Having individual heating and cooling units (<i>per unit gas heaters!</i>) is stupendously inefficient.<p>I travel in Asia fairly regularly so this isn't new to me, but even after all of these years I can't believe I continue to see shiny, brand new "high end" condo buildings in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, etc., with individual AC units hanging out the window.<p>Contrast this with a condo in Minneapolis that I own wherein heat and AC are central in the building and individual units can set their temperature to whatever they like - all run with tremendously higher efficiency.<p>It was explained to me once that there are Asian (specifically, Chinese) attitudes towards thrift that make it inconceivable/impossible to pay for AC that someone else might be using (or misusing). I don't know how true that is.<p>What I do know is, my building in MPLS looks very nice without several hundred crappy boxes hanging out the windows.
Someone said Japan used to be in the title - and now that it isn't - I think it should go back. HN is mostly a US based website (with an emphasis on Silicon Valley). This methodology is wildly uncommon in the US. There's very little likelihood this kind of thing would happen in well over 90%+ of the USA.<p>First off - if you're renting - you're not putting holes in the walls that go to the exterior and there certainly aren't any already existing. I've never seen or heard of that in the USA - particularly for apartments. Secondly - you're not hanging air conditioning units off the exterior walls of the apartment (rental or owned - you don't own/rent the exterior and ain't no residential building consenting to that shit). If you had a balcony, that's where it'd go, at best. Thirdly - where's your power coming from!? Most of these units are 220V and usually there is only one or two 220V power outlets in American homes these days and they're always dedicated to the washer+dryer. Maybe you have a third for an electric oven/stove. (Or an electric water heater) You'd have to run new power lines and that involves tearing up the walls. You could try to find 110V mini-split AC units but they're pretty uncommon in the USA (and much less powerful). As well, not having that AC on a dedicated breaker means you'll be giving up all other outlets on that breaker whenever the AC is on, which could be a lot of essential outlets in esoteric places.<p>Great insight for someone who lives in Japan and someone who wants to see what it looks like to install AC in Japan. Put it back in the title!
I like that the schematics are included on the air conditioner. I have a few older appliances like this that have it, and it has helped me a few times replacing/diagnosing parts.<p>I laughed a bit where he explains about "Humidity" and the temperature. I know Americans are fat and lazy and love our AC's, but if you spend any time on the east coast, it's a giant swamp. Life is pretty insufferable without an AC when you are sitting inside all day working - and newer buildings are not designed with passive cooling in mind. I'd like to thank my forerunners for sucking it up but I basically keep my 3 window unit AC's on from June-Sept in Philadelphia.
I also live in Japan, and recently bought 3 new air conditioners, but my instinct was the opposite: forego anything "smart".<p>For tech like that I want it to be as dumb as possible so that there are less things that can go wrong with it. As a bonus the dumb ones are much cheaper as well.
Is this really specific to Japanese air conditioners? Or is this really about mini-split ac that are manufactured around the world under many companies.<p>I don't see whats specifically Japanese outside of the person using Panasonic and is in Japan.<p>The person could be in the USA with Mrcool mini split, it would be a similar article.<p>Edit: title has been changed to remove mention of Japan, so my nitpick may no longer valid:)
What I’d like to know is how they safely pipe gas to all apartments given the occurrence of earthquakes. Does the main valve auto shut off in the event of tremors above M3 of something?
I did a much easier solution for my airconditioner (also in Tokyo so everything OP said applies): I bought a broadlink rm mini3 (IR emitter) for <$30 and hooked it up to homebridge using homebridge-broadlink-rm [0].
Then went ahead and recorded all signals my aircon remote could send and put it in an excel sheet for safe-keeping. Next, plugged the IR codes into the homebridge plugin, put the small device in line-of-sight with the aircon and tadaaa, my old ghetto aircon is now smart.<p>For getting the temperature of the room, I use other devices (a netatmo weather station) and used their API to pull the current degrees into a textfile on the server that is getting fed into the airconditioner plugin.<p>Bonuspoint: I use the same IR emitter to control my TV. I just have to make sure it's in a place that is in line-of-sight with both my TV and aircon, but given how small apartments here are - that was not a problem. The plugin has a functionality to frequently ping an IP for checking if something is turned on, so I use that to determine whether my TV is on/off.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/homebridge-broadlink-rm" rel="nofollow">https://www.npmjs.com/package/homebridge-broadlink-rm</a>
Should've bought Daikin A/C's - their network bridges speak HTTP with a simple REST service. Highly recommend, it was very easy to integrate them into my home automation setup.
Where are the refrigerant lines, how did they run them from compressor to evaporator?, I thought the biggest issue with AC self install is filling the refrigerant and sealing those lines.
I just did a DIY install of a mini split AC, including running electrical and the refrigerant lines, having never done so before. There was a whole "hidden side of the iceberg" to learn besides just the controller parts of how it works. The unit cost was ~600 while the install would have been ~1500, so I was betting that if I mess up catastrophically I could replace the whole thing once or even twice.
I wish those holes for refrigerant lines in apartments were standard in the US. My apartment in the bay area has no AC and furthermore doesn't allow window units, so I'm stuck with inefficient portable units. I'd love to be able to just put some mini-splits in (and I'd probably still come out ahead over renting a place that comes with central AC).
Just by luck before the pandemic hit I installed ground heat exchange with cooling for my house. This is so efficient the cooling is <i>free</i>. How do you ask is that even thermodynamically possible? Well all the heat from the cooling is used to heat the hole, which you get back in cheaper heating of the house from the same hole in winter. It's amazing!
I find it odd that for heat he only mentions units external from the a/c. The 'cu-229cf' unit he bought seems to be capable of heatpump mode[0]. Nonetheless, I really hate mini-splits. They always have really thin intake air filters that really don't filter anything. Thus the insides of the indoor unit are always caked in layers of dust and mold.<p>[0]: <a href="https://panasonic.jp/aircon/housing/products/19f.html" rel="nofollow">https://panasonic.jp/aircon/housing/products/19f.html</a>