Graham Sutherland / Polynomialliving on a humid island where all the houses are spec'd for surviving 1970s winters sure is fun at 30°C.
air conditioning? central air? ventilation ducts? heat rejection? lmao nah we don't need any of that. brick and fiberglass wool all the way. keep every last BTU locked up nice and tight. 🫠
I'm still super mad at whoever's driving the lack of dual hose portable air conditioning units here. they're all the single hose kind, super inefficient. if you want a dual hose unit you have to import one from the US and whack a huge lump of a transformer on it to feed it 110V, total cost pushing £2000. or mod a single hose unit but that's a pain in the ass and pretty ugly.
my other pet peeve: hey we're doing a government incentive program where we cover some of the cost of getting a heat pump installed! it's actually a decent amount of money, too! oh btw we don't cover any unit that provides cooling as well as heating because that's a luxury despite it being the ONE OF THE KEY ENERGY SAVING POINTS OF THE TECHNOLOGY >_<
Richard "mtfnpy" Harman (he/him)@gsuberland I feel this in my bones, after spending a fuckton of money on making my house energy efficient and how all the green energy credits are going out the window, if Trump gets his way. I hate this timeline.
FishermansEnemy 「漁師の敵」 
@gsuberland that is currently what is pissing me off. We’re looking to ditch gas and want to use mini splits for heating and cooling, plus solar and battery storage.
Government just assume I’m the dude from the monopoly box.
Government just assume I’m the dude from the monopoly box.
Ludwig Vielfrass@gsuberland Anybody who thinks A/C is a luxury should be forced to be homeless in Phoenix for a summer.
Sven@gsuberland urgh, that's so dumb. Time for some enterprising manufacturer to make one that just locks it out in firmware and happens to be cross-flashable?
Theolodian@gsuberland a smaller grant for a2a should be coming this winter. It only became legal to install aircon in the UK 2 months ago….
@theolodian huh? friends of mine got a GSHP with cooling installed two years ago, and had quotes for a similar ASHP system too. and standard AC has been available residentially since the 1990s at least.
@gsuberland GSHP is always PD. Lots of people installed aircon in the UK, but wasn’t PD until 2 months ago. So 95% of them were illegal.
✧✦Catherine✦✧@gsuberland oh so it's not just me
i swear, i am this close to building a ghetto minisplit myself, probably with butane or something to avoid a need for an F-gas license
jaseg@whitequark @gsuberland I've seen they make 12 V-powered minisplits with short hoses for installation in RVs, and I've actually considered buying one to cool down a single, 20 sqm-ish room. They're kinda expensive though if you consider they are only about 500 W.
@jaseg @gsuberland i am in a small room and a 700 W unit is Extremely not cutting it. i would not consider anything below 2 kW cooling power most likely
@whitequark @gsuberland sorry, I meant 500 W electrical input, so more like 1 ~ 1.5 kW cooling. Still not great though.
@jaseg @gsuberland yeah that's what i mean here too
i think my unit suffers a lot due to the need to hold a window open
Buttered Jorts@whitequark @jaseg @gsuberland do they have those Midea units with the U shape over there?
@ajn142 @whitequark @jaseg our windows aren't shaped like that. they're hinged like a door, they don't go up.
@gsuberland @ajn142 @whitequark I tried converting my single-hose unit to two hose operation with a DIY’ed window adapter but I figured out that the hot side fan of the unit just didn’t have anywhere close to enough static pressure to deal with more than a meter or two of hose total so I went back to just having another window open. Maybe I could have tried putting in one of those cheap inline exhaust fans you can get on Amazon or Ali to help it.
implr@jaseg @whitequark @gsuberland There are bigger ones, but expensive, eg. https://www.galaxus.ch/en/s2/product/argo-ulisse-13-dci-eco-wifi-40-m-13500-btuh-air-conditioners-14661723
Argo Ulisse 13 DCI Eco WiFi (40 m², 13500 BTU/h)
The Ulisse 13DCI Eco Wifi bridges the gap between portable monoblock air conditioners and permanently installed split air conditioning systems. It is portable, with the indoor and outdoor units connected by a refrigerant line. The outdoor unit can be placed on a terrace or mounted on an exterior wall, while the indoor unit is set up in the room or office that needs cooling. The advantage of this air conditioning system over monoblock units is its quiet operation and significantly better energy efficiency. The 13DCI operates with inverter technology, meaning the compressor's performance adjusts to the actual cooling demand and does not run at full capacity all the time. Setting it up is simple and convenient using the included remote control. The target temperature can be selected in 1 °C increments between 10 °C and 32 °C. Whether low target temperatures are actually achieved depends, as with all air conditioning units, on the room size and heat gain, for example, from sunlight or devices present in the room. "I Feel" function: The unit has two measurement points. One is on the unit itself, and the second is on the remote control. With the so-called "I Feel" button, the remote control measures the temperature and controls the air conditioner. This allows you to place the remote control next to you on the sofa, ensuring the optimal temperature is maintained where you are. The only requirement for the "I Feel" function is a direct line of sight between the remote control and the indoor unit. Warm room air is drawn in from the front of the indoor unit, cooled, and then blown into the room from the upper front area. During the cooling process, excess moisture is simultaneously removed from the air. This moisture is then directed through a hose via the connection line from the indoor to the outdoor unit and is automatically misted before being expelled by the fan.
