it there and make the necessary holes for it, problem solved.
The effect is exactly the same - you just have AC installed. In one case you have to go through totally unnecessary hoops, and in other case, you just do whatever you want.
What's even the point of it?
Ekaros · 2026-08-27 12:16:29 UTC
It is not entirely that simple. Condensate water is potential problem if wrongly discharged. But adding sufficient drainage is not that expensive per balcony basis. So it is something that should be fixed.
post-it · 2026-08-27 12:21:04 UTC
Condensate is discharged from the inside unit, it should never make it to the balcony.
imp0cat · 2026-08-27 12:24:06 UTC
In a typical mini-split, the water flows to the outside unit and exits the system there, so you either have a pump or a sufficiently sloped pipe from the inside unit to the outside unit.
edit: I guess you could route the drain pipe anywhere if you wanted, so I retract my previous statement.
margor · 2026-08-27 12:35:35 UTC
Where do you think it is getting discharged?
post-it · 2026-08-27 16:38:49 UTC
Into drains in the parking garage in the case of my building. Though thinking more about it now, it's totally reasonable that other buildings might find it easiest to drain to the outside unit.
imp0cat · 2026-08-27 12:22:21 UTC
You can have drain pipes installed, but you can also just collect the water in a bucket and empty it periodically. That requires no extra investment of money, just a tiny bit of your willpower and manpower, depending on the size of the bucket.
There are also systems that spray the water back at the AC unit to cool it down, this is supposed to both improve efficiency and evaporate the water so you don't have to deal with it. I am sure those have some downsides, too.
Ekaros · 2026-08-27 12:30:19 UTC
Both are options. Still both also carry risks or don't solve entire issue. With buckets you don't want to them overflow on floors for example.
And with spraying it on ac you want complete evaporation or you are back to same problem.
As said it is not too hard problem but still something that most likely requires consideration.
margor · 2026-08-27 12:37:11 UTC
I am all for solving these problems and making sure they don't cause problems for others. My problem is with the ability for arbitrary people to say "no" to your case, without even considering the options or facts.
Sure thing, you could go to court if they have any problem, but who is going to fight for AC worth $500 for a few years just to get it installed?
iso1631 · 2026-08-27 12:52:37 UTC
If you're worried about that amount of water, what do you do when it rains?
Ekaros · 2026-08-27 12:54:21 UTC
Some idiot figuring out that nice hole in cladding is right place to direct it... Or people under balconies when it is not raining not wanting to have water drop on them... In many cases balconies have less than ideal designs.
imp0cat · 2026-08-27 13:05:41 UTC
Exactly. While I personaly don't have a problem with AC condensate dripping down on the street, I can see how some people might not be used to that.
Best would probably be to use the existing rainwater pipes that lead down to the sewers - all building have those. But good luck getting that past your HOA-equivalent, as that will most probably involve some modifications to the building and we can't have that, no!
yourusername · 2026-08-27 12:42:41 UTC
Most balconies are already going to have drainage for rain water so solving the drainage problem requires a <$1 piece of plastic tube.
nextaccountic · 2026-08-27 12:15:15 UTC
> co-owners
HOAs don't make neighbors co-owners of your own property, do they?
Anyway HOA is something that shouldn't even exist. Or at least not with power to prevent people from having air conditioning in their home.
raverbashing · 2026-08-27 12:17:02 UTC
Other countries outside of the US have different rules regarding multi-logement buildings and how they are organized
Not everything is a HOA
spwa4 · 2026-08-27 12:39:16 UTC
Multi-logement buildings are not really the issue here. In the US (and outside, but less commonly, but e.g. France has them in the Alps, for the same reason) there are communities with only freestanding houses that privately own the infrastructure serving a number of houses, if I may be blunt: to make things cheaper for local councils and get housing approved, everything from roads to sewer lines.
They force homeowners to decide together (and pay for) everything from road maintenance to what noise levels are allowed.
