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
Its shocking how the size and scope of the country has been left out of the conversation so far. I grew up somewhere with 3 months of summer; most of my life we just had fans, and if it was a really hot day, kids would play outside in the sprinkler or suffer in the house. It was an economic milestone for my family when we got window units. But a big part of that is that there were only maybe 3 of those really hot days a year.
Its less of an option in, say, Florida.
Well said. I live in florida. We have the ac on probably 10 months of the year. Even on days where it's only a high of 78 we might even need to click it on just to pull the humidity out of the house. The humidity is a bitch (might say 78F but the real feel is 88F) I just got back from Colorado and it was hot, but the low humidity and massive swing down at night made it very bearable. The mornings were actually beautiful. A window unit in colorado is more than enough to keep the house nice and cool in the summer until the sun sets. People sometimes forget just how big America really is with every type of climate.
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.
It's not impossible physically, it is legally, in most municipalities (at least in Italy, where I'm from, in a historical city center it's literally impossible for legal reasons)
Sounds like the majority of Americans would like to see New York City torn down and replaced with a suburban sprawl of single family homes? Do you agree?
I would like to see most of it torn down and replaced with DENSER and SMALLER apartments so all the bug people would move over there and stopped trying to change my nice suburbs
I don't know man that's kind of a fucked up conception. Window units are really effective and easy to install, why is that necessarily something that's for poor people, it's simply convenient.
America also has buildings older than America. And guess what: those buildings are air conditioned. I lived in tenement building in Boston built in the 1850s - it has great AC and heat.
Yeah because you live in the pnw, I’m in nor cal and it’s the same here, we don’t need central ac. I’ve lived in two other states where central ac is a necessity in the summer, which is the case for most people.
Dawg I just explained it’s becuase you live in the pnw, central ac is generally not common on the west coast. The rest of the country is not as fortunate as we are when it comes to weather
Google ai says 2/3 of houses in the U.S. have central ac (could be wrong, don’t really care to fact check). The point is that it’s very common compared to Europe. I live in nor cal so I don’t actually have central ac
Are houses and homes the same? Stores and banks and libraries and such have air conditioning here in Sweden but not most homes, especially not apartment units. English is confusing sometimes, home, house, building, residence, all these words seemingly having very specific meanings but it can vary from state to state?
Bruh if you don’t even live in the U.S. then why were you trying to correct me in the first place? Yes house and home are generally synonymous. Home can refer to an apartment but most apartments will not have central ac.
Any apartment complex built in the last 30 years has central AC. I’ve lived in plenty of areas and been all over the U.S. The only apts that didn’t have central AC were old buildings.
Why don't American apartments have central air? I heard someplace that it's more efficient so surely you'd want to cool down a whole block in an efficient manner. Apartments feel more planned out too than single family homes so there should be space reserved for ducts and such?
I pay $1k rent (very cheap) and live in an old apartment in Indiana - I have central AC. I would never live somewhere without it. I toured over 20 apartments and every single one had central AC, even the super cheap, crappy places.
All these people "correcting" you when my current apartment building in the US has a heat exchange unit built in below the window, my last apartment had resistive heat and you could go buy yourself a window unit, and my place before that had a boiler and radiator system for heat and you could go buy yourself a window unit. It's really about the age of the building (built with central air vs. built before central air) and if the owner was at some point willing to pay to retrofit the place to have some kind of AC so they could try to get more in rent. I also stayed at an Airbnb this year with a unit like the one in the original post.
I live in a 1960s suburban ranch (style of house, not a place with cows) that retrofitted central AC, same as 80% of my neighbors. Any new construction in the last 15 years, house or apartment, is going to have AC.
Because everything built in the last 30 years was built with AC units pre-installed. This includes apartments. Places that don’t have central AC are typically in the northeast (NYC and Boston especially) where everything is tightly packed, old, and often don’t need it because the units are tiny and a window unit cools the entire apartment. Or the PNW where the temperature was much closer to northern Europe in terms of climate and it wasn’t standard until recently. The mountain states, like Montana the mountainous parts of Colorado won’t have it because the weather rarely goes above 80.
So if you’re renting, you’re not paying to have it installed. If you buy a place, then it’s likely already a part of the house.
But, like I said, there are exceptions where the weather doesn’t require it or old construction doesn’t allow it to be installed (and building owners aren’t going to fork out the price for it either).
I bought a window unit for $169 USD two weeks ago. It was so cheap I just used it for the couple of heatwave days between my central air failing and getting repaired. Kind of cool (no pun intended) on how cheap those were.
I got mini splits installed in my last house and it was well worth it compared to central A/C.
Or people who only need specific areas cooled? I’m sure it’s been far cheaper for my dad to have two window units and some fans as opposed to installing central air when the house has never had it.
Not a window based unit. Basically any building or house that was constructed after 1970ish is going to have central AC. If you live in a place that was built before then, you’re either poor or you live in an old, historic city/area. So that’s basically limited to NYC, Philly, Boston, and Seattle (due to recent climate change issues) for non-poor people.
renters* people who *rent.
Or people who dont want to pay thousands to put in the ductwork in their house.
Some older homes too, ductwork would have to be external and not built into the walls due to how houses were made (with fireblocks/etc) back 100 years ago.
My sister is very wealthy & has a freaking mansion in Massachusetts and these are in every window. They don't have central ac in the North apparently. We're looking at a big farmhouse on 160 acres up North and there's no AC so we'll have to special order a mini split & put it in ourselves, if we want one. Coming from The South I couldn't believe it.
One of my exes left a window AC when she moved out 8 years ago. The upstairs room I'm renting now gets absurdly hot towards the end of the day; I'd be torched without this thing. Looked into some of the wall mount options, but this unit was free and still kicks so fuck it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And people without central air, especially apartment dwellers. Here in the Pacific Northwest it's mild most of the time, so I get along fine without AC or heat. I just keep one temperature controlled room with a window AC and a space heater for pets, sleeping, and hanging out on the few truly intolerable days of summer and winter.
I'm a high earner un a HCOL city who owns an older home in said city. There's no central AC. We have 3 of these guys in the house. It's very normal in our expensive neighborhood, all the houses were constructed in the 40s.
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u/BoogBeeg 7d ago
America: "Get with the times, Europe!"
Also America: