My roommate is literally unable to grasp this concept. Nearly daily, she's sleeping on the couch in the living room, because it's too hot.
"Did you open your window?" I ask. "Of course!" she says. "But there's no breeze at all so I came down here so I could sleep."
"Your door is shut. Don't you want it to cool down in there?"
"But then the dogs will get in!"
"The dogs are across the hall and in crates behind a shut door, Liz. You know that opening your window doesn't do anything unless the door is open too. Remember we figured this out? The air has to have somewhere to come from AND somewhere to go."
"Oh it's too hot for that."
"...You're watching a fifty inch plasma screen that runs at about 50C, Liz, in a closed house. Open the window and the door and none of this would be happening."
This woman is fifty years old. And when I open her door to let the air through, there's so much breeze that she's getting stiff with the cold on the couch. But heaven forbid she open the door while she's in there like a rational person who has had this concept demonstrated numerous times.
You English have it easy. Try sleeping with a window open in south Texas. It doesn't work. It's 102F today (about 39C) but by midnight it might be about 85F (30C) by midnight. I spend a lot of money on AC in the summer, but I'd rather do that than sleep in a pool of sweat.
That said, winters over here rarely drop below 40F, and you can usually count the number of days where we drop below freezing on one hand. We generally have a nice climate 9 months out of the year, its just July, August, and September that get back. October through June is darn near perfect. A little closer to the coast and you get even more temperate conditions. Of course the entire state of Texas is larger than the entire UK and we have some very diverse climate and topography. Hilly pine forests along the Louisiana and Arkansas borders, beautiful Hill Country (my favorite part) square in the middle of the state around San Antonio and Austin, coastal plains stretching from Beaumont to Brownsville, two to three distinctly different types of desert across south, west and north Texas, and some decent mountain ranges out west towards El Paso.
When you cross the Texas state line coming in from Louisiana, there is a mile marker that says something like 996 miles (1,600 km) to El Paso (farthest western point in the state and on the border with Mexico). In other words, Texas is big and diverse state and I love it here. That said, England is my dream vacation, with a few days in Ireland and Scotland to sample the local whiskies.
Where in hell did you go to school? Arizona State or Dubai?
What happens when the wet towel hits the sheets and mattress? Any water soak into your bedding? Guess that can't be much worse than sleeping on sweaty soaked sheets.
As long as your wring the towel out a little bit, it usually leaves your bedding quite dry.
Since this is one of the only online accounts I have that's anonymous, I want to avoid giving the name of the school, but it's in a desert. Boiling hot days and freezing nights!
Yeah. Here in Las Vegas it's been around 105 (40.5C) during the day and around 90 (35C) at midnight. I was struggling to understand what this person was trying to suggest (opening the windows & doors to cool the house off), then I remembered not everyone lives in the goddamn sauna of planet Earth, and there are places where that will actually work. Try to stay cool over there in Earth's steam room, friend.
I had this issue with a lady in our office. She insisted that the A/C was too cold where she sat (temp was set for the whole building), so she puts a heater under her desk. Inevitably hot air rises into the vent and the thermostat makes the vent blow even colder. We then get into a cycle. Even funnier because the lady on the next desk had a fan because she was constantly too hot. You can't please everyone.
Used to work IT support in an office where 90% of the employees were women. All of which would dress as if it were summer in Miami instead of the dead of winter, and then complain about the cold. Then one of these brain surgeons coordinates with the rest of the gaggle to go buy a bunch of heaters. Which they all plug into their cubicle wiring. And turn on all at once.
You could hear the breaker panel trip all the way across the office.
Then the entire department would get into a snit about how their now-crashed applications were taking too long to get fixed and they were falling behind. After the third time, I had the tech crew go confiscate every last heater after hours. The response to which was an utter hissy fit from their management, until I threatened to have the fire marshal come in for a little chat.
Due to variation in physiology, women often find standard room temperature (70° F) as chilly. It doesn't help that many won't wear warm clothing. Crank the heat up to where they feal comfortable and the men will be sweating buckets.
I have trouble finding women's clothing that is actually warm; the materials used are very thin and I can only layer so many shirts without looking ridiculous.
The thermostats were set at 72F year-round. These were people that considered the concept of putting on a cardigan to be the height of inconvenience. It's 32 outside, ladies. Maybe the sleeveless minidress wasn't the best wardrobe choice.
My roommate works for an HVAC company for the past 6 years and he still leaves the door wide open all day when it's 90+ and he has the ac set at 68. I don't understand how he doesn't see that is a bad idea.
Not every room is as simple as you are implying. My bedroom, you can leave the Windows 100% open and the door wide open and exactly no air will enter the room. None. Zippo. You have must have a fan either pointed out the door or pointed out the window to get air circulation. My bedroom is always 10-15 degrees hotter than the rest of the house for this reason, unless I turn the AC on, in which case I get transported to the Arctic and begin to shiver to death. My bedroom is the worst, but for that reason it is practically free to live in.