Another issue they cause is that, of course, the homeowners living there do not just use HOAs to override the wishes of individuals, but also feel disinclined to let the local authorities ... and the locals ... operate as normal there, given that they pay for everything, sometimes literally including the roads in the area around them. These communities may have banks, parks, even beaches, and there are conflicts about who gets to go there, given the local homeowners pay for maintenance. For example, given they clean up left-behind garbage, do people from the nearby town get to play there ... and leave behind more garbage?
The root of the problem is that more housing is no longer a net positive for many communities in a great many places. The increase in taxation income does not justify the extra infrastructure in many places. This means local authorities refuse building projects unless they pay for their own infrastructure. Hence, HOAs are being forced to take over the functions that public authorities used to have ... because local authorities are forcing the responsibilities that local authorities used to have on them. Of course, then the public nature of public space goes into question.
spwa4 · 2026-08-27 12:30:49 UTC
HOAs are companies, with the owners as shareholders, who own the shared infrastructure of the owners. Things like hallways, maybe elevators, gardens, this can even include the roads in a community.
The point of HOAs is to force homeowners to CO-decide (in houses: to make things cheaper for local councils) on what happens to the shared infrastructure. What and how to spend of maintenance and what to change.
molf · 2026-08-27 12:36:18 UTC
> HOAs don't make neighbors co-owners of your own property, do they?
Home-owner associations in Europe are frequently set up for apartment buildings, in which case, yes, the roof, foundation, hallways, stairwells, main piping, electricity, etc are all legally co-owned.
Primary purpose of HOAs is to save for & plan long-term maintenance on the entire building.
HOAs for neighbourhoods, or blocks with single-family homes or terraced houses are pretty rare in Europe.
soco · 2026-08-27 14:53:21 UTC
What will hit you before that here in Switzerland is the local authorities which have in front of their eyes a certain plan for your building, and anything not on the plan (in this case the AC unit) will need a permit. It's not an easy task, I would say impossible actually, to get such a permit, unless you find a way to redesign the whole facade in a acceptable way (units poking out doesn't count as acceptable).
master-lincoln · 2026-08-27 12:15:45 UTC
Of course. But isn't this debate more about the case where you are the only owner?
walthamstow · 2026-08-27 12:25:58 UTC
Not in the land of the free, Great Britain. You can put anything on your house, even a 25ft fibreglass shark diving into your loft.
peri-cl · 2026-08-27 16:07:52 UTC
Wait, is there a story behind—oh, here it is:
https://www.headingtonshark.com/Home/About ("Hello. I'm Magnus Hanson-Heine, the home-owner of the Headington Shark House. The Shark House, formally titled Untitled 1986, consists of a 25ft-long fibreglass and steel shark crashing through the roof of an otherwise ordinary house on a quiet residential street in suburban Oxford...")
ozlikethewizard · 2026-08-27 16:18:07 UTC
There are noise conditions and a few scenarios that will need planning permission (facing a public highway is one) but generally pretty liberal.
The shark scenario is more interesting, and was I'd say was largely allowed to stay because it was an art installation. They couldn't have built an extension of the same proportions without planning permission.
eloisant · 2026-08-27 12:37:54 UTC
That's where the image of AC in general matters. It needs to be seen as a life saving tech just like heating, not a luxury item for rich people.
If it was just a matter of red tape it would be fine, but in France people would fight you on AC because it's ugly/noisy/warms up the street.
So you can get it rejected by people who live in a flat where heat is not as much of a problem as your (ground floor vs higher floor, window orientation) or by landlords who don't even live in the building.
deanc · 2026-08-27 12:06:32 UTC
We have those stupid regulations in Finland about how the outside of our apartments buildings should look - meaning you cannot put the condenser visibly on the outside of the building. I've heard stories of residents being scalded for putting flowers on their balcony railings that face outwards as it ruins the "look". Given almost all apartment buildings are built consistently between every floor they could ensure consistent placement of condensers across all floors and it wouldn't even look that bad.
What makes the situation much worse here is we have insanely good insulation on the buildings. They trap heat for the cold winters, but the walls just maintain all the heat during the summers. A new approach is needed to make it livable here.
