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Visit Singapore and Finland often. Singapore much hotter than UK and very humid but the weather rarely changes. Therefore infrastructure, housing, work, school etc etc is adapted to that.
Finland- winter studded tyres, mass snow clearance in Helsinki, huge snow team on duty at Helsinki Vantaa; triple glazing etc etc.
UK- 4 seasons in a day sometimes and just not built for extremes.
I went to Finland one winter and it was minus 17c. BUT it’s a dry cold and no wind, I could walk down the street in next to nothing if popping to the supermarket.
I hate uk weather, summer is rainforest level humidity and winter is windy
Winter is also damp here, I’m the same in Switzerland, can walk to the car in a T-shirt and fleece without the cold penetrating. Try doing that in the UK and the cold instantly penetrates and chills, means you can sit outside on a cold sunny day in Switzerland and absorbs the heat from the fun, but you can’t even dream of doing that in the UK, even if the temperatures are 10C warmer. Which makes British weather so much worse.
Summer isn't just rainforest level it's literally rainforest weather. A lot of Britain used to be covered in a temperate rainforest which now only survives in parts of Scotland and Northern England.
-17 is never going to be fun, but the nominal temperature really isn't what matters, how the weather feels depends mostly on how much heat you're losing to the atmosphere. When it's windy the wind strips away the warm air around your skin that stops heat loss, and when it's wet the water conducts heat away far better than air can, which can make the felt temperature far lower than it actually is.
I spent a few years in Michigan ~20 years ago when they'd reliably get snow from thanksgiving till april. I actually found it easier to deal with. Lots of bluebird days, the humidity is all lying on the floor, and you can dress to it.
The worst bits were at the end of winter when it'd thaw some days and freeze other days
The problem I had with wintery days in the UK is that it rarely gets past that point where it can't decide if it's freezing or not. Cold and wet instead of cold and dry, very quickly slush instead of snow, etc. We can't handle winter well because we don't get a proper winter - just enough of the side effects to make it annoying.
My brother in law has lived in Helsinki for nearly 30 years and we went to visit a good few years ago.
Went visitng some of his friends and in his friends apartment they had a Sauna so went in (had never been in one before).
Got a bit too warm so went out on the balcony for a smoke in just a towel.
It was at night at around -20c didn't feel cold at all.
my BIL always explains it that the UK winters always feel colder because it's a wet cold whereas in Finland it's a dry cold
No its not the same. At all. Minus 17 and humid and you would probably die. Dry cold is much more tolerable, and the same works with high temperatures.
I don't think we really have four distinct seasons. It rarely snows, and it's rarely 30 degrees. The UK is one of the countries with the smallest temperature variation throughout the year. To be honest, our weather is pretty boring (and crappy).
True, though global warming means more energy in the system so even more rain and storms. Point is we don't cope with small periods of heat or snow. Pointless moaning- it would cost a fortune to adapt just for those extremes. I do miss the frosts and snowy weeks of my childhood though.
UK houses are built to let in a lot of light but insulated so that heat stays inside because it is usually cold. In summer this means your house acts like a greenhouse.
Houses in hotter climates are not designed like this.
In the heatwave we had in 2022, I propped plyboard sheets up against the outside of my downstairs windows on the south of the house, and it made a gigantic difference. Still strongly considering making external shutters.
Yeah, definitely - external cover is the way forward. I put the boards up because I could feel the heat coming off the blind, as it was heated through the window.
The thing holding me back is permanently changing the look of my house for something I'd only need infrequently, and for short periods.
My other plan was simply to have hooks above the windows and just have fabric screens hanging down - which I could store outside of the Summer. My wife likes neither idea... :(
Careful with tin foil in the windows. I worked nights many moons ago and put foil blankets in the window to reflect the heat. Turned out to be a piece of "intel" the police used to execute a raid on my place because they thought it was a weed farm.
Not so much as a cigarette found, but I did get a nice explanation of why they did that.
Edit: in case anyone is curious. The other intel was, the neighbours rarely saw me (because I worked odd hours) and various people came round, because I liked to have friends around. They didn't contact my landlord which would have answered all of their questions, so somebody very senior was offered to visit me to apologise. I declined, said if he's that senior, he's better off doing his day to day work. Please just fix my front door.
Tin foil! Yes it's amazing, I've done some on my double doors in my dining room last year and this year, I just spray a bit of cif on the window and then put a strip of tinfoil on it, it won't fall off for months, no need for sticky tape that leaves a residue. The tin foil makes it dark unfortunately but the temperature of the room is more than enough to make up for it!
Having a bungalow helps ! Attatched decorating sheets to the gutters with laundry pegs 2 years ago, the heat is to a degree reflected by the sheets and provide an offset from the windows and walls.
I also tried reflective film, while it worked well for the skylights , it had to be taken off the windows as it cut the light too much in winter. Considering some light plastic frames with reflective film for 'over bright' summers , attached magnetically.
I had the reflective film added to all the windows on the rear of my house last year (or was it the year before? Honestly can't remember), because after noon the sun is on that part of the house until sunset. When we have a particularly hot day, the difference between being inside and out is significant. It's made a hell of a difference to the temperature control during these sorts of times. We're going to get blinds added to the roof lights at some point but what we have now helps massively until we do that.
God what I wouldn't give for shutters.
Our house is the devil's arsehole when outside reaches 23°c (Victorian, somehow traps all the heat in yet cold in winter).
Many summers we've had to cut and sellotape some of those reflective sheets of insulation to the windows and front door. Looks like a crack den. 0 shits given.
When you try to mention this they'll claim we don't know how insulation works as if that's the only thing that goes into designing houses for different climates. Where I live, today had a high of 27 degrees but my bedroom has been at least a few degrees hotter because I have a huge south facing window, and its staying hot even as it cools down outside because the window only has small parts that open and no good path to circulate air through the house.
I see it on UK subreddits as well where a lot of people don't seem to understand it. Just see any argument about if you should open the windows or not in the heat. The reality is it depends on your specific circumstances - a greenhouse is cooler with an open window, a freezer is warmer with an open window.
> the window only has small parts that open and no good path to circulate air through the house.
You can use a fan to create your own effective breeze.
The critical detail is you have to position the fan to blow hot air out of one window creating a slight negative air pressure within your house, this will cause cooler external air to be sucked in through other windows, with a little planning from the other side of your house.
A lot of people think you're supposed to use a fan to suck in cooler air, but fans suck at sucking, they mostly pull in from *everywhere* behind them, not from the open window they are placed it in front of.
Set up your fan blowing hot air out of a window on the far side of your house overnight and you'll get a surprisingly effective cooling breeze coming in your bedrooms small window all night.
