Let’s try this again, being more explicit about the analogy, though it’s incredibly simple so that really shouldn’t be necessary.
E. Large drawbacks
Boston has very cold winters.
F. Small drawbacks
Boston has summers that are hot, humid and swarming with mosquitoes.
These are backwards. Cold winters are a lot easier to work around than sticky summers; a fireplace is simpler than an air conditioner.
A fireplace is simple, and is the simplest man-made method of dealing with cold.
Because it is simple, manufacturing tolerances and installation tolerances are large.
This makes it cheap, and easy to install, when installing it as intended
If you install a fireplace six inches to the left of the intended location, it will work without problems. (You will probably have other architectural problems, but they are not the fault of the fireplace; if it had been a window or a non-structural column that was moved, that would be equally problematic.)
Derivatives of the fireplace optimized for particular use-cases, such as being addable and subtractable after the building is finished, start from this extremely low baseline. They add complexity, reduce manufacturing and installation tolerances, etc.
But because the baseline is incredibly low, even after making those changes it remains very simple, so the devices remain cheap, easy to install, etc.
End result: Furnaces, space heaters, radiators, all are cheap and abundant.
Contrast with
Air conditioners are the simplest general-applicability man-made method of dealing with heat.
They’re really fuckin’ complicated. Tolerances for installation and manufacture are small.
If you install an air conditioner six inches to the left, it probably won’t work at all; the seal will be crap and you’ll get worse results than you would have from leaving the window closed. At best you’ll get 50% capacity.
Variants exist with better tolerances, (freestanding units with pipe) but they’re more expensive and less efficient.
This also makes air conditioners fairly expensive. An AC unit can cover more ground than a space heater, but even if you want to evenly blanket your home with heat (usually not true, some rooms are much lower priority), it will take only two or three space heaters per AC unit, and AC units cost roughly 5x a space heater.
Because AC units are so complex, advanced variants are not a common product. The main descendant innovation is central air. This has all the drawbacks of a fireplace with regard to installation, though it does have higher efficiency.
Central air has another relevant feature: Even in really hot jurisdictions like Los Angeles or Phoenix, AZ, it almost always also has heat. Because once you’ve set up the ducting and control systems for central-air AC, it is trivially easy to support heat through that. So using it once a decade, or just the possibility that you might, someday, want to sell to an octogenarian with no thermoregulation who can’t take the ‘cold’ of 65 F, is more than enough to justify the cost.
In conclusion: The fact that fireplaces are simpler than AC units has direct, obvious consequences for how difficult it is to keep your home warm vs. cool, regardless of whether using an actual fireplace is practical or even desirable. It is much easier to deal with Massachusetts winters than Massachusetts summers via technological means.
To clarify, I was thinking more about the overall effect of the weather on people. You are not indoors all the time, nor can you cover every square inch of your body with warm clothing. At least from my point of view, being outdoors in 20F wind in a winter coat is worse than 85F in shorts + t-shirt. I’m not disputing that air conditioning is more technologically complex than a fireplace, I just don’t think it’s a major factor.
I think it is a pretty major factor. 20 F is not that common, and much easier to work around than 100 F, which is approximately as common. Both are pretty terrible outdoors; 20 F often comes with some benefits that make it worth suffering through, most of which involve snow, and 100 F doesn’t AFAIK, but that’s a minor detail. And you’re correct that the difficulty of dressing for the weather is not obviously tied to the difficulty of controlling an indoor environment; I think there’s a weak correlation there, but it could just be noise.
It’s only inside that you can really work around either extreme enough to be comfortable. And how hard that is differs greatly due to the different underlying complexities of the problems.
This makes [a fireplace] cheap, and easy to install, when installing it as intended
This is not true at all. Fireplaces are very expensive to install, costing thousands of dollars at the low end (and going into five digits of dollars). (Furthermore, if you live in a rented unit, you generally have no option to install a fireplace at all.)
If you install an air conditioner six inches to the left, it probably won’t work at all; the seal will be crap and you’ll get worse results than you would have from leaving the window closed. At best you’ll get 50% capacity.
This is also not true at all. I can move my window air conditioner six inches in either direction right now (I’d just have to undo/re-do some screws and reapply some foam padding), and it would work just as well. The same has been true for every other air conditioner I have owned.
At this point you must be deliberately misreading everything I write. No one could be that wrong by accident.
I can move my window air conditioner six inches in either direction right now
I conclude that you have not actually tried this, because if you had you would have noticed that it reduces the capacity of the device massively. AC units need to be placed centrally in the window with carefully-guided siderails.
What does “installing it as intended” actually mean in practice?
