When, not if

Impetus

There were two articles in Irish newspapers today about patients suffering from heat in state hospitals. One involved the CUH maternity building which is new, and one involved a hospital in Limerick which is a legacy 'building'. These articles mentioned 30 to 40C.

In intelligently run countries - Germany, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Austria, and Monaco, Scandinavia etc politicians work on 'when' and not 'if' there will be problem x.

Inverter heat exchanges (using the latest refrigerants - eg R32) can achieve 6x energy efficiency. ie in the cold of winter, 100w of electricity produces about 600 w of heat. The same works in the reverse direction - in terms of pumping excess heat outside, when in air conditioning mode. They use far less energy to heat a premises compared with oil and gas. Because oil or gas is not consumed to make energy. Instead excess heat is pumped outside, and vice versa. Due to the low electricity consumption, air heat pumps can be powered to a large extent from solar PV cells - perhaps situated on the roof of the building - providing 'free' cooling during periods of max sunshine.

Whoever is responsible for constructing new buildings who opts for energy wasting heating systems, with no provision for cooling, - be they architects or politicians, should be hung out and shot at dawn.

Imagine the pain mothers having babies endure at 20C - and how much this is made more intense at 30C - because overpaid bureaucrats couldn't bother to do the job properly when it came to building that new hospital, (and the same applies to schools, offices, and homes).

I am speaking from back in the day as a baby who was born in a record hot August. Typical Oirish thinking. " Shur if it gets hot" xxxxx. Whereas in most continental countries engineers and architects think of WHEN it will get hot.

Ireland, a country with no plan B.

Intelligent building design not only saves energy, (winter and summer) but the buildings are far more comfortable.

Inquitus

Much like none of us have Air Conditioning in our houses, as it's pointless in a country where it is rarely needed, we should not expect our Government to spend huge money on HVAC solutions that are also rarely needed.

blanch152

Inquitus wrote: »

Much like none of us have Air Conditioning in our houses, as it's pointless in a country where it is rarely needed, we should not expect our Government to spend huge money on HVAC solutions that are also rarely needed.

Which politician is going to run for the next election with a promise to put 2% extra on income tax to fix the public buildings for hot weather?

Twenty Grand

We're in an extremely rare and unprecedented heat wave.
Probably last another week then we're back to our usual service of rain and cloud.

Every country you've listed has continental weather, consistently minus temps in winter, consistently high temps in summer.
There's no point spending huge amounts of money for once in a generation weather and comparisons between us and Europe are largely useless.

FreudianSlippers

Inquitus wrote: »

Much like none of us have Air Conditioning in our houses, as it's pointless in a country where it is rarely needed, we should not expect our Government to spend huge money on HVAC solutions that are also rarely needed.

Modern buildings should be built with HVAC systems; we have few modern hospitals; hospitals are too hot in heatwaves. /thread

Ubbquittious

There's a lot of things that need fixing in the hospitals before they can start looking at fanciful extras like air conditioning

Victor

Realise that all these things cost money and in a health environment, will cost more. Do you spend money on HVAC or medicine? Legionella (Legionnaires' Disease) is a particular risk with air conditioning. Not something you want in a hospital.

Impetus wrote: »

Due to the low electricity consumption, air heat pumps can be powered to a large extent from solar PV cells - perhaps situated on the roof of the building - providing 'free' cooling during periods of max sunshine.

Is the solar panels are on the roof, where do you put the air conditioning equipment?

View

The H in HVAC stands for heating - heating and air conditioning are two sides of the same HVAC coin. Heating and Air Conditioning aren’t two completely separate systems as many people tend to assume in this country.

Podge_irl

Lots of public buildings shut down in Geneva during the last heat wave three years ago. They weren't designed with temperatures of 40C in mind because it was close to unprecedented weather. Geneva airport also handles snow better than Dublin but worse than Helsinki.

Twenty Grand

View wrote: »

The H in HVAC stands for heating - heating and air conditioning are two sides of the same HVAC coin. Heating and Air Conditioning aren’t two completely separate systems as many people tend to assume in this country.

The temperature in Ireland is fairly constant year round.
We're generally between 5 and 15 degrees for 10 months of the year. HVAC systems just aren't needed in most buildings and are probably impossible to retrofit onto current ones (based on the amount and size of the ducting)
Again, comparisons between us and continental counties are largely redundant.

seamus

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Modern buildings should be built with HVAC systems; we have few modern hospitals; hospitals are too hot in heatwaves. /thread

Yeah, the main issue is that our hospitals are old when "it was far from air conditioning you were raised".

There is also an issue that air conditioning in hospitals is considerably more complicated than a standard building. Aside from increased levels of filtering, there may be hundreds of separate, isolated zones to prevent the spread of infection and protect immunocompromised individuals.

For example, on an oncology ward a patient may be in isolation, which means the AC in that room must be on its own isolated circuit separate to the hallway outside and any other adjacent rooms. And you might have five of those rooms on a ward.

Each ward would then be on its own circuit and not intermixed with the rest of the hospital, to keep infection from spreading.

So this makes hospital AC a considerably more expensive system and in older hospitals bordering on impossible to retrofit.

So the expense of such a system versus the actual need for it in Ireland, needs to be balanced.