Europe north of France is substantially cooler than much of the US, even on the hottest days. Many homes could get by on ceiling fans, but they are very uncommon here.
We've had a series of heat waves this summer, and temperatures have gotten very high inside. Much depends on the location of course, and the type of building, and stuff like that, but the fact is that in Belgium alone thousands of people have died because of the heat. Thousands of people that would still be with us if they would have had adequate cooling.
When it's close to 40 °C in your home, a ceiling fan is not going to make a meaningful difference.
And we need to keep in mind that summers are in all likelihood going to get hotter and hotter.
There were many excess deaths, but there was also a shortage of fans here. Good fans could have also saved their lives.
IR blocking film/tint on outside works great if you can't get windows shaded.
The lower floor has windows facing north so it's always much cooler there. I've never seen it reach more than 30C, which was in the middle of a heatwave, usually it keeps 25C during summer.
Yeah this is exactly my point. If your house is so poorly insulated that your internal temperatures go above the ambient temperature, you can open a window.
There's a world of difference between a house in the countryside, with maybe even some trees providing shade, and an apartment in a densely populated area with very low opportunities for thermal control.
Hottest the hottest south facing room in my house got in the UK this year was 31.8C on the 13th August.
The loft got upto 43C, but that's what insulation is for.
That said, you're right, things are changing. I'm looking at getting AC installed this winter (no way I was paying summer prices).
> Use electric fans only when temperatures are below 40˚C / 104˚F. In temperatures above 40˚C / 104˚F, fans will heat the body.
- https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-cha...
I'd still favour the fan, I've lived in India for longer periods with consistently around 32-36 C and a fan is perfectly enough after a little while of adapting.
Charge the battery from the solar and it powers the AC in the evening.
You'll generate more than enough during the day to run AC and fill the battery to run it overnight.
Still using grid sources in winter, but you aren't using the AC. Although you might find air-air AC in heat mode is better than your gas boiler.
You can replace farmland, but that seems like a really bad idea with Globalism's decline. Who knows what's going to happen to the food supply chain over the next 30 years. The only other option is attaching them to the exterior of historic buildings, and heaven forbid! Think about the character of the neighborhood!
In the UK Semi, Terrace and Detached is about 75% of households and 80% of people.
If you look only at owners it's about 90% of households (and even higher for population)
And anyone who owns a home is rich. If you can afford 300k for a house you can afford 15k on reducing your electric bill.
Now rental of course is a separate matter, and the real problem.
As housing is so constrained landlords can extract all the money from tenants regardless of the quality, but even if it isn't, renters tend not to value things like solar or aircon. You can spend £10k adding solar to a house, but you probably aren't going to get enough from extra rent to offset the cost of installing it.
In the US a property owner has to provide AC because renters will expect it, same as you have to provide a washing machine connection in a rented place. This is a mindset thing which can't be changed.
In other European countries, but its not changing. Among owner-occupiers its France 80% houses, Germany and Austria 70%.
However the rental issue is far more in those countries, where nearly half the country live in rental. Things like balcony solar work well there, and they can power a portable AC.
That said, if you are able to get a ground source heat pump, that's awesome, but it's something like 10x to 20x the price of even a really good ceiling fan.
Ground source is overhyped and overpriced. District heating and air-exchange AC is still the winning solution.
try opening your window in +15C high humidity and then sleep.
I assure you, sleeping in a 0-5C sleeping bag on the nearby sea shore would be a more acceptable experience.
You just never lived there, yes?
But if you mean no forced convection, that's just not the case. You can survive at wetbulb temperatures in excess of 30 C, which means 30 C + 100% RH. Hell, my house right now is at about 25 C drybulb and 18 C wetbulb, which from the perspective of evaporative heat transfer is identical to 18 C with 100% RH, so I should be dying any minute. See you on the other side!
but I would not want to live in that bath house.
In any case where I live fans are not a meaningfull stopgap measure.
I don't know how bad the situation in Europe is, but we're already at point where there are times and places on Earth where one can construct a primal instinctive understanding of that by simply walking out of an air conditioned room(to which you SHOULD return within half an hour and MUST within an hour). "Just get fans bro" is tone deaf.
Yeah there are those places, and northern Europe is not one of them!
The WHO guide others are posting says fans only work under 40C, but that's the absolute maximum. There's no other option than resorting to devices based on refrigeration cycle when people are already dying("estimated through excess mortality" or however you dress it up), beyond being useless(human cognitive performance significantly degrade at above 28C).
The upper bound of 40C quoted in other comments is also just absolute maximum temperature - it's just saying that there's no way fans do anything if temperature of air and body are actually equal. The practical upper bound is lower than that(humidity and metabolism dependent, I guess).
personally I tried one summer back here in Europe without AC just with ceiling fans in each room and gave up and installed AC next year, that was like 10 years ago, can't imagine just ceiling fans in these 35-40C heatwaves, you will be just moving hot air since building can't cool down even in night
Tell me you're German without telling me you're German
Most Germans don't own ceiling fans, which is the problem.
Ceiling fans should be installed before any AC.
If you are not convinced, there is a one-hour video by Technology Connections on YouTube that will argue the point more in-depth that anything I could write here.