Lots of them here in Melbourne - thankfully very hot days tend to go with low humidity - 35C here is a lot more bearable than 30C in London. I've got a portable one (cheapjack developer didn't put aircon in bedroom) and it does an OK job.
You might not need the 220-110V converter. It may well be a 220V system anyway ("plant" often is). Still got shipping and VAT of course ...
The issue is exacerbated by the centre of house having a glass roof ... (all K-Glass) aprox 50 sqm although not S facing it does get a lot of direct sunlight in afternoon. We have had to fit blinds, sort of negatingt he purpose of having glass roof. This with occupancy use (heat from cooking, showers etc) all contributes to build up.
In evening all of downstairs rooms are pleasant .. particularly as no carpets .. and mainly tiled floors ... feels cool under foot.
However all heat created is rising towards 1st floor and with high levels of insulation & high external wall temperatures .. it hangs around.
All of my first floor is screed over insulation, with pipe-in-screed underfloor heating. Floors are tiled.
In the central core of house walls are facebrick ... but with 8.5m glass screen wall and 50 sq M of glass roof ... even with Pilkington-K glass it lets a lot of heat in.
No I have a highly insulated timber frame design, this has little thermal mass, but high insulation.
I have had Whole House Ventilation on past 3 properties ... I have never had a problem with it, don't see it as a fad. It does work for it's 'main' reason is to extract waste heat and use it to warm up incoming air in the winter.
Plus air supplied to house is free from dust & pollen which was a requirements for my kids.
So it does work .... what it doesn't do is cool the air in any way in Summer - there was going to be an air-cooler unit 'comfort cooling' but never materialized.
I'd put the system in again on next build.
The low humidity is again the key, that gives room for an increase in RH without getting too high, and allows for the cooling effect to work. My time in the US always had high temps. accompanied by high humidity; St. Louis was usually the worst, like living in a tropical forest without the trees.
That may be your opinion, but I, and many others who have used it, disagree. Its function was to cool the house down quickly on one's return from being away, and it did that perfectly, drawing cold air from the basement up through the rest of the house, and pushing the hot air into the loft space, whence it exhausted outside. Perfect.
It worked just fine in the house where I lived and it was installed, as described. If this house here was suitable for it, I would consider installing it, but the house layout prevents it (they didn't think of this a couple of hundred years ago).
It only really works if you have a nice big cellar full of nice cold air. Our house in Belgium had this capability which was needed only a few times a year. Otherwise you just pull in warmish air from outside.
My house in the UK has so much thermal inertia that there has never been a warm spell long enough for the external heat to penetrate to the core. Equally it takes forever to heat up from cold in winter but once up to temperature holds onto it pretty well.
I think you might have trouble breathing in that wind tunnel.
I wonder if this would solve the hot upstairs room problem I mentioned in my question about "single-room air-conditioning".
No it's 110V .... they can re-fan to 220V but not change the opening mechanism. I could buy a 220-110V transformer but extra cost
Disagree .. as mentioned I would use only after sun has gone down at that time external air temp is significantly lower than the layer of hot air at top of the house.
Think how you can sit outside on a summers evening and how comfortable it can be after sun has gone down.
Isn't there a potential problem with the motor wearing out early if it's designed for 60 Hz but used on 50 Hz? ISTR that people often have that problem using American appliances in Europe with a transformer.
Yes. It is particularly bad for inductive loads where the lower UK frequency allows higher current flow. Those really cheap and nasty US Ronson shavers used to rely on a 60Hz mechanical resonance too.
It might get hot faster, but if it has a thermal cut-out, that should protect it. I have an American knife-sharpener that does exactly this, I have been using it here in the UK for over three years now, with a step-up transformer. If I use it in a session for long enough, it just shuts down, then restarts when it's cool enough. A fan motor might well have thermal protection; maybe....
Fan motors tend to have high resistance. I'm running a lot of 110V US appliances/tools including fixed and freestanding fans and have for very many years. I have yet to experience any problems at all.
I figure the frequency difference should put the current up by 20% for a purely inductive load (less for a mixed resistive-inductive load). I guess some appliances are designed with low safety factors.
Does the fact that the shaver motor is running at 50/60 the expected speed make it wear out faster (apart from the increased current)?
Not really. It made it so that it never really worked properly in the UK and on a tough whisker would stall annoyingly without cutting it.
If we're talking about synchronous or asynchronous induction motors, the solution to that problem is to reduce the voltage in proportion to the drop in frequency. For example a motor rated for 120v 60Hz can also be rated for 50Hz by specifying 100v at this frequency. The torque (and current) will remain the same whilst the speed will drop, reducing the HP rating in direct proportion.
In fact quality induction motors will often have both voltage and frequency combinations on their rating plate (120v 60Hz / 100v 50Hz).
Interesting. I guess if you use a British 110 V "building site" transformer, you'll be halfway there.
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