In my own apartment I am not able to create a cross-breeze through strategic window opening to try and bring in cooler air from outside, so I've resorted to opening a window on one side of the apartment and using a Vornado fan to push air out the window on another side of the apartment - creating a pressurized system.
margor · 2026-08-27 12:11:47 UTC
Seems like Poland and Finland might have something in common then. It's exactly the same here and exactly senseless.
the_real_cher · 2026-08-27 12:23:59 UTC
I could see this being a good policy for unsightly detrius or debris but they've taken it way too far.
titzer · 2026-08-27 12:24:28 UTC
Is it really so hard to put a small fence around it to hide the ugly?
deanc · 2026-08-27 12:28:18 UTC
Of course not, there are numerous ways to make things look nicer.
margor · 2026-08-27 12:42:15 UTC
Sometimes it's not about the fence, it's about exerting power. Put people in charge of the decision that shouldn't be there, and you're in world of pain.
kwarcode · 2026-08-27 12:50:31 UTC
Flowers bad, planks good?
eemil · 2026-08-27 12:58:52 UTC
Doesn't matter what it looks like, problem is it changes the facade. For that you need to submit some paperwork and get it approved.
You can actually install a heat pump in most apartment buildings, as long as it's on the balcony and not visible from the street (=below waist-level). Main reason you wouldn't, is condensate output which has to be piped indoors or into a heated drain during the winter. Or you just pipe it into your balcony's rainwater drain and accept that you can't use the heatpump below 0C.
raincom · 2026-08-27 13:17:39 UTC
Fencing AC units is a very bad idea, as they just cause air flow problems. After all, air and refrigerant circuit exchange heat.
titzer · 2026-08-27 14:07:22 UTC
Obviously, people thought about this, and there are lots of fence designs that admit plenty of airflow and lots of products ready-made for this already.
raincom · 2026-08-27 16:17:10 UTC
Service technicians hate fences unless they are easy to remove during a service call. Honestly, esthetics is not as much concerning as the noise from compressor and condenser fan. I stayed in an AirBnb, where the outdoor unit next to the bed room, and I couldn't sleep.
titzer · 2026-08-27 16:48:42 UTC
Ok, you're clearly trolling it this point. Fences can open.
michelsedgh · 2026-08-27 12:25:38 UTC
wow such beautiful industrial cement buildings how can someone put flowers and destroy the beauty of cement?
spankibalt · 2026-08-27 12:34:51 UTC
> We have those stupid regulations in Finland about how the outside of our apartments buildings should look - meaning you cannot put the condenser visibly on the outside of the building.
Same for Germany, at least in many places. And if your building gets reclassified as being under Denkmalschutz (cultural heritage management) you've won in the Lottery of Pain.
deanc · 2026-08-27 12:38:27 UTC
Wasn't it the case in Germany it's only fixed installations? Meaning you could put the Midea split system there? This'd be a big no-no in Finland.
fnordsensei · 2026-08-27 12:36:50 UTC
While I hear you, I think AC is better centralized for the building, along with heat and water.
Yes, there are numerous reasons why this is harder to do than just doing it ad-hoc per apartment, but if we’re to see it as infrastructure, it should receive the same level of consideration as other utilities.
deanc · 2026-08-27 12:39:10 UTC
Agreed, new builds should be mandatory, but this is not easy to retrofit to existing apartment buildings in a country where labour and parts are notoriously expensive and have to be split with the residents.
stasomatic · 2026-08-27 22:06:47 UTC
I can run a broken toilet tank all day long without extra fees, hundreds of gallons. Can turn all faucets on without penalties, nobody is counting and the utility doesn't care. The maintenance fees for water cover it, spread across all residents (although they are not low, like $1,800 on top of mortgage, subsidizing things I don't use, like card rooms, ping pong hall, etc.). Some families live 4-5 in a 2 bedroom, in my case it's just the two of us and the dog. Pretty insane, no logical solutions in sight. Moving isn't inexpensive.
ryandrake · 2026-08-28 02:02:09 UTC
That seems unusual to me. I've never lived in a place where water was not metered and charged by the volume consumed. A necessity like water (and A/C) should be as you describe, but I've never seen it, at least not in the USA.
stasomatic · 2026-08-28 13:19:52 UTC
I live in a condo in Florida in a 3 building high-rise compound. There are no water meters per unit. Water is covered by maintenance fees. They are atrocious and rising, but water is "free". Retrofitting will increase maintenance fees, likely by a lot more than I would save paying for my own water usage.