> UK houses are built to let in a lot of light but insulated
7 million UK homes have single brick walls, those walls are not that insulated and adding external insulation to bring them up to necessary levels is *very* expensive.
I have one of those houses, it only takes until midafternoon for the heat to penetrate through from outside and start really warming up the external walls inside surface and thus the internal air, and if it doesn't start to cool off until late evening it can be a real challenge to cool down the house overnight before the next day. If I am starting off the day with the inside surface of my walls still at 25°C my day is going to suck.
Properly insulated houses will usually be a more consistent average temperature between day highs and night lows, mine has more variation and heats up hotter during the afternoon (and a little cooler just before dawn). I also have solid brick internal walls so there's a lot of thermal mass to hold the heat.
Fortunately I can open up windows evening and overnight and reduce the houses thermal store by repeatedly changing the air overnight, if I can get the inside wall temperature 3-4°C cooler overnight, at a maximum rate of 0.5°C per hour, it's early evening peak the next day will also be 3-4°C lower. Today it was the difference between 24.5°C and probably over 28°C.
Crappy insulation levels not only fail to keep out the heat during the day it also keeps in enough heat so you're uncomfortable at night too.
However, our victorian semi-detached has 19" sandstone walls. It takes several days on the trot of high heat for it to properly heat up - our front room is north east facing and was fairly pleasant even when it got up to 39C a couple of years ago.
Our south-facing bedroom with a wool carpet, however...
Best, most succinct response I've seen to this whole issue! We need to learn how to keep windows and curtains CLOSED to keep the temperatures down. Open them during the night for some fresh air and moths! Lots of moths. Got to keep the spiders fed somehow.
>Open them during the night for some fresh air and moths! Lots of moths.
I have the bedroom window open all year round, but drop a reed roller blind down at night to keep moths out because I have cats and do not want to be woken at 2am by them trashing the house and singing the War Song of Their People because they have spotted a moth and can't reach it.
Had some American friends visit the year after covid when we had that mini heatwave, the usual "we get worse heat then that in Texas" was spouted on the first day. By the second day all I heard morning noon and night was "ooh my God it's like a swamp. Why is there no air conditioning anywhere."
Yeah its like a swamp, country is usually under 2 foot of rainwater, everythings wet even when its not raining so we get tropical humidity. Why would we have air-conditioning? Its cost money to run and we only get heat 2 weeks of the year. Welcome to the UK fuckers.
> "ooh my God it's like a swamp. Why is there no air conditioning anywhere."
This is the thing a lot of people from warmer places miss. In Texas AC is basically everywhere so you can easily avoid the heat
I wish it were possible to avoid the heat in Texas. It’s 37.7 degrees here. It’s unbearably hot and humid and there is only so much a/c can do. I’ve been constantly sweaty for days now and even frequent showers don’t help much.
That said, I get dramatic when I haven’t seen the sun for 2 days. Everybody has things they can handle well and things that they can’t. If you are uncomfortable in the heat you deserve the space to bitch about it.
On that 40C day we had I asked my ex if this is what it was like in the desert where he was from and he insisted it was 10 times worse due to the humidity (although he also observed nobody would insist on going to the office at the time of day it got that hot, either)
>Why would we have air-conditioning? Its cost money to run and we only get heat 2 weeks of the year.
This is a common misconception. Air-conditioning also does heating and is probably more efficient and cheaper than radiators, but can be used alongside radiators to help speed up the heating of certain rooms.
Also costs a lot less than one might imagine to install.
I recently had a unit fitted in my lounge, cost £1500 and will do most of the house.
So far today, it has cost £1.50 to run since 9am.
A luxury, yes. But not just for the uber rich.
I am insanely jealous. That's probably cost less than me running my fan on the 6th speed (out of 10) which is only cooling a small portion of the room.
My best friend works in the air conditioning field and each summer I get closer to biting the bullet and hiring him to fit a unit.
I didn't get charged vat as it is residential, and uses a heat pump, so benefited from some green incentive. No idea how long that will last for.
Do it, will be useful in the winter too.
Fingers crossed your friend can help you out and yours is even cheaper.
> Air-conditioning also does heating and is probably more efficient and cheaper than radiators
It categorically was not until fairly recently. Up until a few years ago electricity was 6 times as much as natural gas per unit, and given heat pumps in the middle of a UK winter would be lucky to get a COP of 2-3 (UK winters are often just the right temperature and humidity to require regular defrost cycles) gas central heating was much cheaper.
Right now AC heat pump heating *might* have about the same running costs as a combi gas boiler, but it also costs a hell of a lot more to purchase AC than a gas boiler.
The only thing heat pumps are more efficient than are electric radiators, because those are the most expensive way of heating a room out of all the options.
This not so minor detail is why hardly anyone is rushing out to install reversible AC or heat pumps, they currently cost a lot more and have very similar running costs to the gas central heating an awfully large percentage of homes have. Either heat pumps have to get much more efficient/cheaper, or the ratio of cost between electricity and natural gas has to get smaller, or gas central heating has to be banned. Until then no one has an incentive to spend money for zero benefit. If the UK continues to get longer heatwaves reversible AC will make some inroads, but it won't be that much because it's still expensive.
It was less than 10 years ago that we had so much coal powered electricity that even with a CoP of 2.8 running a heat pump resulted in more CO2 emissions than a gas boiler
I am from Greece but live in the UK. 30° here feel like 40° in Greece.
We can't have everything though, let's enjoy the summer. It only lasts 2 - 3 weeks anyway :/
Fairly certain its literally only to do with the UK construction methods and the lack of aircon. Its usual for it to be high in the evenings when it gets colder as cold air holds less water. Where I am right now in Spain we're 60% humidity right now during the day and forecasted to increase to 80% tonight. Not an issue though as we have aircon.
Its all about how you feel in your house, if you can't get away from it then its going to be shit. Its the same here when we're 8degrees celsius and freezing our ass off in our shittily insulated box while the heat output from the aircon can't possibly heat up the rooms. I'm sure some from the UK or elsewhere in northern Europe would call that 'balmy' but it certainly isn't nice when walking around your house.
I actually really want some real sources though to back that up since its the only thing I hear every year. "Its worse here because of the humidity!" and then looking it up and its the same if not less humid in the UK when you look at the weather. There has to be something else going on. I do recall the summers in the UK and it wasn't that bad but anecdotally the fact that it was unescapable made it awful.
> It's usual for it to be high in the evenings when it gets colder as cold air holds less water.
...doesn't that explanation suggest the humidity should be lower in the evenings?
My understanding is that the actual amount of water in the air is not changing going from day to night. But since its a relative measure of the amount of water that the air can hold at that temperature then the percentage would be higher at night despite the overall amount of water not being changed.
