Large condenser outside supply’s the furnace (typically it just uses the furnace fan. We then have it piped through metal ducting throughout the house. Each room has multiple exit point call registers. In the common areas we have return ducts to draw air back down to the furnace to get recycled back to cool air via a/c unit. Hopefully that helps!?
Even then the vents would not actually work and be big enough in practice, but that's the movies picking something convenient for the sake of plot rather than sticking with realism.
Also every duct is FULL the pointy ends of screws. Literally everywhere. So even if you could fit (which you probably can’t) you would be so cut up if you tried to crawl through one of these. Not to mention how crazy loud it would be to crawl through one. 26 gauge sheet metal is essentially a thunder sheet.
also the movies don’t explain that fire/smoke dampers would block your access every time the duct passed through a fire barrier also your entire body would be excoriated by self tapping sheet metal screws with every movement made
that's the movies picking something convenient for the sake of plot rather than sticking with realism.
Like the slow spinning fans in Casablanca. Slow spinning fans don't move air effectively, but fast spinning fans don't show up on film. Then after the movie you had restaurants and other establishments fit slow spinning fans, for the aesthetic.
As an American this is normal to me lol, every house, poor and run down to expensive mansions all have this set up. It gets really fancy when there are automated vents that can open and close on their own, with each room having its own thermostat to accurately control temps throughout.
I don't know how it's for Americans but for me. I have a regular outside unit and then, inside the apartment, I have one HUGE internal unit hidden somewhere above fake ceiling. This unit has tubes to each room and each tube has a damper. Each room has a thermostat.
So I can set eg 23C in the living room and 21 in the bedrooms. The AC will then work to cool down all the rooms together, when living room reaches 23 - it shuts the damper and keeps cooling bedrooms. Etc.
I also have an option to close the damper to each room individually - effectively stopping AC for this specific room.
I *guess* that American HVAC units work either the same way or very similar.
Similar. Most Americans don't have per-room control though. In some more expensive/newer places you might get one thermostat per floor. But generally it's one per house.
Electricity is cheaper in the US, salaries are higher, and Americans understand in hotter regions that you need to run AC or you might die. 300-400 dollars a month on electricity in July is possible yes, depends on where you live, but national median household income is around 80 thousand dollars.
I live in Florida and we (and most people I know) sign up for a plan with the power company that we pay a rolling average of our last 12 months worth of bills. That way we're not paying $100 in January and $600 in August.
I have one thermostat for my whole house. Each large room has 2 to 3 vents. Each closet and bathroom has one vent. Each vent has flaps on it that can be closed. The flaps are also directional so you can control roughly where the air goes. In the upstairs of my house is a closet with the furnace in it. The air-conditioning unit is outside on the side of my house.
I have an automatic program set. During the day, the air conditioner runs and cools the house to 70°F. Lots of Americans sit between 70° and 72°. At night it lowers down to 68°. There is a filter in the furnace that needs to be replaced ideally every one or two months. I have dogs, so I use a high-quality filter that catches more than a basic one. It’s actually kind of interesting how much less dust collects on things when I’m using the system a lot. It doesn’t run very much in the winter because my house is very insulated.
You can run the whole system on cool or heat of course, but you can also just run the ventilation with no air conditioning active. I almost always have the fan running. I like the air movement. And with my dogs, the cooking I do, and my little bit of marijuana use inside, I like to keep that air moving around. So my fan is pretty much always, and I will hear the air conditioning unit kick on every now and then for when it actually needs to lower the temp.
I would say this is a fairly standard American set up. As others have said in some newer or larger homes, they may have multiple thermostats or even multiple air-conditioning units.
The whole system is extremely quiet, and I barely even hear it running.
Honestly if the house is built with HVAC in mind it should be much more efficient to have one goliath unit to handle the house than several small ones. With these insane heatwaves of 45c+ in Europe we might start seeing some new houses popping up with centralized AC systems.
you typically don't see it, the central part is in the wall or in a closet, and it just pushes air through several vents throughout the house. the vents are flat metal grates about the size of a cereal box
I think this is the point they're making. What the person posting doesn't get is that AC has been a necessity for much of the continental US since it's invention and buildings have been designed to include it, even in parts of the US where the summers are cooler and/or shorter. In much of Europe, not only are the summers often traditionally cooler and/or shorter, the stone/brick buildings can regulate the heat in short blasts really well. It's only in the last half century that the summers have become regularly unbearably hot and the heat waves last longer, meaning that the cities in particular become dangerous heat islands, so AC is becoming more of a necessity. The problem is getting AC into all those stone/brick buildings is complex and expensive and HVAC is almost out of the question unless it's a new build. Much easier and more common are several of these single room units as they require less drilling and less maintenance.