I had a similar situation involving electricity when living in Los Angeles, in the Valley. Electricity costs were averaged across all units, there were no individual meters per unit. My family of 3 humans in a 2 bedroom apartment consumed a lot less than a 10 human family in a 3 bedroom, and that was a thing. I subsidized their electricity usage. This involved things like pool heating, grass maintenance which I never cared about or used. This was at Bella Vista near Warner Ridge. https://www.equityapartments.com/los-angeles/woodland-hills/...
In the US, utility companies don't bill you for actual usage, they have "predictions" on what you may use. IME. You can burn candles and eat canned food for a month and still get billed $300.
snapplebobapple · 2026-08-28 06:45:21 UTC
Thats easy then. put the condenser in the running toilet
margor · 2026-08-27 12:40:57 UTC
For most of the buildings from communism era - all the utilities run through the apartments anyway and there is absolutely no place or way to retrofit these utilities without extensively either re-doing it from scratch, or trying to somehow retrofit it on the outside.
All of these options are a non-starter considering basic AC starts from $500. Why should anyone invest more than that?
xattt · 2026-08-27 12:49:36 UTC
Many communist-era buildings had a service shaft the width of the back wall of the toilet closet (yes, bathroom and toilet are separate rooms). This was hidden from everyday view with large cabinet doors.
A national-scale project can likely package cooling for these shafts, possibly emanating from rooftop units.
numpad0 · 2026-08-27 15:32:38 UTC
Permissions and structural concerns aside, you only need one 65mm/2.5" hole in the wall to run the high/low pressure gas lines, a drain hose, and a power cable, plus couple more non-penetrating drill holes on the wall to mount the inside and outside units. You'll need a hole saw attachment on a drill, a vacuum pump to thoroughly dry out the system, and bits of plastic putty to fill the hole against intrusion. It's a less than 5 man-hour job.
Markoff · 2026-08-27 16:13:38 UTC
you don't really need drain hose for outside multisplit unit, my AC drain hoses from all indoor units are connected to my WC tank, I used previously pumps to push the water to the roof, but they were not reliable and once after thunderstorm they died when I finally went for passive solution, should have done it from the beginning)
OptionOfT · 2026-08-27 16:19:26 UTC
The problem with shared is the issue of shared cost. How do you determine how much a user consumes?
There is also the issue of upgrading the shared infrastructure. Because of the size it's a lot more expensive to replace, so that is postponed for much longer because now everybody needs to pitch in.
anilakar · 2026-08-27 12:40:42 UTC
> ensure consistent placement of condensers
You can install one on the balcony below the railing level.
The housing company is responsible for the exterior surfaces and thus also responsible for whatever happens to fall on bystanders when it will inevitably happen.
AC installers are also notoriously bad at following placement guidelines.
soco · 2026-08-27 13:20:16 UTC
I've had one placed like this in the balcony of a XVth century palazzo turned museum plus hotel, straight in the historical heart of Verona. If they can do it, everybody can do it as well.
matt-p · 2026-08-27 13:09:35 UTC
You say stupid, but I actually would find it sad to see beautiful buildings that are in many cases hundreds of years old defaced with loads of small condensers bolted on to the face.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't have A/C but rather all flats use one system with a large roof condenser, or where that is not possible district cooling or ground source.
deanc · 2026-08-27 13:30:03 UTC
I'm not talking about historic buildings that are hundreds of years old. I live in Finland - we don't have many of these. Almost all apartments are built after the 60s outside the downtown and look like concrete boxes.
soco · 2026-08-27 14:28:53 UTC
You'd be surprised (I certainly am) how fond can some people be of concrete box architecture - hint Le Corbusier.
deanc · 2026-08-27 14:39:54 UTC
Take a look around [1]. This is what every neighbourhood built looks like now.
