What’s the deal with UK air conditioning? Why do we suffer?
With the looming May heatwave, I’ve decided to splurge on quite an extravagant air conditioning solution.
After doing my research, and owning one of my own, I’ve realised the standard portable air conditioners we have access to here in the UK are essentially a scam. Technology connections on YouTube explains why better than I ever could here: https://youtu.be/\_-mBeYC2KGc?si=lXXexM635yQXGb-B
Essentially when the condenser is inside the room as with most portable ACs, it generates heat, is very noisy, and creates negative pressure in your room which sucks the warm air from outside back inside through the shoddy window seal you’ve DIY’d together.
The one I’ve bought, called the Midea Portasplit, gets around this by having the compressor hung on a bracket outside your window, still temporary with no screws required. It connects via a hose to an indoor unit more similar to a proper split system, but without the ugly permanent box on your wall. The US for example have loads of options like this that sit in your window, and Germany have caught on the last few years with products like the Midea Portasplit and more. I haven’t been able to find anything online about it being used in the UK, or anything similar. Just brits suffering with their shitty portable units they bought for a few quid at Argos.
My question is: Why is nobody talking about this in the UK? Online or otherwise? Why do we suffer? Why are these products that actually work around the world so rare in the UK? Why do we in the UK have a strange stoic suffering culture with a sort of social currency applied to it? Complaining about the heat during a heatwave in the UK is basically a national sport, but actually spending money to fix it feels somehow indulgent, even embarrassing. Visible domestic comfort infrastructure has a sort of strange cultural coding in the UK, the rest of the world just installs AC and gets on with it. What’s our deal?