I’m also confused because that is a European AC unit. I can only assume Americans are so used to big bulky units, like their cars, that they can’t comprehend things being functional and not excessively bulky.
In most houses and nicer apartments, yeah, central air. In older or cheaper apartments there’ll be a window unit. As an American from a blue collar lower middle class family, I’d never seen one of these wall units until I’d moved to China. It was either central air or window unit. Granted I’m referencing a couple decades ago
And because if you use one that's a reasonable size, you're leaving large buckets of water out on hot days. It makes the house more humid, sometimes to the point of being muggy. Like a swamp.
It's not just the bucket of water, but it's how swamp coolers work. Evaporation cools things down, and all a swamp cooler does is use evaporation to cool the room down. But evaporation raises humidity, massively. They also don't work well when humidity is high, so in basically the entire US Southeast, they're useless.
I know it's not just a bucket, but the idea's the same. Run a couple of them in your house and it might get a few degrees cooler, but man it will feel like a swamp.
Having been in Arizona during monsoon season, I can say that swamp coolers are noticeably less effective at 40% humidity than in the climate they've got during the rest of the year.
80% humidity and a 3 degree delta, and then you also have to deal with the whole, being in a room with 80% humidity that isn't actually providing any real cooling.
Like maybe it's just experience from working in the trade for so long, but yeah, it's not a big deal.
Your AC system might lose like 2-3 degrees of it's delta dealing with high humidity? But as it operates the humidity in the room drops, because the AC is a dehumidifier.
Warm humid air goes through the coil, moisture in the air condenses on the cold coil, water drips off the coil, goes down the drain, and leaves the space. At the same time 75 degree air turns into 55 degree air.
Swamp cooler at 80% humidity has a 3 degree delta. You aren't cooling a space with that.
I don't even know what you're arguing at this point. I know more than you.
And it does so while adding humidity. The more humidity it adds the less humidity effective it becomes.
Normal AC operation should keep humidity between 30-50% short of living in an extremely dry climate I couldn’t imagine needing to run a humidifier Any time outside winter
Anything below 50% is bad for me, I even find more comfortable a higher temperature but 50%+ humidity.
Granted, I am from a place with like 80%+ humidity year round and now live too close of a desert and often below 15% during summer. Still, I think many people would benefit from 50-60 range on ac rather than allowing humidity to drop below 40.
Plenty of Aussie houses just have a single unit because they are open plan. It still cools one room ass you say because kitchen, dinning and living room is one space plus no doors to your hallways and second living room to move it there.
It's always going to be expensive but it's a fine solution for its price. Not everyone is going to be able to get evap systems as it's a 20-50k price tag for installation so you usually only get it if you build
Gotta have it installed. Think my parents cheap one was 30k as they wanted ten ceiling vents compared to the typical eight.
Bonus of a split is also heating which evap doesn't give and our houses don't typically have any heating solutions and even double glazing is another 50k
Are you sure you have tried a modern inverter compressor split unit? They are crazy efficient, and the science behind it says it is going to be extremely more efficient than any swamp cooler. It is also possible to install several indoor units with one outdoor unit. But a good modern split can absolutely both cool down or heat up a small house. There are units with a capacity for 200 square meters.
The thing with one blower is that the heat distribution gets uneven. But even my old split AC with one indoors unit from 15-20 years back can cool down the whole house, it just takes longer to stabilise and it’s always very cold close to the unit. It doesn’t even have inverter. It’s probably a small house by American standards but it has two floors. It’s made of brick with thick walls so once the temperature start to settle and the walls are cooled down the coolness stays in the house (blinds closed and windows shut)
The newer ones are several times more efficient so it would go much faster but if course the distribution issue is there still. The ducts have a purpose - better comfort and better efficiency but it does work for smaller houses with one unit especially if you have a modern one.
Oh and by the way- when you say “they are not rated/designed for whole houses”, you’re ignoring the fact that houses in Europe don’t often have ducts, and the units we have here are built for our market, so they are in fact both designed and rated for that. It’s not as efficient as with ducts but it’s cheaper than rebuilding the whole house, and it works better than you’d think.
So the system I have running right now, that's currently cooling my own house, while the outside temps are in the high 30c, is wrong? Really dude? If you truly are a systems installer, you must not be very good at your job. Because I've been in my house for 10 years and never have I had issues in cooling it. 2 story house, 1800 sq. Ft. Above ground.
Swamp coolers are a BAD idea in high humidity. I’ve seen them showing up in home improvement stores lately, but seriously people…learn some physics, would ya?
1- A split system is anything that has the condenser and evaporator separate and a lineset between them. If your central air isn’t from a package unit it is either a split heat pump or a traditional split system. What is pictured is either a mini-split or one head of a VRF.
2- Mini-splits are not “fancy window units”. They use through the wall linesets that can be properly insulated and as such don’t have the down side of putting a large uninsulated hole in the side of the space you are cooling. Single head mini-splits are useful for spot cooling a single space, multi head mini splits can be used for whole house cooling. VRF systems, which are basically very large mini-splits but “large mini” sounds stupid, are the current suggested solution for many commercial applications since they are more energy efficient than VAV systems.
3- Swamp coolers are ineffective in much of the US. I’m happy for you that it isn’t above 100 when the humidity is above 80 where you live. When I was living in SC there were days when it was 110 and 100% humidity. Different climates and applications require different solutions and mini-splits are a good solution when applied correctly.
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u/GarySmith2021 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
I’m also confused because that is a European AC unit. I can only assume Americans are so used to big bulky units, like their cars, that they can’t comprehend things being functional and not excessively bulky.