I live in Eastern Europe (Romania) and it's crazy how most of Western Europe doesn't practically allow residential AC units for esthetic purposes only. That explains why what I regard as normal summer-time temperatures (there have been 36 degrees today in my city) are seen as basically a new apocalypse in places like Germany or Northern France (it surprised me that a news item from a couple of days ago wanted to mention that there were 34 degrees in Paris, like that would have been an abnormally high temperature). Maybe it's time for the city authorities from Western Europe to put the health and well-being of their citizens above a so-called esthetic sense.

To be fair, all-time-record-breaking temperatures are (the start of) "basically a new apocalypse." The fact that Western Europe's temperatures are commonplace in other places on earth does not diminish the fact that these temperatures are abnormal and dangerous to the populations experiencing them, and are a harbinger of things to come. Summers will on average only get hotter from this, and not just for Europe.

Not a European, but I regularly live in 39°C, 102°F with very high humidity. Get a portable, floor standing unit in the 1500 watt range so you plug it in anywhere. It will have a fist sized duct to exhaust hot air, stick that out a window. Now reduce your living space to something it can cool. Close off rooms. Worst case, use sheets to erect a tent around your bed and just make it comfortable. Something like 400EU should do it. Don’t sweat the power use, it will use no more than 5EU/day, but you won’t use it many days. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific about specifications, my country uses made up units for cooling and you wouldn’t understand.

Edit: about condensate… half of the comfort comes from getting water out of the air so your mammal body works. Some units will require a gravity drain or for you to empty a bucket a couple times a day. Others will have a tricky design to move the water into the hot exhaust duct and evaporate it. I like these.

> Get a portable, floor standing unit in the 1500 watt range so you plug it in anywhere. It will have a fist sized duct to exhaust hot air, stick that out a window. Now reduce your living space to something it can cool.

Try to get the two-duct ones, they are dramatically more efficient. This is reflected in the newer U.S. DoE capacity ratings, which take into account the various ways that single-duct portable air conditioners are not so great.

> Others will have a tricky design to move the water into the hot exhaust duct and evaporate it. I like these.

That seems really convenient, can anyone comment on the effect that has on efficiency? It seems like if the hot side is hot enough, re-evaporating the condensate on the hot side should improve efficiency.

Are the two-duct portable air conditioners even available on the European market? They certainly don't appear to be a thing here in the UK as far as I can tell.

The omission is shocking, I can't seem to find any on UK or German Amazon.

Though on amazon.de I see at least one alternative to the Zweikanal-Klimaanlage or whatever you'd call it; a small split system with two condensers for just four-hundred euro. Though it seems like it'd likely warrant professional installation, and therefore €€€. https://amazon.de/dp/B06XTQKLXM/

Perhaps it is a Russian conspiracy to keep you all burning that sweet sweet gazprom oil (except the UK, congratulations!). ;- )

There's plenty of split units in the UK too, but those require professional installation and quite possibly also planning permission with a full professional noise assessment. No dual-hose portables though. I'm not sure why; we don't seem to have banned them like Australia accidentally managed to do (they imposed efficiency requirements on dual-hose units that portable aircon couldn't meet whilst exempting the single-hose variety).

> they imposed efficiency requirements on dual-hose units that portable aircon couldn't meet whilst exempting the single-hose variety

Unintended consequences hall of fame. Have they reversed that, or is it just sorta sitting there, like a festering wound?

What do you mean the AC units are not allowed in Western Europe? I lived in Germany and never heard of this. In my experience, it's mostly cultural. The French for instance expect a "canicule" once or twice a year and that's generally survivable, although I think they are realizing that their frequency and power are increasing, so we might see uptake in air conditioning.

Edit: Or perhaps you meant regulations? If so, then yeah those exist, such as permits for the building and so on.

Why would you say that's not allowed?

I have the rare luck of renting an apartment close to Frankfurt/Germany that has an Split A/C built in.