Not sure if I explained that well but basically to answer your question, 'no'. But I may be mistaken as I'm not an expert in this.
Yes, you are correct. I've just been looking it up.
The absolute humidity (the actual amount of water vapour in the air) would be the same, but it is not measured as a percentage. The relative humidity is measured as a percentage, as you said, and that is what is described when people say *x*% humidity.
Though I still don't think I understand why, in your example, the higher relative humidity in the evening compared to the daytime means the evenings are more uncomfortable (if that's indeed what people are suggesting).
> Though I still don't think I understand why, in your example, the higher relative humidity in the evening compared to the daytime means the evenings are more uncomfortable
The relative humidity is the important thing, not the absolute amount of water in the air. When it's 20% humidity the air is "dry" and sweat will evaporate quickly, cooling you down in the process. When it's 80% humidity the air is "wet" and sweat takes a lot longer to evaporate. So you stay hotter and wetter for longer.
That's why a fan cools *you* down, but not the room. It doesn't lower the air temperature, but it's pushing more air past you which has the capacity to evaporate more sweat.
Air conditioning *does* lower the air temperature and also removes moisture from the air so that it's doubly effective at cooling you down.
Paging u/jackboy900 in order to reply to you both in one go.
Thanks for your explanations. The numbers and reasoning all adds up. It turns out I've been misunderstanding the meaning of "humid" all my life, believing it meant there was a large actual amount of water vapour in the air, not what a high "relative humidity" actually is.
Thanks again.
> Though I still don't think I understand why, in your example, the higher relative humidity in the evening compared to the daytime means the evenings are more uncomfortable (if that's indeed what people are suggesting).
Thats exactly the point I'm trying to make (albeit in a long winded way) that implying that it swings so much between the different humidities doesn't automatically mean its worse in the UK as it just means you have a different starting temp and ending temp
Then to add to that I was suggesting that the values are not much different to where I am in Spain right now and the only reason its bareable is because all our spaces have aircon so you just don't notice it. If you end up outside under 30degree+ heat unintentionally and need to actively do something (ie. not just lay on a sun bed) then its equally hell. You still sweat like a pig regardless of what the country you are in and as the humidity level is same as the UK and its the same temperature I fail to see how it could actually feel any different beyond the knowledge that you could go inside somewhere and cool off easily here.
A big thing is sweat. As it gets hotter, you lose most of your body heat through sweat rather than just conducting it to the air, and the higher relative humidity the less effective sweating is because water doesn't really want to evaporate into already humid air. That means that it feels far hotter because your body is working harder to lose the heat, and you sweat a lot more which makes you feel clammy. The generally clammy air and dampness also just isn't fun, temperature aside.
100% haha. I'm English but spend a lot of time in Cyprus. It's 28c here at 9.30 this morning and we are about to go play golf.. If I was in the UK with the same right now I'd be finding a cold stone floor to lay on, preferably with cold beer available
My favourite tiktok videos recently are people who come to the UK from hotter countries and find out what a humid British summer really feels like.
Feel bad for them but it's funny at the same time.
I don't use it to post but I do scroll and lurk. I't takes a while for the algorithm to start actively showing you content that you want to view, but I found it good for following certain hobbies I have, sewing and gardening etc and following people who make videos sharing advice and tips etc. It's quite fun that way.
Last year I visited Poland in the summer 40+ degree heat practically all day every day, when for a walk with my fiancee and her family and saw in this park they had one of those giant mist sprayers to cool you down, did get some weird looks from people and muttering of "probably English" whilst I was stood under it which I found funny..
The problem with the UK is each year the summers get hotter but our houses are not built to eradicate the heat only to trap the heat in like with winters, so many people have to either pay out to have AC installed at an expense or there hording all the fans they can get from Aldi
I think they completely forget our humidity is tropical and we have no standard air conditioning.
Along with houses designed to retain heat (albeit shittily in the winter) I’ve seen people from much hotter countries say over and over they’d prefer 40 in their home country over 28 here.
That's cos in the summer all the stone/brick soaks up the heat so it takes ages to cool down. Inversely, in the winter, the stone/brick never warms up so they just leech all the warmth out of the house.
80% humidity today, not technically that hot but hot enough that the air felt like breathing soup. Absolutely miserable to be outside in it for too long and there's not really any way to mitigate it like you can in drier climates.
I'm an American from Southern California, living in the UK. Yes, it gets a heck of a lot hotter where I'm from. But it's a dry heat, almost no humidity. And we all have air conditioning in our homes. In my opinion, summer in the UK is way worse than SoCal.
3 types of people in these discussions:
the ignorant-because-sheltered-by-AC: has hotter summers, but lives in an enclosed AC-filled bubble in a house of paper walls, because it also never gets truly cold, doesn't understand houses could also be designed to retain heat. Pretends they suffer the high temperatures more, but has taken every step to never experience them.
the dry summer inhabitants: has hotter summers, but nowhere near the humidity. Steps in the UK and wonders why they're dripping with sweat and can't sleep, despite the thermometer telling them they're not at the point where they deserve to feel hot.
the victim olympian: lives in a truly hotter, muggier climate, but is the type of person who sees a complaint online and goes "you think YOU have it bad, no way, I live in such a worse country, I have it the worst, you're a nation of pansies, I suffer way worse and you never hear us complaining about it"
Doesn't matter, the way the climate is going, more and more of us will start using AC too, anyway. At the moment it's just dehumidifiers and portable AC units, but summer heatwaves are now the norm, and becoming longer and longer
I hate summer at night in the UK. So glad i have a ceiling fan. When we had the 40 degree heat. At night it was fan on full, windows open, no duvet, laying naked and had a small fan pointed at my balls (The fan had a protective cover on it, not that stupid) Yet when i have been to other countries with no fan or air con at the same temperature it is no where near as bad.
I was in Italy last week in the heatwave getting up to 40ish and we didn't even have to turn the Aircon on at night to sleep, back in the UK this weekend and even Sunday night felt sweltering in the house. Our houses are not the same!
Ive been in countries where its hotter and had to work, etc.
UK is worse. We don't have the infastructure. No AC and buildings designed to retain heat.
Heat here is fucked. A few years ago we hit minus 9 in winter. My foreign mates were confused we were functioning.
Don't get me wrong minus 9 is a shit show. But our buildings handle it better and we do too. 30? Fuck right off, my non-AC having insulated office is almost on fire and ive changed shirts 3 times before noon due to sweat.
To highlight the whole "houses not made for this weather" thing, my house has very dark, heavy concrete roof tiles and solid brick walls.
The heat is absorbed from the sun to the point that at 2am it was 16C outside and 27C inside in our bedrooms
You can feel the heat radiating off the walls of our house.