The amount of engineering that goes into a system like this makes it impossible to retrofit into an existing structure.
koalalimpo · 2026-08-27 13:11:13 UTC
I think you misunderstand what isolation does. It will also keep the heat out. Having window awnings to block sunlight from directly warming up the room will go a long way.
soco · 2026-08-27 13:15:56 UTC
Now here is exactly one place where the regulation can hit hard: awnings are maybe not allowed because the house wasn't designed with them. Possible to get the new design approved? For sure. Simple? Ha.
unknownfuture · 2026-08-27 13:47:57 UTC
Yes and no.
The problem is if you can't get the home cooled off, then heat that does build up can't escape.
In western Canada until recently we got away with very good insulation coupled with opening windows at night as daytime-vs-nighttime temperatures could swing as much as 15C.
But as both daytime and nighttime temperatures increase, or in more humid climates where the temperature doesn't drop enough, that's no longer effective.
The net result is the home just gets hot and stays hot.
crossroadsguy · 2026-08-27 13:35:26 UTC
> I've heard stories of residents being scalded for putting flowers on their balcony
In medieval times, not after, I hope.
Markoff · 2026-08-27 16:10:14 UTC
if you have balcony you could hide multisplit unit under railing
if you don't want permanent installation there are not basically mobile split units like Midea Portasplit, it's basically same thing you would install on the wall, but mobile on the wheels (personally I have regular AC (Toshiba) and my multisplit unit is on the flat roof invisible from the street, this year neighbor floor below me installed his unit on the roof as well, we are the only 2 apartments in two units with 40 apartments in total with AC, so much for Prague AC statistics, though honestly even under the roof in 35C+ temperatures it was not that bad prior turning on the AC)
mr_mitm · 2026-08-27 12:07:17 UTC
> Germany has reported more than 5,000 excess deaths this year.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I am wondering what luxury will next become a necessity if we keep increasing our energy usage in order to get both more luxuries and necessities?
On the bright side, I suppose one mitigating factor is that renewable energy makes it less harmful to use energy to power A/C usage.
oleganza · 2026-08-27 12:08:05 UTC
Are we going to build a dyson sphere some day or are we not? That's some hell of a "increasing our energy usage".
Arodex · 2026-08-27 12:08:47 UTC
First words from the article:
>Yet as heat waves kill tens of thousands of Europeans each year
...Each year? Was it the case every year twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago? What has changed, miss Follett?
Last words from the article:
>But forgoing air conditioning is a refusal to move on from a lethally hot past.
Gee, I wonder if this global warming thing wasn't a mistake to let happen...
If that author is right, then we can and should punish the people responsible for global warming? Because that includes a lot of her colleagues at Cato and WaPo. The same who were against the same carbon taxes that would be useful to reduce and mitigate the global warming that kills...
2III7 · 2026-08-27 12:20:20 UTC
> If that author is right, then we can and should punish the people responsible for global warming?
So every adult human and corporation?
Arodex · 2026-08-27 15:31:55 UTC
We can start with people who got paid to make sure no action was taken against global warming - such as everyone working at CATO, like the author of this article...
michelsedgh · 2026-08-27 12:23:58 UTC
How are u gonna punish china? do u have any logic? chatgpt 3.5 makes more sense than these types of comments...
Arodex · 2026-08-27 15:26:18 UTC
I didn't know it was China who lied and diverted global efforts to reduce greenhouse gases...
pessimizer · 2026-08-27 14:17:24 UTC
> ...Each year? Was it the case every year twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago? What has changed, miss Follett?
Are you considering answering this question? Was it the case fifty years ago? Did anything change?