It's obviously legal, it's just uncommon, but that is in a large part an artifact of the high ratio of renters.

Landlords don't see an A/C as an particularly value adding addition to their investment, and tennants don't really get to pick and choose. The A/C in my apartment was installed by the previous tennant, out of his own cash and simply left it installed when he moved out.

The owner doesn't want to have anything to do with it and when it breaks i'll either have to replace it, or leave it there broken...

I never knew air conditioners were not allowed in some parts of europe, I don't know of any regulations here in Italy.

You can't install AC units on the outside of your building in Rome to maintain the architecture, which is the same as saying you can't have any at all.

I think you're just talking about the historic portion of town?

Lots of AC units on display here: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8816316,12.4546184,3a,75y,23...

Of course it's not in every single building. Where I grew up we had AC, but where my grandpa lived for example you couldn't. Just saying that the root comment isn't completely wrong, it happens.

You can run an AC inside the building, you just need to exhaust the heat out, which can be done through a window. Do an image search for "portable air conditioner window vent" and you'll see some examples.

You can vent AC’s heat out through a chimney. Window units are cheap and reasonably efficient, but not the only option.

Protecting the architecture is understandable, but there are plenty of indoor and portable units.

I recently traveled to Rome and in both places we stayed there were AC units mounted below the windows. We also saw some split systems that had the condenser unit either in a foyer/lobby (hooked up to a vent) or on the roof.

Maybe that's not typical.

In Switzerland it's just not allowed to install central AC with some exceptions AFAIK. But most people rent, so those window installed units aren't really an option either (can't just drill a huge hole for airflow next to a window). Many offices do that nowadays however, work impediment is just too big otherwise.

Any reasoning behind central AC not being allowed? Just energy efficiency?

Until a couple of years ago it was IMO not necessary, especially for modern buildings with good isolation. Hot summer was maybe 2-3 weeks. But now I wouldn't say that anymore, but Paris agreement / trying to protect the climate as hard as possible is still more important than this. I do think however that we need to take measures to protect the oldest and youngest inhabitants.

No, it’s not all of Europe. In Northern Finland we’we had even snow in the last few days and typical day temperatures hang around ten degrees Celcius (EDIT: which is actually typical).

What do you think are the odds that you are correctly describing the situation in the entirety of freaking Western Europe (your edit included)?

Meanwhile in Guadalajara, Mexico (usually a 23 Celsius city) has hailstorms.

This image ( https://i.redd.it/11x7w5vo3m731.jpg ) shows it very well. And they say global climate change is no a thing...

Is this unusual? There are plenty of places that are known to get hail storms, particularly on very hot and humid days. It looks like Guadalajara has the heat and humidity requirements for most of the year, so if it's unusual it must be the local weather/geography.

And of course blasting A/C uses more energy that further contributes to the climate crisis. The positive-feedback cycles at play here are really terrifying.

The good news is, if you limit running the AC during daytime, it is easy to power them with solar energy, as the need for AC implies a lot of sun shine. These days the German grid is powered between 30-40% by solar only. And one would expect this percentage to raise quickly in the next years. Of course, if you are a home owner, you could run your AC directly by your solar, completely removing any network impact (and consequently any additional carbon output).

Pretty sure Germany runs on wind solar and nuclear.

So no feedback loop

> Pretty sure Germany runs on wind solar and nuclear.

Nuclear is pretty much dead. Unfortunately, nuclear was considered much worse than coal couple of years ago (and is still) so shutting down nuclear had and has priority.

As for wind, solar and water: Most of the time, it is utilized 100%. Every extra consumer of power means more coal or gas has to be burned.

Germany is phasing out of nuclear, only 7 plants left. They use solar and wind energy, combined with coal.

They can't produce enough with solar and wind so they have to keep burning coal which produces even more CO2.

Not sure why you're downvoted. This is true. Here in Boston my electric bill is a factor of three higher during the peak heat months.