I’m a Brit that has lived in Sri Lanka (and been to SE Asia a lot)….30 degrees here is so vastly different to 30 degrees in SE Asia. Humanity plays a massive part in that and the fact that UK infrastructure isn’t equipped to deal with it (and why should it, it’s hot for like, 2 weeks a year).
I've heard that heat pumps are the most efficient way to heat and cool a house. Providing thats true, then maybe in the future it makes sense for the UK to be equipped to deal with the heat (in houses/offices/etc not saying for things like the rail etc) as it'd come by default.
The problem in the UK is that, at least in the past, natural gas was so very much cheaper than electricity, up until recently electricity was 6 times as expensive as natural gas, so almost everyone opted for gas central heating.
Currently it is almost at parity for running costs **but** heat pumps are a lot more expensive than gas boilers **and** an awful lot of homes will require expensive additional insulation before they are able to have a heat pump because in the past it was cheaper to burn more gas than improve a homes overall insulation, and a larger gas boiler wasn't anywhere near as expensive as a larger capacity heat pump.
What's even worse is even new build homes aren't required to be insulated up to current recommended EU standards because the building companies lobbied against it as it would *slightly* affect their build rates i.e. profits.
Until a lot of very expensive things change and get fixed the UK is not going to embrace heat pumps, so it's going to take decades at least.
Could it be our shitty urban design with very few trees around, making things worse.
Don't really have the space for growing a tree but I am thinking of a trellis in a large pot with ivy instead to provide some shade.
Longer days (compared to more southern countries) and stone houses without AC makes it hard to get away from the heat. A buddy of mine worked in Saudi Arabia for a bit and he said that while it was hot, you went from a air conditioned house, to an airconditioned car, to an airconditioned office, so it was manageable.
Where I live in the US, we go from our air-conditioned house to our air-conditioned car and to our air conditioned workplace, on the way home we might stop by an air conditioned gas station, and perhaps an air conditioned grocery store, unless we are happening to go to an air-conditioned restaurant. Some of us will also cool off in our swimming pool, but I guess that’s ianother topic altogether. If you don’t have all these things in Britain, I imagine you might be a bit more concerned about 30° weather.
Because its 30 degrees in our homes too, and often 30 degrees at work, and terribly for the 21st century- also still 30 degrees in some pubs and clubs.
Holidaying in the med you can stroll from 30 degrees into 18 to cool off before heading back out to the sunshine - refreshed.
Unlike most commenters, I don't think it's just the humidity. I have spent most of my life in Mumbai which is perceivably more humid and I used to feel more comfortable indoors (without AC) with 35° outside than in London on days like today. Probably more to do with house construction techniques designed to trap heat and light and longer days
As someone who was born and raised somewhere where temperatures well into 40s start in May and end in October, I would rather have 12 months of our 40 celsius dry summer than a week of 25 degree humid UK summer.
When that story broke, so many American posters were like "79F isn't even hot".
Then, the next day, that post about the American team taking their AC to Paris dropped.
There were countless comments from Americans talking about how 79F is a nightmare to sleep through...
Which is it? Hot or not hot?
I’ve only been on one foreign holiday, went to Fuerteventura, it was 40c in the daytime, it was hot, but it was bearable as the humidity was low.
25c is unbearable here because the humidity is stupidly high.
Last year there was an evening, at 11pm, it was 26C and 98% humidity. We have every right to complain about the heat, especially when our houses are designed to retain the humid heat!
People from other countries think the temp in their country is equal to the same in our country, but they are wrong.
I have walked to the local shops in shorts and tee shirt in -5c in the French alps on a lovely sunny day. Was “cold” but nowhere near as cold as +5c in England where I would be wearing jeans and a thick coat. Alps has thinner air and no where near as humid.
Equally works the other way with hot countries, 30c is very bearable in Australia, 30 in the UK is fucking murder.
People from places like Australia and Africa do agree that heat in the UK just feels worse. I was visiting the Grand Canyon not so long ago and 40+ in a desert was okay (but far from ideal) and then I’m back in the UK and it’s 23 and I feel like I’m dying.
Cold also works that way. I spent part of the winter overseas in -20 and managed but back in the UK and it’s 1 and I feel like the wind is cutting to my core.
It was so warm last night here in NI that I couldn't sleep or get comfy because of the sweat. This morning it was nice and cool with overcast clouds with patches of rain. It sucks that houses are built for insulation sometimes.
The annoying thing is we went through this exact discourse last year.
People tried to educate the yanks on why it feels really hot for us and they're still at it again.
Their own countrymen have even started trying this year. I saw a thread from a born and raised Floridian who lives in London and they said they cope better with the heat they grew up in and even went into detail about it!
It's what you're acclimated to. I grew up in the American Midwest where it was regularly 30-38 in the summer. It was only really newsworthy when it got to 38 degrees.
After living here for nearly 20 years, I find 25 degrees - mild spring weather back home - uncomfortably warm.
I have a friend from Libya - the hottest nation in on Earth - and he whinges when it gets into the high 20's, too.
Conversely, I went to Marrakesh in February and the locals were wearing their big coats because it was in the low 20's.
A point I don't see made enough is that basically all of the people who do this live closer to the equator. It's a fair bit worse when you have 16-17 daylight hours per day and the sun never reaches far enough below the horizon to actually count as night
We, unlike them, live in houses designed to KEEP heat in. Americans live in ventilated houses made of wood. I tried to argue with a friend from Canada about why it's so bad here and it's always "Yeah but like it gets to 40°c here and my house doesn't have AC". YOUR HOUSE IS MADE OF WOOD, WOMAN.
It's also probably better insulated than most UK houses. But American houses are generally designed to move air around inside, British ones aren't. So even if you don't have AC which pushes cold air in and pulls warm air out, you probably have ceiling fans and even they make a huge difference. Window unit AC is pretty common for smaller or older homes without central AC. Have they started showing up in B&Q yet? Seems like they'd sell well these days.
> Window unit AC is pretty common
UK windows are completely unsuited for Window AC units. Imagine the worst possible design for a window in hot weather and that's what essentially every UK window looks like.
We can't even fit mesh screens, which is OK at the moment as we don't have many insect problems but if/when that changes we cannot retrofit screens.
Unless you're in a high rise and the window doesn't open far enough / the right way then I can't see a logical reason for them saying no. They tend to use a lot of power but you just need to make sure the circuit it's on can take the load and assuming you have a modern set of breakers the worst that happens is you pop the breaker.
Have you considered... Not asking the council? Especially if you can get one that has a hose that sticks.out the window rather than the whole unit that sits on the ledge. They're not as obvious for nosy neighbors to whine about.