Arodex · 2026-08-27 15:26:11 UTC
It is called a rhetorical question. You already know the answer.
And if you don't already know it, just wonder why AC isn't widespread in Europe, why nuclear plants built decades ago have to stop due to the lack of water and why every single article talks about an "exceptional" heat wave. Do you really need me to hold you hand there?
elil17 · 2026-08-27 12:08:51 UTC
Cooling technologies are a necessity and air conditioning is one of many possible options.
Europe north of France is substantially cooler than much of the US, even on the hottest days. Many homes could get by on ceiling fans, but they are very uncommon here.
boxed · 2026-08-27 12:13:24 UTC
I live in Sweden. You are incorrect. Having your home basically unlivable a few weeks every year is not ok, and ground heat exchange pumps that provide cooling are energetically basically free, so just do it.
danek_szy · 2026-08-27 12:19:08 UTC
What technology are these heat pumps using that make them "energetically basically free"?
fhackenberger · 2026-08-27 12:23:37 UTC
Run on solar (sun usually shines when it's hot) and use geothermic energy. The ground below your house is significantly cooler than the surrounding air.
I'd still favour the fan, I've lived in India for longer periods with consistently around 32-36 C and a fan is perfectly enough after a little while of adapting.
ane · 2026-08-27 12:27:42 UTC
They have very good thermal coeffiency: ground source heat pumps will typically generate 3-6kWh of thermal energy from 1kWh of electricity. By reversing the flow you can also use ground source heat pumps for cooling as well.
danek_szy · 2026-08-27 12:34:19 UTC
Doesn't sound like "basically free" to me... It still uses electricity, which doesn't help with climate change (even if it mostly comes from renewables).
D-Machine · 2026-08-27 12:42:32 UTC
Hard to see how you can read what GP said as anything other than "basically free", and failing to quantify, like you are doing here, and just categorically calling all electricity use bad is not coherent or helpful either.
sampo · 2026-08-27 12:43:28 UTC
Swedish electricity generation is 99% low-carbon sources.
iso1631 · 2026-08-27 12:48:39 UTC
Install 8kWp of solar panel on your roof (£5k), add a battery (£3k) and AC (£3k)
Charge the battery from the solar and it powers the AC in the evening.
You'll generate more than enough during the day to run AC and fill the battery to run it overnight.
Still using grid sources in winter, but you aren't using the AC. Although you might find air-air AC in heat mode is better than your gas boiler.
ux266478 · 2026-08-27 13:02:15 UTC
More or less the only people who can do that in Europe are rich people with detached homes in the suburbs, which is a vanishingly small minority. European governments could do a lot more to invest in photovoltaics, but it's a bit complicated with how cramped the continent is.
You can replace farmland, but that seems like a really bad idea with Globalism's decline. Who knows what's going to happen to the food supply chain over the next 30 years. The only other option is attaching them to the exterior of historic buildings, and heaven forbid! Think about the character of the neighborhood!
Comments
Nothing unique about Germans in this case, sorry. ;)
So once it is too hot, just turn the AC on and you won't get sick or risk a heat stroke either.
We'll come back to this in several months for a winter freeze to see if Europe has basic heating to keep themselves warm (or will they not turn the heaters on for some reason) and in a year, to see if the rest of Europe have learned their lesson to just have basic AC installed for the next heatwave.
Personally I think their "allergy" is just because most AC units in Japan are disgustingly moldy and never cleaned regularly.
This is not unique to ACs. Anything on the outside of a building requires your co-owners to agree.
People who don't have a balcony are screwed and are entirely dependent on homeowners association which arbitrarily can agree or not, or they can stay indecisive about it and not let you do anything.
Well, if you have a balcony? you just put it there and make the necessary holes for it, problem solved.
The effect is exactly the same - you just have AC installed. In one case you have to go through totally unnecessary hoops, and in other case, you just do whatever you want.
What's even the point of it?
edit: I guess you could route the drain pipe anywhere if you wanted, so I retract my previous statement.
