Southern Europe bakes and burns, turning holiday hotspots into infernos | World news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/13/this-is-europe-ajit-niranjan-europe-heatwaves-climate-tourists
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Europe Finally Embraces Air Conditioning as Heat Waves Hit Hard - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-13/air-conditioning-use-rises-in-europe-as-extreme-heat-becomes-the-new-normal
As Europe's Heat Waves Intensify, France Bickers About Air-Conditioning
As heat waves batter Europe, the need (or not) for air-conditioning has become part of the political tug of war in France between the right and the left.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/world/europe/heat-waves-france-air-conditioning.html
While FR is bickering, I've been seeing a LOT of 3dp ducting elbows, adapters, window vents on print aggregators over the last 2 months. Many of them strongly smack of EU users. The influx has seemed to roughly coincide with the heatdomes in the US & EU. I assume modelers are scrambling to cool housing that had inadequate cooling for their 'new' summers.
I have 2 of those portable 120v units with similar ducting hose for prolonged power outages after a hurricane.
>> 2 of those portable 120v units
AC units? 120v so they can run off generator?
I think I'm one of the rare Americans my age who has never lived in a house with air conditioning. I suspect that when kids born today are my age, that will be like people my age who have never lived in a house with a TV
>AC units? 120v so they can run off generator?
Correct. Basically rolling window units that vent though a hose. Look like a tall humidifier. Mine are large-ish, so the hose is 6-7 in OD. Some smaller ones use dual dryer hose, based on the 3d models I've seen passing by.
>never lived in a house with air conditioning
Remember my dad was a electro-menchanical whiz kid? My home was built in 1949-50 and had full-house AC using a 4-ton geothermal unit ...a.k.a. a chiller. So I've never lived in a house without air conditioning.
Well, to be fair, I spent all my early years in the north where nobody had it. I don't think I *met* someone with air conditioning until I was at least a teenager, growing up in Vermont in the early Anthropocene...
The only place I ever encountered AC before, say, college, was at the movie theater. A lot of tickets got sold during heat waves. My mom would get mad at my dad for falling asleep at the movie (after not sleeping well at night because of the heat) and he would say, "It was worth it just for two hours of good sleep."
He's 96 and I don't think he's ever lived in a house with AC either. He was in the South for pilot training, but I don't think base housing had AC units in 1954... I'll have to ask him.
By the time I was 10 (1960), most of the houses in my upper middle-class neighborhood had some sort of AC, I recall a lot of window units sticking out of houses. Older colonial homes were designed to draft air into the house and vent it out the roof using cupolas & the chimney effect. But new post-war southern homes were ranch, bungalow, or plain ol' 2-story. ...and the occupants suffered bigtime. Window fans were common. Some had whole-house fans.
But there was only one house with 3-phase power and a chiller, hhh. In the 60s, the top hotels and restaurants on the Outer Banks wrote big checks for him to install chillers.
Meanwhile, in Spain...
2 links
Europe scorched by wildfires – pictures from space | World news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2025/aug/14/europe-scorched-by-wildfires-pictures-from-space
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Thousands displaced in Greece, Spain and Portugal as wildfires continue to rage | Euronews
https://www.euronews.com/2025/08/14/thousands-displaced-in-greece-spain-and-portugal-as-wildfires-continue-to-rage
With waters at 32C, Mediterranean tropicalization shifts into high gear
https://phys.org/news/2025-08-32c-mediterranean-tropicalization-shifts-high.html
>> designed to draft air into the house and vent it out the roof using cupolas & the chimney effect.
That's something I want to learn more about.
Adding to list ...
The ones I've been in use the stairwell as the chimney. The first one, the Cupola House in nearby Edenton, is from the 1700s and probably the most famous. The 2nd one is local and shows another type of venting treatment. Our historic walk is full of assorted ways to do it.
Quote from: buckworks on August 17, 2025, 05:49:35 AM>> designed to draft air into the house and vent it out the roof using cupolas & the chimney effect.
That's something I want to learn more about.
A friend years ago shared an article about an architect? carpenter? in France trying to revive naturally cooled buildings. The article said that a lot of traditional techniques were lost because so many skilled carpenters were lost in WWI and that's when home construction started shifting to concrete in France. Not sure if that's true.
In any case, the design had voids in the walls so that heat could escape in the summer, but could be recirculated in the winter. In other words, rather than filling the voids with insulation, they had a technique for using the voids.
>> rather than filling the voids with insulation
That might work well in a mild climate, but here on the Canadian prairies we need our exterior walls to be well insulated. We do use ducting in interior walls to circulate air, though.
>> lost because so many skilled carpenters were lost
The loss of knowledge caused by war is incalculable.
I jotted a few notes on drafting air into the house design
https://th3core.com/chat/index.php?topic=14122.0
Quote from: buckworks on August 18, 2025, 10:22:39 PMThat might work well in a mild climate,
Honestly, I struggled to understand this aspect. In theory, it's a combination of thermal mass and airflow and is supposed to work in relatively cold climates (maybe not Canada cold), but I could never quite understand how.