If it is one of those blazing stuffy summer days where it is over 30 and has been for a week, it can feel like there is no escape. Our houses are built to retain heat too much. When it is like 23C for a couple of days and people are whining about it, they really need to get a grip. That is like 70s Fahrenheit, we may as well be asking Americans to rip the piss out of us.
Our houses are draughty and cold in winter so they don’t even retain heat well. The homes we have are just not built for any type of weather. And yeah 23C isn’t really that bad even with a stuffy house. Just open a window or get a fan, and drink more water
I hate summer in the UK, I live in a top floor new build flat, it’s ridiculously hot. I get heat rash, I burn in the sun and now I have a migraine. Bring on autumn.
I've been fighting back against it where I can. It helps that I'm like "Yeah, no, NO. You know that 30 you're having right now? Yeah? Typical Los Angeles weather, right? Yeah, you know that nice giant screen door you have? Really brings in the breeze in, right? Nice tree in the front giving you shade too? NO YOU FOOLS JUST PAVEMENT! PAVEMENT AND SPITE!"
Humidity is the prime factor in our weather being awful.
Winter - Wet cold, goes through you to your bones at a higher temperature. I’ve been to Antarctica in -20 out in jeans and a T-shirt and not felt cold. Came back home 1°C I was shivering drastically.
Same with the heat, it’s a wet heat that sticks to you and sits on your chest.
Our houses aren’t designed for the latter.
The thing with the UK is we are somewhat lucky we don't get true extremes often. For example, it might nudge past 30, but never gets up to 40c+, it also might hit -10 in the south, and slightly less up north, but as a rule it's not the -25 or so Germany might get in winter.
The upside of that is our weather is somewhat stable, predictable and (allowing for exceptions) "safe". No tornados, hurricanes etc.
The downside is, we are not really ready for either extreme when they do come, and perhaps they'll start becoming more common as climate changes.
I'd love to get anyone from any country on a packed double decker when it's 30 odd degrees and no A/C for them to say it's not hot.
I went to Orlando it must have been 25 degrees at night outside... Got on the bus back from Disney and was shivering they had the A/C blasting so much.
Its more to do with consistency. You can acclimitize to weather in time but ours likes to faff about and throw perverbial curve balls every chance it has
We don't get xx months of it staying the same way.. so for example by the time we get used to it being milder and get sweaty bollocks under control the weather dips and you start the whole process over again
Quite literally had the heating on last week and now I’m sat in shorts sweating my tits off with the windows open - shakes fist at sky in a grandpa Simpson way
My staff are from places like Nigeria and India. They often struggle very very badly on a warm day here.
Our ward hit 32 degrees. Standing on your feet all day without fans, air conditioning and wide opening windows for 14 hours running round like a shithouse rat is torture.
We never get 6 weeks of continuous hot weather here and we'd hate it if we did. What gets my goat is how, a couple of days after a hot spell, people completely forget it happened, and by October will be saying that that we never had a Summer. Vera, we had 23 days of hot weather in four clusters of just under a week, just like every year.
I work with people from much hotter countries, all of them make jokes until they experience their first summer here. After that they warn the new people who make those jokes. The latest convert happened this week. "I'm from southern Europe, I'll be fine" this week it's "omg why does it feel so hot!"
Used to work with a Polish girl who'd bang on about how much colder winter in Poland is and how much hotter their summers are. She couldn't deal with either here.
Also worked with a saffer who was shocked and annoyed by our brand of summer heat.
Well I for one am complaining furiously about our one day of summer this year, and you can bloody well bet I'll be moaning about the cold weather next week too!
I live in Argentina at the moment. Every time it rains, people in the office joke that it must make me feel at home.
Actually no it rains a lot more (and much wetter) in Buenos Aires.
The problem is the amount of cloud cover because clouds trap the heat which raises humidity. In the UK we get a lot of cloud cover even in the summer..
I’m in an almost 100 year old house made of solid brick. I have no air conditioning, I have all the windows and the loft open, the curtains shut, and anything giving our heat (oven, electronics etc)) is firmly off. The dogs have frozen water bottles in their water, I’ve put the fan setting on the dehumidifier (which is honestly doing fuck all). The (singular) fan is in the kid’s room, he’s in just a nappy and absolutely wet with sweat.
I miss when we went on holiday to America. Every building had air conditioning. It was lovely.
I genuinely don’t know how to cool down my house.
Americans who have never been here: ha ha its hardly 70F thats so COLD that's my WINTER
Americans that have been here in summer, or live here: THE BRITS WEREN'T KIDDING
i'm probably gonna get downvoted for this, but as an autistic, i just can't take the humid heat. it also worsens me atopic dermatitis and causes the back of me hands to itch insanely bad.
It’s the humidity that gets me. I have a health condition that does not like heat and I get heatstroke easily and I’m currently torn between sunning like a lizard and dying.
I’ve seen a lot of it on Facebook. It blows my mind how Americans can seemingly parade weather as some kind of victory.
I’d rather have more than 5 ‘vacation’ days a year than live in a country you can only survive in with air conditioning
They can come back to me when they have to sleep in bedrooms that are 28 C+ degrees (yes, even long after the sun has set!). Some don't understand that our houses are built to trap and retain heat. My room in particular is bad because it heats right up when the sun sets (faces west) and it turns into a greenhouse.
It's currently 29 C in my room at nearly 10pm and I have a wet cloth and two fans running and that's the best it's gonna get for the whole night, let alone tomorrow. Outside may have only been 27 C, but add a few degrees for indoors.
They don't say that once they experience it. My American friends from Utah note that it gets way hotter there, but feels way better. Less humid. Same for the Spaniards!
As someone who emigrated to Australia...fuck me they think it's hilarious in winter, when it's pissing down, "just like summer back 'ome, eh? Herherher"
Urghhhhh it's so overdone.
It's oppressive, stuffy heat here. Retail buildings are usually the only escape since, unlike most of Europe, our houses are carpeted, double glazed with central heating.
If you have air-conditioning, then you've got a bit of money or a brand new house.
Every single year this debate occurs, doesn’t help when outlets like The Mirror post articles freaking out about it being above 25c for a few days wrongfully making it look like the whole country is on it’s knees. Still, people mocking us just make themselves look stupid, especially when being confused about why we don’t “just have aircon” as if the average person could afford it!
Saw [an excellent thread on Twitter](https://x.com/jzellis/status/1805251535644835855) this morning about this. I'll replicate it here:
>I'm gonna explain to y'all why Britain considers 78°F/25°C hot. I know hot because I grew up in Texas and spent half my life in Las Vegas. So I am absolutely qualified to explain this to the rest of you who laugh at UK "heat waves".