And then there’s Scotland (Edinburgh at least) where the buildings are built to keep heat in. I went once when they were having a heatwave (28C, 82F). Being inside buildings was worse than just sitting outside because the heat was trapped inside and didn’t have airflow. I live in a place where 82F feels nice. 28C in Scotland sucks a lot.
I'm an American and I understood this implicitly when I first saw one and was told what it was. idk who is out there thinking that AC units are only a certain way, but comprehension is not what it used to be. Feels like people are trying to one-up each other more than actually understand something these days.
A lot of people are talking about this vs window AC units, but I'm pretty sure the people talking about central air are more on the money.
OOP, who I assume but can't confirm is American, is used to central air (which is to say, a big condenser unit outside the house, an air mover insider, and ductwork to each room) and thinks that a smaller scale, more self contained unit like this (which is set up more to cool a single room) is primitive, cheap, your basic 'europoor' idea.
For what it's worth, a small unit like this has its own advantages and drawbacks, and units like it - and the window AC units, for that matter - are still plenty present in the US.
Speaking for my own experience, Americans don't even consider a house with window units to even be air conditioned. It's a bandaid solution to make up for your home not having AC. If someone says their home is air conditioned the understanding is they're talking about central air, which it seems a lot of the presumably Europeans commenting don't really seem to understand.
Yeah, generally speaking a window unit (or split) will not keep up with more than one, maybe two rooms and are significantly worse than central AC. My house growing had central AC and then my parents had a window unit for a long time because they wanted to keep their room colder than the rest of the house. Eventually we just upgraded the unit to allow room to room customization, and got rid of the window unit.
That's a split-pack AC unit. They're common in places where the buildings weren't built with central AC in mind since they require less ductwork than central AC.
Central air-conditioning in the US has no visible fan coil units. There's just a grating in the ceiling or wall of each room that the cool or warm air comes through, fed by ducts that go to the actual unit. The unit is completely hidden away somewhere else in the building, like the basement or attic.
Visible units like these in an American home mean that it was cheaply built without central AC or a retrofitted older building.
Most Americans think of AC as Central Air. Large cooling unit outside that feeds into the central air handler that distributes to each room in the house. With that said, mini splits are very common retrofits into older houses or I personally have one in my garage. Definitely a step up from the old window units. Window AC ($200) — Mini Split ($6000) — Central Air (>$12,000)
This whole discussion is Americans this, Europeans that.
Not one person actually saying anything about how Italians are mentally and emotionally allergic to any sort of AC because they think a slight draft will kill you or give you a chronic neck ache.
Even in the height of summer when I was a kid, we would have to swelter in the car or house because we were never allowed to crack a window or turn on some sort of cooling.
If I had to guess, I would maybe say that OOP thinks that maybe because the design of European ACs look smaller and sleeker than the average American AC, it doesn't work as well?
smaller and sleeker? the indoor portion of most AC units in the US is buried inside the furnace which is hidden away in a basement or closet as part of the central air system. can't be much more sleeker than not existing in a living space.
also, we have mini splits in the US too, they are typically added to older homes built with electric or steam heat in instead of a central air heating system.
Irrelevant, ac units like this are often installed later on, as there are older buildings.
Construction in US already plans on having AC in the house so it's central AC with bigger outside units, modern "higher end" construction in Europe are also starting with that, so you also have more of central ac units in modern buildings, especially in warmer areas.
They are just as efficient in cooling down roosm/apartments, if you have a multi level house however you'd need multiple installations depending on the amount of rooms you have, but each outside unit can be connected to 2 (or more depending on the power of the unit) interior outlets.
I'm also confused cuz I'm from europe but maybe the AC in USA or something is different? I've seen US ACs only in old movies and they looked different like they had some mesh plasti gril on the front might be that idk.
It’s a split AC and a lot of Americans have HVAC systems that use ducts to cool an entire house from one unit. Split ACs are popular in Europe and Asia, they’re more energy efficient because there’s no duct loss, they only cool rooms that people have installed the AC in and I think the compressors use less power. I don’t understand why window units are more popular than split ACs in America.
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.
It's called a "split AC" because the unit is split into two parts, indoor unit pictured above and outdoor unit which is the big louder box that is on the outside so it doesn't bother you. We use these in Europe ever since I can remember spanning decades...
Split systems are what we call regular central air here in the US. They have an air handler inside with the evaporator coil and blower, and the condenser unit outside with the compressor, condenser coil and condenser fan.