@gsuberland can you import a dual hose unit from europe? at least then you don't have to do voltage conversion
💭 i have a 2.2 kW VFD, i could probably just set it to run a single phase motor on however much voltage it needs
@whitequark I haven't been able to find any, unfortunately. or at least not under a £1000 price point.
Emelia/Emi@gsuberland @whitequark The UK does actually have "portable minisplit" things as an option, apparently: https://meow.social/@tryst/114734365694672491 No idea how expensive they are, though.
@becomethewaifu @whitequark I think I've seen them as low as £650 on offer. the main thing that puts me off is you can't really use them anywhere but a ground floor, and the hose/cable may not always reach as far as you want it to.
@becomethewaifu @whitequark (well, you can technically use them on an upper floor if you have a ladder to install the brackets, but it's a pain to maintain and annoying in winter)
@gsuberland tbh i would pay £1000 for it. i cannot function above 21°C. spending three or four months generating zero income will be worse
@whitequark entirely fair, for sure
penguin42@gsuberland @whitequark How about; £1200 UK supplier ?
https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/10353-mce30-230v-3kw-monoblock-pac-unit/
https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/10353-mce30-230v-3kw-monoblock-pac-unit/
@penguin42 @whitequark I don't think that's actually a dual hose unit. it just has a duct for the output air. in a proper dual hose setup both go outside and one is used as an intake for cooling the hot side of the heat exchanger.
@gsuberland @whitequark Fral sc14? Haven't used one personally but heard good things about those
Faux@whitequark @gsuberland we found these things, sub-£1k and supposedly not illegal to self install.
Half tempted to just lie it on the floor and ignore the rest of the installation procedure.
Suspect all the fittings are single use...
@whitequark @gsuberland https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/eiq-9wminv/electriq-eiq9wminv-air-conditioner absolue genius level link pasting in the heat there.
electriQ Easy-Fit 9000 BTU A++ WiFi Smart Wall Mounted Air Conditioner with Heat Pump - 4m Pipe Kit Included eIQ-9WMINV | Appliances Direct
Buy electriQ Easy-Fit 9000 BTU A++ WiFi Smart Wall Mounted Air Conditioner with Heat Pump - 4m Pipe Kit Included eIQ-9WMINV from Appliances Direct - the UK's leading online appliance specialist
@faux @gsuberland yeah that seems legal to self-install. I've installed one myself a while ago, it's not that bad; if a single and not particularly strong woman can do it alone I am sure you can do it! the hardest part was getting it all level
maxime borges@whitequark @gsuberland I was almost buying a second hand R600A industrial compressor to do exactly that, but since I never dealt with anything related to AC, I'm now looking more into opening up a portable monobloc and putting the hot side outside with some random fan without touching the refrigerant piping. I couldn't find that many people doing such things so I'm not really sure where I'm going with that, so I'd be more than happy seeing other people doing such things :p
@mborges @gsuberland i can probably discuss the topic if you'd like! i did a few vapor compression systems from scratch
@whitequark @gsuberland I'll try to go the easy way with the monobloc first, but I'll ping you if I go the DIY way, thanks :)
@gsuberland Over here in DE you can get the unit linked below for about 1 k€ and I've heard people are happy with them. Maybe getting one of those to where you live would be more affordable, at least it's 240 V.
https://www.midea.com/de/klimatisieren-heizen/portasplit/produktinfos.PortaSplit
@jaseg yeah, super expensive compared to what you can get here. a single hose unit typically costs £250-500.
@gsuberland yup. They're about the same price in € over here. The crazy bit is that you can get a pre-loaded split kit for about the same price as a single-hose unit with the same power rating, so I don't quite get why they sell those so expensive.
Lunaphied@jaseg @gsuberland split kit?
@Lunaphied I don't know what the proper name for these is. I mean these DIY kits where they sell you a split AC with coolant hoses with quick connect fittings pre-attached, and with the unit already pre-charged with coolant from the factory so you can connect it yourself once.
@jaseg ahhh. shame that those really don't matter if you don't own the property (unless I'm unaware of something). the problem with AC is that to do it right and most efficiently you need to retrofit the building itself which means you'd have to get the landlords or the other tenants to agree with the cost increases and everyone still seems to view having a comfortable temperature as a luxury
TAL@gsuberland @jaseg yep, but even the "wide dual-hose" ones are mostly not available anymore. a very common model is still up for sale https://klima-vertrieb.de/klima/mobile-klimaanlagen/olimpia-splendid/576/olimpia-splendid-dolceclima-easy-10-p-klimageraet-ohne-aussengeraet but even that has like a 200€ markup now... (and doesn't have parts required for the second hose in the box anymore)
Chris Petrilli@gsuberland sounds like Seattle minus the humidity. My 110yo house is still sans AC. I have a portable unit and I manage but… I covet.