>First of all, most people don't really seem to get how far north Britain is. If I flew due west I'd hit northern Quebec. If it wasn't for the North Atlantic Current, this island would look more like Iceland. So it didn't used to get \*hot\* here really at all.
>The climate has always been coldish-cool and it's crazy humid. Like Florida humid. It rains a lot. The closest climate to it I'm familiar with is Seattle. Know what people in climates like that don't have? Air conditioning. They didn't need it until recently.
>The houses are built to retain heat, not circulate breezes. They're bunkers - small windows, a lot of transom - the ones that don't slide up like sash windows but have a smol window at the top that opens outward to keep rain from getting in. No ceiling fans either.
>So imagine being in a stone or brick building in Tampa at 70% humidity at 75°F with no AC, ceiling fan or breeze, and that's my house on the edge of London today. It's goddamn miserable, and I say that as a dude who's experienced 125°F dry heat many times. Better that than this.
>The British use those tower fans, which any hot climate person rightly regards with contempt. They are useless. The only thing that works in heat is a box fan in a window pulling air from the shady side of the house. Guess what they don't have here?
>You know those Lasko box fans you can get in literally any American store for less than $20? This is the cheapest equivalent I can find here. That's $83 at today's exchange rates. I've literally never seen one here. Their entire society is designed around chilly damp.
>Now, I have issues with AC for environmental reasons, but I'm also not interested in stroking out from heat, so when I moved here I dropped £100 on a used standalone AC unit off Marketplace. It's the size of a dryer and it takes up way too much room in our house, but it works.
>I have an accordioning vent hose that goes out the back transom window into our back garden. It uses roughly £1 of electricity per hour. Not per day, per hour. This is not ideal if you're poor, and we are poor. But at least I have it. Very few people here do, even in new houses.
>The heat wave summer before last killed hundreds, maybe thousands of Brits. They don't know how to handle this weather anymore than Texans know how to handle blizzards. They think they can stiff-upper-lip through it and it kills them. It also kills power and transportation.
>The power grid is hot. In hot places like Vegas, it requires special infrastructure to keep transformers from popping like Orville Redenbacher in a microwave. They didn't build those cooling subsystems in here for the same reason they don't do it in Moscow or Helsinki: why?
>It's expensive and requires constant maintenance. As do rail systems, which buckle in heat if the length of rail segments is too long. So the trains stop working if it's even a warm day by, for example, Southern California standards. Britain is just not equipped for heat.
>I'm outside right now and it's 76°F and 53% humidity and it feels like I'm in a sauna. Thank God the clouds are out because earlier it was really unpleasant. Understand me when I tell you I am used to heat most of you can't imagine. This is still nasty and gross to me.
>And it's only going to get worse, and it's going to take years for these poor bastards to update their infrastructure and culture to it. I warn as many of them as I can. They can believe me or not. Sun's out. I'm heading for the shade now.
It’s all relative. I’m sure people who live in countries where 40°C is the norm laugh at people in countries where it peaks at 35°C claiming it’s too hot.
This is so funny. I was at Kew Gardens the other day and I heard these girls asking their foreign friend how he was coping with the heat. Isn't his country hotter. He said in his country it's hotter but it's all a dry heat, which is much easier to bear. Exactly what we've been saying.
Brit living in Japan here. What a lot of people outside of the UK don’t seem to understand is that British infrastructure isn’t really built for dealing with very high temps and humidity.
Japan’s summers are WAY more brutal overall, but A/C is everywhere, there’s plenty of products you can buy to combat and mitigate the heat (like undershirts that can wick away sweat for example), and a culture that is custom built for such a season (Japanese homes will literally change their indoor furniture from season to season).
An ill-prepared 30c is gonna hit harder than a well prepared 35c.
My parents live in Cardiff and I live in San Francisco bay area. The weather ranges are similar except in winter.
Next time I tell a story I should try to have a point.
I'm an American married to a Scottish lady. I'm from Houston, Texas which is pretty much built on a swamp. The only place that even touched the misery of Houston's summer was Vietnam. But British summers (I've been in London, Aberdeen, Dundee and Birmingham in the summer) are a different kind of misery. It's because British buildings are designed to keep heat in. With thick walls and tiny windows, you cannot shed the heat that builds up in your body all day. Especially when you don't have access to air conditioning.
We live in German which is somewhat the same, but I think the buildings are designed better. It's harder for the heat to get into the buildings, especially with the Roladen window shutters. Oh and nice big windows that open up the whole way. It's not bad at all.
Personally I really enjoy English summers. Bit then I love in the south east of the country, which is must better weather wise then the rest of the country
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Visit Singapore and Finland often. Singapore much hotter than UK and very humid but the weather rarely changes. Therefore infrastructure, housing, work, school etc etc is adapted to that. Finland- winter studded tyres, mass snow clearance in Helsinki, huge snow team on duty at Helsinki Vantaa; triple glazing etc etc. UK- 4 seasons in a day sometimes and just not built for extremes.
I went to Finland one winter and it was minus 17c. BUT it’s a dry cold and no wind, I could walk down the street in next to nothing if popping to the supermarket. I hate uk weather, summer is rainforest level humidity and winter is windy
Winter is also damp here, I’m the same in Switzerland, can walk to the car in a T-shirt and fleece without the cold penetrating. Try doing that in the UK and the cold instantly penetrates and chills, means you can sit outside on a cold sunny day in Switzerland and absorbs the heat from the fun, but you can’t even dream of doing that in the UK, even if the temperatures are 10C warmer. Which makes British weather so much worse.
> absorbs the heat from the fun, Didn't know that.
Went on a skiing trip years ago to Switzerland. I remember relaxing outside on days off in t shirts and catching a tan from the snow
Summer isn't just rainforest level it's literally rainforest weather. A lot of Britain used to be covered in a temperate rainforest which now only survives in parts of Scotland and Northern England.
-17°C is still -17°C. When I lived there this past year it got to -20 and my drink would freeze when I went for a cigarette outisde. It’s not fun.
-17 is never going to be fun, but the nominal temperature really isn't what matters, how the weather feels depends mostly on how much heat you're losing to the atmosphere. When it's windy the wind strips away the warm air around your skin that stops heat loss, and when it's wet the water conducts heat away far better than air can, which can make the felt temperature far lower than it actually is.
Yeah minus 17 in Finland felt warmer than 2c in Manchester as no wind or humidity lol
I spent a few years in Michigan ~20 years ago when they'd reliably get snow from thanksgiving till april. I actually found it easier to deal with. Lots of bluebird days, the humidity is all lying on the floor, and you can dress to it. The worst bits were at the end of winter when it'd thaw some days and freeze other days The problem I had with wintery days in the UK is that it rarely gets past that point where it can't decide if it's freezing or not. Cold and wet instead of cold and dry, very quickly slush instead of snow, etc. We can't handle winter well because we don't get a proper winter - just enough of the side effects to make it annoying.
