i've lived and worked outdoors in a wide range of climates and have kind of an obsession with microclimates and their regulation. if i had infinite money and time, i would legit go to some top-tier industrial/commercial/residential HVAC school just for edification, though i am more of a passive (shade sails, building orientation/design), green infrastructure (trees for evapotranspiration, shade and windbreaks), casual (attic fans, dehumidifiers) type of guy by desire, education and experience.
i was all over Caledonia (gorgeous, would happily live/die there) somewhat recently. typically in early summer the urban/developed areas i guess are like 55°-65°F (let's say 12°-19°C), but there was a high pressure system / heat wave that took temps up to 75°F (24°C) some days, which made many indoor spaces stuffy and upwards of 85°F (29°C). because as others have said, the focus seems to have been on making/keeping places impervious to rain/wind and be warm and cozy since there is a lot of wind and water blowing around out doors during the year. 100% understand that focus. for those laughing at the UK from the desert southwest, i've seen your roofs. any clown can design a house to keep the sun out. a kid could make that shit out newspaper and cardboard. lots of steady water and wind is an engineering nightmare. especially if it might go through a freeze/thaw cycle.
in the northern UK, they don't have insane humidity and heat there like the southeastern/malarial US, so the requirement to homogenize air with good flow to avoid mold or high RH discomfort hasn't been a big driver it seems. there are certainly damp places, but the heat just doesn't seem to have historically been there to push it into the red zone. most people can tolerate a week or so of discomfort, when they get 50+ weeks of relative comfort. you just go outside, roast a jay, and drink with the lawn sprinkler on you while you lay in a kiddie pool with a white tshirt, athletic shorts, and a bucket hat on. i used to live in savannah, ga with no A/C and do extremely trashy shit like that in view of the neighbors. the genteel types judge, but the non-snooty types know you're a goddamn wizard.
i have no doubt there's like a community wind/solar offset option packaged with an array of high SEER rated A/C geothermal systems that could be coupled and installed on behalf of councils for housing, hospitals, etc and like regular ass people to be alright with an added benefit of like improving housing ventilation and air filtration in the not-hot-as-balls season. if some firm put the pieces together and didn't try to gouge, they could probably be printing money in a few years.
the US, especially in some of the far southern environments has made an incredible amount of technological progress in high efficiency A/C systems. though, where the US is hodge podge as fuck (even with like 30 compressors individual compressors and meters for 30 housing units instead of one, integrated system with multiple zones), the UK as a late arrival to the A/C party could avoid a lot of extremely stupid mistakes and save a lot of old peoples' lives.
not to mention, high temperatures make for hot tempers.
i've lived and worked outdoors in a wide range of climates and have kind of an obsession with microclimates and their regulation. if i had infinite money and time, i would legit go to some top-tier industrial/commercial/residential HVAC school just for edification, though i am more of a passive (shade sails, building orientation/design), green infrastructure (trees for evapotranspiration, shade and windbreaks), casual (attic fans, dehumidifiers) type of guy by desire, education and experience.
i was all over Caledonia (gorgeous, would happily live/die there) somewhat recently. typically in early summer the urban/developed areas i guess are like 55°-65°F (let's say 12°-19°C), but there was a high pressure system / heat wave that took temps up to 75°F (24°C) some days, which made many indoor spaces stuffy and upwards of 85°F (29°C). because as others have said, the focus seems to have been on making/keeping places impervious to rain/wind and be warm and cozy since there is a lot of wind and water blowing around out doors during the year. 100% understand that focus. for those laughing at the UK from the desert southwest, i've seen your roofs. any clown can design a house to keep the sun out. a kid could make that shit out newspaper and cardboard. lots of steady water and wind is an engineering nightmare. especially if it might go through a freeze/thaw cycle.
in the northern UK, they don't have insane humidity and heat there like the southeastern/malarial US, so the requirement to homogenize air with good flow to avoid mold or high RH discomfort hasn't been a big driver it seems. there are certainly damp places, but the heat just doesn't seem to have historically been there to push it into the red zone. most people can tolerate a week or so of discomfort, when they get 50+ weeks of relative comfort. you just go outside, roast a jay, and drink with the lawn sprinkler on you while you lay in a kiddie pool with a white tshirt, athletic shorts, and a bucket hat on. i used to live in savannah, ga with no A/C and do extremely trashy shit like that in view of the neighbors. the genteel types judge, but the non-snooty types know you're a goddamn wizard.
i have no doubt there's like a community wind/solar offset option packaged with an array of high SEER rated A/C geothermal systems that could be coupled and installed on behalf of councils for housing, hospitals, etc and like regular ass people to be alright with an added benefit of like improving housing ventilation and air filtration in the not-hot-as-balls season. if some firm put the pieces together and didn't try to gouge, they could probably be printing money in a few years.
the US, especially in some of the far southern environments has made an incredible amount of technological progress in high efficiency A/C systems. though, where the US is hodge podge as fuck (even with like 30 compressors individual compressors and meters for 30 housing units instead of one, integrated system with multiple zones), the UK as a late arrival to the A/C party could avoid a lot of extremely stupid mistakes and save a lot of old peoples' lives.
not to mention, high temperatures make for hot tempers.
If I understand right it’s to the point that heat pumps (which are basically just AC units but reversed) are more efficient than direct heating.