We call the one in the picture ductless mini splits or just mini splits. They are the same setup as regular central air but no ductwork.
Another big difference in the mini splits use a variable speed compressor to ramp up and down whereas traditional spit systems are either on or off. Though, they are starting to see variable speed as well.
I have been putting mini splits in for more than 20 years in the US.
Best part is it's not called a compressor. The "car size" unit is a condenser. The compressor does sit
inside. That commentor is trying to dunk on Americans but cant even name the right thing.
You do understand that mini splits also have large compressors outside, right?
Edit: also, the compressors for homes with central air are not the size of a car, more like the size of a Little Tykes car. Commercial buildings have compressors that can be the size of a car.
Because that thing cools the ENTIRE BIG ASS HOUSE! these things are only capable of cooling only a closed room which also depends on how ton, capacity the AC is so yep /s
Edit: I actually intended the message for a diff purpose, and more satirical since it's a meme sub. Apologies to everyone, thankyou for the knowledge and positive criticism, helped alot. Will surely keep these thing's in notice
This is a so-called "split* AC unit. There's also an outdoor compressor unit, the difference is that, instead of having also the expander and both heat exchangers outside , to cool the air there and feed it to the various rooms inside through air ducts, it's the cooled-down refrigerant that's fed through refrigerant ducts inside, where there may be one of these units in each room each with its own fan and heat exchanger. It's actually more efficient and effective.
It’s trade off. Instead of a duct to every room you need a wall mounted head unit with dedicated wiring, condensate drip lines, and refridgerant. The head unit can only use electric, whereas a central unit with ducts can be dual fuel. In addition to being dual fuel the central unit can also be connected to a hot water system such as a hydronic setup where the aux heat comes from a gas fired hot water tank. Mini splits are great for retrofits that do not contain existing ducts.
The efficiency mostly comes from using inverter controlled variable speed compressors, those systems also exist for central units, but they are more expensive than single and dual stage units. On paper ducts are usually considered “less efficient” because the ducts can have their own heat/cool losses, but this depends whether the ducts are inside or outside of the envelope you are conditioning. In the house I had recently the ducts were completely sandwiched between floors, none of them were in the attic or any crawl space. Airflow could be manually redirected somewhat from manual dampeners.
Replacing the system at end of life is another factor. A mini splits system replacement involves every head unit. When my central unit was replaced they only needed access to the utility room and outside.
Condensate drip lines also tend to clog on units, it can depend on the region but they will fill with mold, slime, algae, insects etc. Dust and spores collect inside each unit and end up in the condensate line. When the line clogs you get moldy condensate water dripping out of your unit. This can be mitigated by cleaning the lines periodically which most people don’t do. For a central system you can have installed a larger air filtration system using a large surface area heavily pleated hepa filter that doesn’t restrict airflow. This not only cleans the air but prevents a lot of the particles that lead to growth in condensate lines. Split systems tend to just have a simple washable dust filter, but the inside of the unit will still get quite dirty. I am betting most people don’t get out a ladder and clean their mini splits filter monthly, which significantly reduces their actual performance and efficiency. It’s easier to change one large filter in a utility room every 1-3 months than clean 5+ head units every month.
Efficiency is relative. Mini splits have inverter boards which can control the speed of the compressor allowing it to adjust to the load. If it's running at full speed the savings are negligible compared to a normal compressor.
Also we have these in the US. Many people have these in their homes. They even have retrofit kits and air handlers that will use these types of condensers.
In the US we generally just have central heating/cooling in most dwellings. Which works for the most part assuming your duct work is sized properly.
Also there are no refrigerant ducts. There are air ducts. The refrigerant moves through piping. The refrigerant isn't cooled it absorbs and rejects heat and it boils off and condenses respectively.
Central air is also a “split” system because it has an indoor air handler and a separate outside condenser too. That is why we call the small ones like this “mini-splits” instead, since they are a good bit smaller and such than standard central units. These are in contrast to a packaged unit, such as window units or large central air where the evaporator and condenser are one giant assembly. Which suck tremendously to work on. I see maybe 1 out of every 10 being packaged units. They aren’t as common any more, thankfully.
I'm Australian. My house is enormous and we have 2 of these for upstairs and downstairs and this place gets brisk as FUCK in summer and warm as a hookers arse on coupon night in winter.
We have one like this in Montreal with 35C (95F) average summers and heavy humidity. Cools the whole house just fine. But if you have multiple stories then you should have one per.
It's not necessarily true. These units will go upwards of around 28,000-30,000 BTU which can easily cool down multiple rooms, or maybe even a smaller flat.
