DOMESTIC AIR CONDITIONING
Is residential air conditioning now a hot prospect?
Residential air conditioning may never be as popular in the UK as in Spain or Italy, but there are reasons to believe the long hoped-for lift-off in UK domestic sales could be on the way, says David McSherry, sales manager for Toshiba.
F
or British people travelling in Southern Europe, it can be a surprising sight to see the lines of condensing units mounted outside
apartments and homes. In parts of Italy, Spain and Greece, the majority of dwellings are air conditioned. In high summer, when the mercury starts climbing through the upper thirties and beyond, it is not hard to understand why. Here, it is not so much a luxury as a necessity of life. In the UK, of course, the picture is different.
Residential air conditioning – at least until recently – has mainly been confined to premium apartments. The high-rise glass towers that have sprung up in London and other major cities have high heat gains and sealed windows, a combination that requires air conditioning to make them not only comfortable, but habitable. However, there are changes underway that could result in residential air conditioning becoming increasingly mainstream in the UK in future. The most obvious driver, of course, is climate change.
The upward drift in temperatures over the past few years is a reality. The Met office reports that nine of the 10 warmest years for the UK have occurred since 2002, with the top 10 all happening since 1990. It culminated last year with the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK – 38.7 °C – in Cambridge. Reflecting the impact of this on the general population, online search traffic in the UK for ‘air conditioning’ surged last summer, peaking on 29 June, according to Google Trends. Air conditioners were in John Lewis’s top 10 most searched-for
20 April 2020
items last summer, the retailer reports. Another important driver is improved building
standards. Part of the UK’s strategy to improve efficiency and cut carbon, the updated regulations require much higher levels of insulation and lower air leakage rates than in the past. As a result, today’s homes are highly insulated and almost hermetically sealed. From an energy efficiency standpoint, this is highly desirable. It is fine for homeowners, too, so long as they are able to open windows to provide natural ventilation and allow heat build-up to escape. However, for those living in towns and cities with high levels of noise and air pollution, this
is not always possible. In these situations, air conditioning can provide much-needed relief. The downside, of course, is the additional
energy required, which runs counter to the aims of introducing higher insulation and leakage standards in the first place. Fortunately, today’s modern inverter-controlled systems are light years ahead of conventional technology in terms of efficiency, and use a fraction of the energy to produce the same cooling effect. There is also the fact that practically all
air conditioning units sold in the UK now are based on heat pumps. This ensures even higher efficiencies, as well as offering an efficient means
www.acr-news.com
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