I conclude that you have not actually tried this, because if you had you would have noticed that it reduces the capacity of the device massively. AC units need to be placed centrally in the window with carefully-guided siderails.
You conclude incorrectly. I have indeed shifted my A/C’s position, in the way I describe, multiple times (spanning multiple units). There was no detectable effect on the A/C’s performance.
Let’s try this again, being more explicit about the analogy, though it’s incredibly simple so that really shouldn’t be necessary.
These are backwards. Cold winters are a lot easier to work around than sticky summers; a fireplace is simpler than an air conditioner.
A fireplace is simple, and is the simplest man-made method of dealing with cold.
Because it is simple, manufacturing tolerances and installation tolerances are large.
This makes it cheap, and easy to install, when installing it as intended
If you install a fireplace six inches to the left of the intended location, it will work without problems. (You will probably have other architectural problems, but they are not the fault of the fireplace; if it had been a window or a non-structural column that was moved, that would be equally problematic.)
Derivatives of the fireplace optimized for particular use-cases, such as being addable and subtractable after the building is finished, start from this extremely low baseline. They add complexity, reduce manufacturing and installation tolerances, etc.
But because the baseline is incredibly low, even after making those changes it remains very simple, so the devices remain cheap, easy to install, etc.
End result: Furnaces, space heaters, radiators, all are cheap and abundant.
Contrast with
Air conditioners are the simplest general-applicability man-made method of dealing with heat.
They’re really fuckin’ complicated. Tolerances for installation and manufacture are small.
If you install an air conditioner six inches to the left, it probably won’t work at all; the seal will be crap and you’ll get worse results than you would have from leaving the window closed. At best you’ll get 50% capacity.
Variants exist with better tolerances, (freestanding units with pipe) but they’re more expensive and less efficient.
This also makes air conditioners fairly expensive. An AC unit can cover more ground than a space heater, but even if you want to evenly blanket your home with heat (usually not true, some rooms are much lower priority), it will take only two or three space heaters per AC unit, and AC units cost roughly 5x a space heater.
Because AC units are so complex, advanced variants are not a common product. The main descendant innovation is central air. This has all the drawbacks of a fireplace with regard to installation, though it does have higher efficiency.
Central air has another relevant feature: Even in really hot jurisdictions like Los Angeles or Phoenix, AZ, it almost always also has heat. Because once you’ve set up the ducting and control systems for central-air AC, it is trivially easy to support heat through that. So using it once a decade, or just the possibility that you might, someday, want to sell to an octogenarian with no thermoregulation who can’t take the ‘cold’ of 65 F, is more than enough to justify the cost.
In conclusion: The fact that fireplaces are simpler than AC units has direct, obvious consequences for how difficult it is to keep your home warm vs. cool, regardless of whether using an actual fireplace is practical or even desirable. It is much easier to deal with Massachusetts winters than Massachusetts summers via technological means.
To clarify, I was thinking more about the overall effect of the weather on people. You are not indoors all the time, nor can you cover every square inch of your body with warm clothing. At least from my point of view, being outdoors in 20F wind in a winter coat is worse than 85F in shorts + t-shirt. I’m not disputing that air conditioning is more technologically complex than a fireplace, I just don’t think it’s a major factor.
I think it is a pretty major factor. 20 F is not that common, and much easier to work around than 100 F, which is approximately as common. Both are pretty terrible outdoors; 20 F often comes with some benefits that make it worth suffering through, most of which involve snow, and 100 F doesn’t AFAIK, but that’s a minor detail. And you’re correct that the difficulty of dressing for the weather is not obviously tied to the difficulty of controlling an indoor environment; I think there’s a weak correlation there, but it could just be noise.
It’s only inside that you can really work around either extreme enough to be comfortable. And how hard that is differs greatly due to the different underlying complexities of the problems.
This is not true at all. Fireplaces are very expensive to install, costing thousands of dollars at the low end (and going into five digits of dollars). (Furthermore, if you live in a rented unit, you generally have no option to install a fireplace at all.)
This is also not true at all. I can move my window air conditioner six inches in either direction right now (I’d just have to undo/re-do some screws and reapply some foam padding), and it would work just as well. The same has been true for every other air conditioner I have owned.
At this point you must be deliberately misreading everything I write. No one could be that wrong by accident.
I conclude that you have not actually tried this, because if you had you would have noticed that it reduces the capacity of the device massively. AC units need to be placed centrally in the window with carefully-guided siderails.
Link? I hadn’t heard this before.
What does “installing it as intended” actually mean in practice?
You conclude incorrectly. I have indeed shifted my A/C’s position, in the way I describe, multiple times (spanning multiple units). There was no detectable effect on the A/C’s performance.