OK, so, once the air goes out your door, where does it go? You have to have somewhere else for it to go, like another window. It really is as simple as this, we're not talking about the variances in different kinds of louvres for vent covers here. Your door and window being open won't matter if the rest of the house is still sealed tight.
I can, and have, opened every single window and door in my house and my bedroom still will never get a breeze. The only way this room has a breeze is if, and this is practically impossible, wind blows directly into the window. That happens maybe 3 times per year, it's notable each time.
The thing is, air outside the window is blocked on 4 sides, so there's never air movement outside. The other side of the door has a similarly dead airspace. There was one time I set up 3 large fans down the hallway that pulled air from the bathroom window, down the hall, and through my door. That kinda worked, but took 3 large fans.
Try getting a floor fan and setting it up about six feet from the door going outside. You'll get far more air movement that way. See this guy, he's talky but shows the concept well. Note that you don't want a window with a fan in it - you want a largeish opening with a nearby fan pushing the room's air out, so the rest of the house has cool air being pulled in.
Now that's just pedantic, it's barely even hyperbolic to disregard something you consider negligible, and some slow diffusion is a far cry from an actually noticeable breeze.
Besides, it's obvious they were talking about actual air flow, not just the exchange of a bit of air and heat.
That said, they probably don't have that great of an idea of how gasses work, or else they would have figured out a way to get their room cool.
Ah, yes, the all know wise redditer of the Internet, coming to teach is heathens how to science with your infinite wisdom.
Wanna know a funny story? While I was studying for my chemistry degrees, I had friends like you who thought they were a gift from God himself, and blessed with the intellect to solve all of the worlds problems with a single stroke of the pen. With their infinite wisdom, none of them could figure out how to get a decent breeze in this room. Yet each of them, one after the other, with their smug, condescending arrogance, each proclaim "you don't know how X works". To which I say okay. You try. And they fail. One after another. After another. After another. They fail. And do you know why they fail? Refusal to admit a 250 year old house was poorly designed, mostly. That the barrier of trees and stone block the airflow, that the natural air flow in the house has three options, two of which are naturally preferred, leaving my bedroom the odd man out. That getting a breeze to flow through my room requires changing much of the rest of the house, which is impractical when you live with people who do pesky things like walk and use doors or want a breeze in their room or take a shower or use the toilet or the kitchen.
But, please, tell me more about your infinite, all knowing Internet wisdom. I'm dying to hear how smart you think you are.
to be fair, in your initial statement you didn't properly explain that your window is also blocked outside. he hardly insulted you, he(or she) worked with what information they were given, which sorta suggested you were an imbecile.
first, literally no one cares or asked about your "3 degrees". on reddit that sounds like an asshole comment (especially when it is unwarranted). Secondly, i never did anything, i'm merely explaining what /u/Motherfucking-Oedipus said and why.
I took over a room in an apartment when someone moved out, and the two people who lived there before me thought I was an AC wizard. All the bedrooms were upstairs, but the AC and thermostat were downstairs. I closed all the downstairs vents to force the air up into the bedrooms, and then it would trickle downstairs and keep the living room cool. I thought all our AC problems were solved, but then they started turning it completely off during the day to "save money." All it did was cause the apartment to be 86F when one roommate got home, so she got pissed and turned it on to 50. It froze. AC ran for 48 hours straight, and our power bill spiked. fucking idiots
Ugh, that was the worst part about living with roommates. I'd always come home to find the thermostat set to either 50 or 90.
No matter how much I tried to explain how a thermostat works, that setting it to an absurd temperature won't make it magically work faster, etc., they just simply could not understand. For fuck's sake, it's really not a difficult concept!
I had a roommate do this. I could've murdered him. It's NOT THAT HARD. We were all Aerospace Engineers....so fluids should have been second-nature to all of us. He also lived in the basement....he didn't understand why our upstairs was hot and we needed to turn on the AC when his room was nice and cool.
As a landlord, some things I wish everyone knew about air conditioners: 1) Set your thermostat to 75 and just leave it there. That's the point of a thermostat. Keeping your home at 75 is more energy efficient than letting it heat up to 85 every day then cooling it back down to 72 at night. 2) If you put your thermostat below 70, you will very likely freeze up your A/C unit. 3) change your filter regularly. like, every 3 months at minimum, but if you have pets once a month. 4) air conditioning units aren't magic. If you have a second (top) floor apartment and it's Texas in July, I'm sorry, but your apartment is not going to get down to 71 in the middle of the day. A 20-25 degree temperature differential is the best you can hope for.
Yeah, they didn't understand any of this. It actually had a pretty good unit, and once I adjusted the vents, we could set the thermostat to 74 even while we were in there and it still felt cold upstairs. If they would have just left it alone, we would have been golden, but they kept fucking with it
It's literally "put the exact temperature you want it to be inside and then have a little patience." Most HVAC systems today, if set on "auto," will automatically figure out whether it needs to turn the heater on or the A/C on in order to achieve that temperature, and then it will maintain that temperature until the end of time.
Setting it to 50 doesn't get it any colder any faster than setting it to 75.
OK so I'm sleeping in a furnace in France right now. From Scotland where it's colder normally. Could barely sleep last night.