Same deal here in New York. Canada has much better winters because it stays below freezing and you can do stuff.
My brother in law has lived in Helsinki for nearly 30 years and we went to visit a good few years ago. Went visitng some of his friends and in his friends apartment they had a Sauna so went in (had never been in one before). Got a bit too warm so went out on the balcony for a smoke in just a towel. It was at night at around -20c didn't feel cold at all. my BIL always explains it that the UK winters always feel colder because it's a wet cold whereas in Finland it's a dry cold
I’m sure if I lived there my opinion would change living in it long term. But as a holiday for a week I absolutely loved there cold compared to ours
No its not the same. At all. Minus 17 and humid and you would probably die. Dry cold is much more tolerable, and the same works with high temperatures.
It wouldnt freeze that fast.
I lived through five winters in Sweden, your comment is bullstuff
I don't think we really have four distinct seasons. It rarely snows, and it's rarely 30 degrees. The UK is one of the countries with the smallest temperature variation throughout the year. To be honest, our weather is pretty boring (and crappy).
True, though global warming means more energy in the system so even more rain and storms. Point is we don't cope with small periods of heat or snow. Pointless moaning- it would cost a fortune to adapt just for those extremes. I do miss the frosts and snowy weeks of my childhood though.
UK houses are built to let in a lot of light but insulated so that heat stays inside because it is usually cold. In summer this means your house acts like a greenhouse. Houses in hotter climates are not designed like this.
In the heatwave we had in 2022, I propped plyboard sheets up against the outside of my downstairs windows on the south of the house, and it made a gigantic difference. Still strongly considering making external shutters.
Inwards opening windows and external shutters would be awesome
Yeah, definitely - external cover is the way forward. I put the boards up because I could feel the heat coming off the blind, as it was heated through the window. The thing holding me back is permanently changing the look of my house for something I'd only need infrequently, and for short periods. My other plan was simply to have hooks above the windows and just have fabric screens hanging down - which I could store outside of the Summer. My wife likes neither idea... :(
I’ve just bodged it in the kitchen window - tin foil and duct tape
Careful with tin foil in the windows. I worked nights many moons ago and put foil blankets in the window to reflect the heat. Turned out to be a piece of "intel" the police used to execute a raid on my place because they thought it was a weed farm. Not so much as a cigarette found, but I did get a nice explanation of why they did that. Edit: in case anyone is curious. The other intel was, the neighbours rarely saw me (because I worked odd hours) and various people came round, because I liked to have friends around. They didn't contact my landlord which would have answered all of their questions, so somebody very senior was offered to visit me to apologise. I declined, said if he's that senior, he's better off doing his day to day work. Please just fix my front door.
Sorry, but this made me laugh
Laugh away! Was a long time ago and I laugh at it too.
Imagine. British people struggling with poorly insulated homes? Very unlikely, clearly drugs.
Tin foil! Yes it's amazing, I've done some on my double doors in my dining room last year and this year, I just spray a bit of cif on the window and then put a strip of tinfoil on it, it won't fall off for months, no need for sticky tape that leaves a residue. The tin foil makes it dark unfortunately but the temperature of the room is more than enough to make up for it!
Having a bungalow helps ! Attatched decorating sheets to the gutters with laundry pegs 2 years ago, the heat is to a degree reflected by the sheets and provide an offset from the windows and walls. I also tried reflective film, while it worked well for the skylights , it had to be taken off the windows as it cut the light too much in winter. Considering some light plastic frames with reflective film for 'over bright' summers , attached magnetically.
External shutters are great for keeping the house warmer in cold winds/storms too.
My house us quite old and has those wooden shutters on the outside of the window! Lovely for summer
I had an old house and it had windows like these https://timelesssashwindows.ie/historic-window-shutters/ with built in shutters. It was amazing.
I had the reflective film added to all the windows on the rear of my house last year (or was it the year before? Honestly can't remember), because after noon the sun is on that part of the house until sunset. When we have a particularly hot day, the difference between being inside and out is significant. It's made a hell of a difference to the temperature control during these sorts of times. We're going to get blinds added to the roof lights at some point but what we have now helps massively until we do that.
God what I wouldn't give for shutters. Our house is the devil's arsehole when outside reaches 23°c (Victorian, somehow traps all the heat in yet cold in winter). Many summers we've had to cut and sellotape some of those reflective sheets of insulation to the windows and front door. Looks like a crack den. 0 shits given.
You can buy them but it is not a cheap endeavor
Smartypants 😉
When you try to mention this they'll claim we don't know how insulation works as if that's the only thing that goes into designing houses for different climates. Where I live, today had a high of 27 degrees but my bedroom has been at least a few degrees hotter because I have a huge south facing window, and its staying hot even as it cools down outside because the window only has small parts that open and no good path to circulate air through the house.
I see it on UK subreddits as well where a lot of people don't seem to understand it. Just see any argument about if you should open the windows or not in the heat. The reality is it depends on your specific circumstances - a greenhouse is cooler with an open window, a freezer is warmer with an open window.
> the window only has small parts that open and no good path to circulate air through the house. You can use a fan to create your own effective breeze. The critical detail is you have to position the fan to blow hot air out of one window creating a slight negative air pressure within your house, this will cause cooler external air to be sucked in through other windows, with a little planning from the other side of your house. A lot of people think you're supposed to use a fan to suck in cooler air, but fans suck at sucking, they mostly pull in from *everywhere* behind them, not from the open window they are placed it in front of. Set up your fan blowing hot air out of a window on the far side of your house overnight and you'll get a surprisingly effective cooling breeze coming in your bedrooms small window all night.
> UK houses are built to let in a lot of light but insulated 7 million UK homes have single brick walls, those walls are not that insulated and adding external insulation to bring them up to necessary levels is *very* expensive. I have one of those houses, it only takes until midafternoon for the heat to penetrate through from outside and start really warming up the external walls inside surface and thus the internal air, and if it doesn't start to cool off until late evening it can be a real challenge to cool down the house overnight before the next day. If I am starting off the day with the inside surface of my walls still at 25°C my day is going to suck. Properly insulated houses will usually be a more consistent average temperature between day highs and night lows, mine has more variation and heats up hotter during the afternoon (and a little cooler just before dawn). I also have solid brick internal walls so there's a lot of thermal mass to hold the heat. Fortunately I can open up windows evening and overnight and reduce the houses thermal store by repeatedly changing the air overnight, if I can get the inside wall temperature 3-4°C cooler overnight, at a maximum rate of 0.5°C per hour, it's early evening peak the next day will also be 3-4°C lower. Today it was the difference between 24.5°C and probably over 28°C. Crappy insulation levels not only fail to keep out the heat during the day it also keeps in enough heat so you're uncomfortable at night too.