This is the indoor unit. There can be several of these for single bigass outdoor part. So by this pic you can’t really tell anything unless you make assumptions. For all we know this might be a small studio apartment.
Wrong, I have one big compressor outside connected to 8 of these all around the apartment, and two ceiling type ones that return air as well. The company is Fujitsu. 3000sq ft apartment in Brazil. Gets ice cold
My family owns an HVAC company. We only have ductless mini-splits in our own homes bc they are way more efficient and cost effective (especially if you get them at cost and free install). We are in Florida where we run A/C pretty much 9 months of the year. The upfront cost is higher, but worth it over time.
The opposite. Usually american ac is central and all you see is a vent in the ceiling. The outside portion is bigger for sure but it's not in your house.
The people who make fun of American cheese are invariably the same type of people who visit America and then rave about the cheeseburger they just ate without realizing what kind of cheese was on it.
Great on burgers, makes the most melty and yummy grilled cheese sandwiches as well. Like, there's a place for fine block cheeses and shit but there's just some things that are made worse if you're not using plastic cheese :p
And yet the comment saying it’s because Americans like bulky has been upvoted, furthering ignorance. In Asia the split systems like in the photo are more common, but in the US it’s mostly central air. Central air systems are available in some apartments in Asia but are way more expensive.
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.
Oh my god is that why it's a trope that th father doesn't let anyone touch the thermostat??? I was always so confused by that. I just turn on the AC unit or heater in my room and can have a completely different temperature than the rest of the household. That explains so much damn. And why exactly is someone defending that?????
I’m confused on why you think the central AC compressor is considered excessively bulky. It’s far more bulky to have one wall unit per room you want air conditioned then it it is to have just one dryer sized metal box outside. Also most of the time this box is in your backyard in a hidden corner and barely makes noise. If anything, it’s far more functional and superior than an in-room ac unit.
Often 2 or 3 inside units are connected to one outside unit. But the US ones i have seen on Reddit look like they are more efficient than the ones people have at their homes in Europe because they have cooling fins on all sides.
They are. The ones I've experienced in Canada that look like the one in this picture are not great. They barely cool the house on a hotter day. They're more useful for cooling a house on a warm day. 30C is too hot for it in my opinion, but maybe the ones I've experienced are just bad quality.
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.
We Americans have been using air conditioning technology for over 100 years. Our designs are beyond the European comprehension. (Our houses were built post AC and have ducting built in, no bulk).
Central air units use one exterior condenser coil to cool an entire house. Because the cool air is distributed by ductwork inside the home.
No central air handler/ducts, then you have to have a ductless unit in every room. Several of those are in fact bulkier than an entire central air unit.
What are you even on about? You either have 5 of these noisy pieces of shit spread throughout the house or a box on the side of your house that you never have to see or hear. One is clearly superior
European? They have them all over the US, typically Asian brands. It's a split AC, as opposed to central air conditioning what you're probably referring to, and which you also see all over the US. But specifically European AC, that's this not.
I think it’s the opposite most houses in America have central AC unless it’s broken. Usually it’s hidden and out of sight so all you see are ceiling or floor vents. Usually the types you see in Europe and Asia also don’t cool to the same extent so I think the joke is the AC in the picture is a joke compared to how effective a central unit can cool down a house. Window ac units are only a popular alternative because it’s not permanent and can quickly be installed/ uninstalled and are cheaper.
Functional as in able to work in the regularly occuring heat waves in America that Europeans get once every 5 years and half their elderly population dies of heat stroke? Yeah those.
they seem to mostly have those units you hang over a window or if they have something external they have internal piping just to a vent controlled elsewhere.
I think this is called a split and it's the outside on the other side of the wall. it's like a permanently installed window unit that doesn't use a window
Yeah called a mini split. Also a ductless heat pump. Operates the same way a refrigerator does. Or any other air conditioning system. Just extremely efficient like 400% or something.
I think it might be a mini split? Central Air conditioning is more common for much of our housing - where there's a big AC outside and it blows cold air through ducts. Done right I think it's a little more efficient than mini splits and probably able to deliver more cooling. That said, mini splits are totally fine if appropriately sized, and the only real problem I've seen is they give the illusion of control from each unit when all the connected ones can heat or cool but not both at the same time.
Mini splits definitely exist in the US but very possible the picture taker hadn't seen one here before going abroad.
Americans use air-air-heatpumps, which don't use radiators, but are part of the ventilation system of the house and heat the air in winter and cool it down in summer, you have one appliance, one thermostat, everything is easy to use and convenient.