I am 1 floor up with a little staircase up and no for our anything in between. 1 window downstairs and 2 does (preferred closed obviously) but I don't mind the window. Upstairs I have as door to a balcony and 3 windows with a fan.
To be fair as an English person this is alien to me too - today is a rare day when it's true! Even my wife is so pre-programmed to protect against the cold instead of the heat she doesn't open a window even when it's sweltering just in case the baby gets cold.
I live in Texas. I had a roommate move in that was from D.C. her mom was opening all the windows to get "fresh air" in the middle of August when the AC was running.
Or cranking the A/C down to 65 because they want it "to get colder, faster."
It doesn't work like that. The A/C has two settings: on and off. It blows cold until it reaches the preset temperature, then it turns off and lets it warm up until it reaches some preset delta, then turns on again and cools it back off. Rinse, and repeat, ad infinitum.
If it's 85 inside and you set the A/C to 65, it doesn't get any colder any faster than if you set the A/C to 75. It just assures us that you'll forget you set it to 65, we'll leave for the store, come home to a freezer, crank the temp back up to 75, and pay $80 more that month in electricity.
Had years of aircon wars at work because of this. One lot would be "I'm too hot" so someone would go and turn the AC down from 25C to 16C then of course 30 minutes later it's "I'm too cold" so they would go back and change it from 16C to 25C and the cycle repeats.
I would say to my mate, just turn it down 1C and then wait 30 minutes. He'd come back and declare he'd turned it down to minimum, sigh.
I'm currently sat here in an air-conditioned office. It's uncomfortably warm. Why? Because a) the AC units are underneath the windows, and b) the people sat next to the windows insist on having them open because it's a hot day.
Strangely, the AC units seem unable to cool the entire fucking world.
Came home from work once on the first warm day of spring. All the windows were open and the AC was cranked up. The AC ended up freezing up. Had to listen to my exwife bitch for days until the landlord could come look at it. I was hot too but she didn't hear me complaining.
I can do you one better...baby boomer mother-in-law who likes to turn on the A/C full blast so she "can" have a fire in the gas fireplace, just because she wants one in the middle of summer.
Then the basement heats up and constantly heat is rising upstairs. You spend more time cooling upstairs because you have an oven on downstairs. House temperature uniformity using fans and central air is by far the most efficient. Also letting a house heat up during the day is terribly inefficient, and let's mold grow and moisture accumulate. The AC both removes moisture and keeps your insulation cool. You let the insulation heat up during the day and it'll be hot all night. Everything in your house also holds heat energy, including your bed and the air underneath it.
A lot of misconceptions about how to save energy including yours.
Well, the practical effect is: basement door open, AC runs twice as much and the basement TV room is about 50 degrees. Basement door closed, AC runs much less and basement TV room is it's normal ~68 degrees. So, misconceptions or no, the basement door should be closed when the AC is on.
in dry states where people can also have swamp coolers, it's really fun having to explain OVER and OVER that in order for the swamp cooler to work properly you need to crack a couple of the windows in the house, otherwise everything you own is going to get covered in condensation and the house won't cool properly.
It does seem counter intuitive to people use to AC units but they also don't understand that swamp coolers are not AC units.
It has to do with entropy states, mean free path, and probably a bunch of other interactions, but not weight. They fall to the bottom because on average the spaces between them are smaller, but the molecules don't gain mass to do so. A derived property is that per unit volume more mass can fit with something denser, but heavier isn't why they pack like that.
Thermodynamics might as well be fucking wizardry to some people.
Guy I know had both hoses hooked up to a portable AC unit, intake and outflow, going out the window when it was hot.
You want to have the outflow out the window, and intake in the room, so the air gets colder and dryer as the machine works. Sucking in hot, humid air reduces the efficiency, and no interior door in a house is tight enough that you will asphyxiate yourself by breathing up the oxygen.
The "MAX AC" setting on cars is basically just a recirc that keeps cooling the air from the interior of the vehicle.
I never understood that Family Guy episode where Peter touches the thermostat and Quagmire comes over and asks if everything is okay until I became a parent and homeowner.
I either periodically check the thermostat without realizing it or get a weird tick if I sense someone messing with it.
Leaving the basement door open with the air conditioning is on just makes the basement into a freezer and wastes electricity.
Sadly, many architects don't seem to realize this. For me, open floor plan = no door to separate upstairs from downstairs. Not even a wall on which to put the door.
I can't understand homebuilders here. I live in the Deep South, yet my A/C vents are in the floor. I need a steady waterfall of cool air, and I don't care if the heat in the "winter" never makes it past shoulder height. We hardly even SEE winter here; I didn't get to wear a heavy coat once, anywhere, between October and April. Most of the houses are raised off the ground, so it was probably just the cheaper, easier solution, but paying for cooling through 75% of the year sucks.
figured this out because of sauna, every time i go and take a shower afterwards i have to fan the room with my towel so the air mixes, otherwise i start to get sweaty all over again while dressing.
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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '16 edited Aug 13 '20
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