There are also systems that spray the water back at the AC unit to cool it down, this is supposed to both improve efficiency and evaporate the water so you don't have to deal with it. I am sure those have some downsides, too.
And with spraying it on ac you want complete evaporation or you are back to same problem.
As said it is not too hard problem but still something that most likely requires consideration.
Sure thing, you could go to court if they have any problem, but who is going to fight for AC worth $500 for a few years just to get it installed?
Best would probably be to use the existing rainwater pipes that lead down to the sewers - all building have those. But good luck getting that past your HOA-equivalent, as that will most probably involve some modifications to the building and we can't have that, no!
HOAs don't make neighbors co-owners of your own property, do they?
Anyway HOA is something that shouldn't even exist. Or at least not with power to prevent people from having air conditioning in their home.
Not everything is a HOA
They force homeowners to decide together (and pay for) everything from road maintenance to what noise levels are allowed.
Another issue they cause is that, of course, the homeowners living there do not just use HOAs to override the wishes of individuals, but also feel disinclined to let the local authorities ... and the locals ... operate as normal there, given that they pay for everything, sometimes literally including the roads in the area around them. These communities may have banks, parks, even beaches, and there are conflicts about who gets to go there, given the local homeowners pay for maintenance. For example, given they clean up left-behind garbage, do people from the nearby town get to play there ... and leave behind more garbage?
The root of the problem is that more housing is no longer a net positive for many communities in a great many places. The increase in taxation income does not justify the extra infrastructure in many places. This means local authorities refuse building projects unless they pay for their own infrastructure. Hence, HOAs are being forced to take over the functions that public authorities used to have ... because local authorities are forcing the responsibilities that local authorities used to have on them. Of course, then the public nature of public space goes into question.
The point of HOAs is to force homeowners to CO-decide (in houses: to make things cheaper for local councils) on what happens to the shared infrastructure. What and how to spend of maintenance and what to change.
Home-owner associations in Europe are frequently set up for apartment buildings, in which case, yes, the roof, foundation, hallways, stairwells, main piping, electricity, etc are all legally co-owned. Primary purpose of HOAs is to save for & plan long-term maintenance on the entire building.
HOAs for neighbourhoods, or blocks with single-family homes or terraced houses are pretty rare in Europe.
https://www.headingtonshark.com/Home/About ("Hello. I'm Magnus Hanson-Heine, the home-owner of the Headington Shark House. The Shark House, formally titled Untitled 1986, consists of a 25ft-long fibreglass and steel shark crashing through the roof of an otherwise ordinary house on a quiet residential street in suburban Oxford...")
The shark scenario is more interesting, and was I'd say was largely allowed to stay because it was an art installation. They couldn't have built an extension of the same proportions without planning permission.
If it was just a matter of red tape it would be fine, but in France people would fight you on AC because it's ugly/noisy/warms up the street.
So you can get it rejected by people who live in a flat where heat is not as much of a problem as your (ground floor vs higher floor, window orientation) or by landlords who don't even live in the building.
What makes the situation much worse here is we have insanely good insulation on the buildings. They trap heat for the cold winters, but the walls just maintain all the heat during the summers. A new approach is needed to make it livable here.
In my own apartment I am not able to create a cross-breeze through strategic window opening to try and bring in cooler air from outside, so I've resorted to opening a window on one side of the apartment and using a Vornado fan to push air out the window on another side of the apartment - creating a pressurized system.
You can actually install a heat pump in most apartment buildings, as long as it's on the balcony and not visible from the street (=below waist-level). Main reason you wouldn't, is condensate output which has to be piped indoors or into a heated drain during the winter. Or you just pipe it into your balcony's rainwater drain and accept that you can't use the heatpump below 0C.
Same for Germany, at least in many places. And if your building gets reclassified as being under Denkmalschutz (cultural heritage management) you've won in the Lottery of Pain.
Yes, there are numerous reasons why this is harder to do than just doing it ad-hoc per apartment, but if we’re to see it as infrastructure, it should receive the same level of consideration as other utilities.