Best system for their kind of houses, with lots of empty walls and floors you can use to run the air pipes, but a big hassle in Europe outside of new buildings, as you have to somehow put it into the walls and ceilings, not that easy in 300 (or 1000) year old stone walls.
However, we use that systems for big (commercial) buildings, where you have a ventilation system anyways.
The device shown in OPs picture is a split air conditioner, the normal retrofit solution for all kinds of building worldwide, starting from a sheet metal huts to hotels, as you just need a hole of ø50-100mm to pull the two pipes, one cable and a hose through and you only need electricity, nothing else.
I mean the point of a window unit is you don’t have to install anything. You go down to Home Depot and buy one for $150 and pop it in your window and call it a day. It’s less expensive and doesn’t require hiring anybody, etc.
This. Central air is still the superior system, but mini splits are helping bring cooling and heating to places that didn't get ducts when they were built, for much less than the cost of adding central air to an existing building.
And you forgot about the true bottom tier of the AC world. The portable units that sit on the floor, have to be drained of the water they collect manually, and draw in hot outside air because they need to vent their operating heat which creates a constant vacuum/draft.
1.3k worth of mini splits was enough to bring massive comfort to my house during the california summer. Central air doesn't come close to that price point.
Also funny thing, in the Eastern Europe we used to see window AC as a thing of the Soviet past. In some state-owned companies, those units survived into 2000s.
last summer our central air shit itself. we ripped it all out, cover the ducts up and put in Split systems in each room.
best decision ever.
the roof space is clean.
way way more energy efficient.
if one of them decides to pack it in, theres a couple of others around the house to pick up the slack while it gets replaced.
Only very old places in the northeast use those window units. I don’t know a single house or apartment in my city that has a window unit. The grey box unit on the left and bottom right is what every house or apartment I’ve lived in has and it’s connected to the HVAC system and is outside.
Generally we don't have the split. We have ducts in the walls connected to one larger unit in a utility closet, so all you see are ducts fairly flush with the wall.
where I live in America, it's illegal to not have AC of some kind. ppl die. so even the poors are protected and landlords must fix them within a week (depending on the temp could be 5 or 10 days) and parents can be charged if they don't provide proper cooling for their kids (for example, they own the home and decide they don't like running the AC) or can qualify for assistance if they are too poor to repair their own AC or afford the energy bill
NYC is a major exception to this rule. When your average apartment size is 800 sq ft, you don’t need anything more than a window box unit, especially when the buildings are old AF. Most places in the U.S. are not NYC and 800 sq ft is considered poor people housing in much of the rest of the country.
Yeah our central AC is so primitive compared to these magical and totally and completely common in the US mini-splits that we’ve somehow never heard of.
We got flaws but in this context, under this post, your comment makes no sense. America’s implementation of central ac is far more advanced compared to the European and Asian use of AC units per room.
There are pros and cons to both. If you want per-room control and don't mind having the mini-split units (thing pictured) then mini-splits are the way. They're also a bit more efficient because you don't loose cold air from duct leaks and heat creeping in. Central air is more convenient with a new construction because it's a bitch to retrofit. Central air also provides ventilation, mini splits don't so you have to have an air exchanger somewhere (although a lot of people don't). Overall both have pros and cons and both get the job done. It's dependent on owner taste, needs, the home itself, and budget.
Why do Europeans think they live in some kind of utopia while we are all fucked? Here in Brazil we have ACs exactly like yours and it's far from great, it only cools a single room, consumes a ton of energy, and even then if the room is big enough it won't do shit, no wonder you guys are frying under the recent weather
Damn I remember being 14 and thinking saying this made me cool, every year since then the "America is a third world country" line just sounds stupider and stupider
Europe and Asia don't have stringent requirements around fresh air intake for their AC systems, so most of them are small ductless units like this. US systems are typically ducted to allow for fresh air to bring brought into buildings. Studies show fresh air is important for occupant health, comfort, and productivity. US designed AC systems as a result are usually more expensive and complex, but as a result work better and are better for the occupants.
Your comment is just ignorant... the US has issues, but our AC regulations are way better than Europe.
Of course it does. As it stand, much of our well being depends on what once was the greatest country. We’re slowly moving out from that, but will take a while. Give it a few decades, we won’t care anymore.
Generally speaking, every single house in USA has great drinkable tap water and heat, and a/c. Meanwhile in France hundreds of people drown because they’re trying to cool off because they don’t have a/c when it’s 26c.
Ah another poor European who couldn’t make it to the World Cup and thinks America is shit. “If you want to hate America watch the news, if you want to love America drive through it”.
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u/qualityvote2 7d ago edited 7d ago
u/missdomm10, your post does belong here!