I had a similar situation involving electricity when living in Los Angeles, in the Valley. Electricity costs were averaged across all units, there were no individual meters per unit. My family of 3 humans in a 2 bedroom apartment consumed a lot less than a 10 human family in a 3 bedroom, and that was a thing. I subsidized their electricity usage. This involved things like pool heating, grass maintenance which I never cared about or used. This was at Bella Vista near Warner Ridge. https://www.equityapartments.com/los-angeles/woodland-hills/...
In the US, utility companies don't bill you for actual usage, they have "predictions" on what you may use. IME. You can burn candles and eat canned food for a month and still get billed $300.
All of these options are a non-starter considering basic AC starts from $500. Why should anyone invest more than that?
A national-scale project can likely package cooling for these shafts, possibly emanating from rooftop units.
There is also the issue of upgrading the shared infrastructure. Because of the size it's a lot more expensive to replace, so that is postponed for much longer because now everybody needs to pitch in.
You can install one on the balcony below the railing level.
The housing company is responsible for the exterior surfaces and thus also responsible for whatever happens to fall on bystanders when it will inevitably happen.
AC installers are also notoriously bad at following placement guidelines.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't have A/C but rather all flats use one system with a large roof condenser, or where that is not possible district cooling or ground source.
[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/bMYANpDU2AGDKVQN7
The problem is if you can't get the home cooled off, then heat that does build up can't escape.
In western Canada until recently we got away with very good insulation coupled with opening windows at night as daytime-vs-nighttime temperatures could swing as much as 15C.
But as both daytime and nighttime temperatures increase, or in more humid climates where the temperature doesn't drop enough, that's no longer effective.
The net result is the home just gets hot and stays hot.
In medieval times, not after, I hope.
if you don't want permanent installation there are not basically mobile split units like Midea Portasplit, it's basically same thing you would install on the wall, but mobile on the wheels (personally I have regular AC (Toshiba) and my multisplit unit is on the flat roof invisible from the street, this year neighbor floor below me installed his unit on the roof as well, we are the only 2 apartments in two units with 40 apartments in total with AC, so much for Prague AC statistics, though honestly even under the roof in 35C+ temperatures it was not that bad prior turning on the AC)
We're up to more than 15,000: https://www.rki.de/DE/Themen/Gesundheit-und-Gesellschaft/Ges...
On the bright side, I suppose one mitigating factor is that renewable energy makes it less harmful to use energy to power A/C usage.
>Yet as heat waves kill tens of thousands of Europeans each year
...Each year? Was it the case every year twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago? What has changed, miss Follett?
Last words from the article:
>But forgoing air conditioning is a refusal to move on from a lethally hot past.
Gee, I wonder if this global warming thing wasn't a mistake to let happen...
If that author is right, then we can and should punish the people responsible for global warming? Because that includes a lot of her colleagues at Cato and WaPo. The same who were against the same carbon taxes that would be useful to reduce and mitigate the global warming that kills...
So every adult human and corporation?
Are you considering answering this question? Was it the case fifty years ago? Did anything change?
And if you don't already know it, just wonder why AC isn't widespread in Europe, why nuclear plants built decades ago have to stop due to the lack of water and why every single article talks about an "exceptional" heat wave. Do you really need me to hold you hand there?
Europe north of France is substantially cooler than much of the US, even on the hottest days. Many homes could get by on ceiling fans, but they are very uncommon here.
I'd still favour the fan, I've lived in India for longer periods with consistently around 32-36 C and a fan is perfectly enough after a little while of adapting.
Charge the battery from the solar and it powers the AC in the evening.
You'll generate more than enough during the day to run AC and fill the battery to run it overnight.
Still using grid sources in winter, but you aren't using the AC. Although you might find air-air AC in heat mode is better than your gas boiler.
You can replace farmland, but that seems like a really bad idea with Globalism's decline. Who knows what's going to happen to the food supply chain over the next 30 years. The only other option is attaching them to the exterior of historic buildings, and heaven forbid! Think about the character of the neighborhood!