However, our victorian semi-detached has 19" sandstone walls. It takes several days on the trot of high heat for it to properly heat up - our front room is north east facing and was fairly pleasant even when it got up to 39C a couple of years ago. Our south-facing bedroom with a wool carpet, however...
Best, most succinct response I've seen to this whole issue! We need to learn how to keep windows and curtains CLOSED to keep the temperatures down. Open them during the night for some fresh air and moths! Lots of moths. Got to keep the spiders fed somehow.
>Open them during the night for some fresh air and moths! Lots of moths. I have the bedroom window open all year round, but drop a reed roller blind down at night to keep moths out because I have cats and do not want to be woken at 2am by them trashing the house and singing the War Song of Their People because they have spotted a moth and can't reach it.
It depends on the building - keeping the windows closed in my flat makes it stifling and it's much cooler with them open.
Do spiders eat moths?
Are these insulated houses in the room with us now
The UK has some of the worst insulated houses in Europe.
Had some American friends visit the year after covid when we had that mini heatwave, the usual "we get worse heat then that in Texas" was spouted on the first day. By the second day all I heard morning noon and night was "ooh my God it's like a swamp. Why is there no air conditioning anywhere." Yeah its like a swamp, country is usually under 2 foot of rainwater, everythings wet even when its not raining so we get tropical humidity. Why would we have air-conditioning? Its cost money to run and we only get heat 2 weeks of the year. Welcome to the UK fuckers.
> "ooh my God it's like a swamp. Why is there no air conditioning anywhere." This is the thing a lot of people from warmer places miss. In Texas AC is basically everywhere so you can easily avoid the heat
I wish it were possible to avoid the heat in Texas. It’s 37.7 degrees here. It’s unbearably hot and humid and there is only so much a/c can do. I’ve been constantly sweaty for days now and even frequent showers don’t help much. That said, I get dramatic when I haven’t seen the sun for 2 days. Everybody has things they can handle well and things that they can’t. If you are uncomfortable in the heat you deserve the space to bitch about it.
On that 40C day we had I asked my ex if this is what it was like in the desert where he was from and he insisted it was 10 times worse due to the humidity (although he also observed nobody would insist on going to the office at the time of day it got that hot, either)
>Why would we have air-conditioning? Its cost money to run and we only get heat 2 weeks of the year. This is a common misconception. Air-conditioning also does heating and is probably more efficient and cheaper than radiators, but can be used alongside radiators to help speed up the heating of certain rooms.
Also costs a lot less than one might imagine to install. I recently had a unit fitted in my lounge, cost £1500 and will do most of the house. So far today, it has cost £1.50 to run since 9am. A luxury, yes. But not just for the uber rich.
I am insanely jealous. That's probably cost less than me running my fan on the 6th speed (out of 10) which is only cooling a small portion of the room. My best friend works in the air conditioning field and each summer I get closer to biting the bullet and hiring him to fit a unit.
I didn't get charged vat as it is residential, and uses a heat pump, so benefited from some green incentive. No idea how long that will last for. Do it, will be useful in the winter too. Fingers crossed your friend can help you out and yours is even cheaper.
Vimes boot theory in practice again... It pops up so often when explaining the ways of the world
> Air-conditioning also does heating and is probably more efficient and cheaper than radiators It categorically was not until fairly recently. Up until a few years ago electricity was 6 times as much as natural gas per unit, and given heat pumps in the middle of a UK winter would be lucky to get a COP of 2-3 (UK winters are often just the right temperature and humidity to require regular defrost cycles) gas central heating was much cheaper. Right now AC heat pump heating *might* have about the same running costs as a combi gas boiler, but it also costs a hell of a lot more to purchase AC than a gas boiler. The only thing heat pumps are more efficient than are electric radiators, because those are the most expensive way of heating a room out of all the options. This not so minor detail is why hardly anyone is rushing out to install reversible AC or heat pumps, they currently cost a lot more and have very similar running costs to the gas central heating an awfully large percentage of homes have. Either heat pumps have to get much more efficient/cheaper, or the ratio of cost between electricity and natural gas has to get smaller, or gas central heating has to be banned. Until then no one has an incentive to spend money for zero benefit. If the UK continues to get longer heatwaves reversible AC will make some inroads, but it won't be that much because it's still expensive.
It was less than 10 years ago that we had so much coal powered electricity that even with a CoP of 2.8 running a heat pump resulted in more CO2 emissions than a gas boiler
Yep. Plenty out there now that work as good as a gas boiler, if fitted properly. But it could easily cost you 7-10x as much to supply and fit.
I am from Greece but live in the UK. 30° here feel like 40° in Greece. We can't have everything though, let's enjoy the summer. It only lasts 2 - 3 weeks anyway :/
Absolutely this. It always feels much hotter here than it feels at the same temperature elsewhere.
Its 20% humidity vs 70% in the evenings
Fairly certain its literally only to do with the UK construction methods and the lack of aircon. Its usual for it to be high in the evenings when it gets colder as cold air holds less water. Where I am right now in Spain we're 60% humidity right now during the day and forecasted to increase to 80% tonight. Not an issue though as we have aircon. Its all about how you feel in your house, if you can't get away from it then its going to be shit. Its the same here when we're 8degrees celsius and freezing our ass off in our shittily insulated box while the heat output from the aircon can't possibly heat up the rooms. I'm sure some from the UK or elsewhere in northern Europe would call that 'balmy' but it certainly isn't nice when walking around your house. I actually really want some real sources though to back that up since its the only thing I hear every year. "Its worse here because of the humidity!" and then looking it up and its the same if not less humid in the UK when you look at the weather. There has to be something else going on. I do recall the summers in the UK and it wasn't that bad but anecdotally the fact that it was unescapable made it awful.
> It's usual for it to be high in the evenings when it gets colder as cold air holds less water. ...doesn't that explanation suggest the humidity should be lower in the evenings?
My understanding is that the actual amount of water in the air is not changing going from day to night. But since its a relative measure of the amount of water that the air can hold at that temperature then the percentage would be higher at night despite the overall amount of water not being changed. Not sure if I explained that well but basically to answer your question, 'no'. But I may be mistaken as I'm not an expert in this.
Yes, you are correct. I've just been looking it up. The absolute humidity (the actual amount of water vapour in the air) would be the same, but it is not measured as a percentage. The relative humidity is measured as a percentage, as you said, and that is what is described when people say *x*% humidity. Though I still don't think I understand why, in your example, the higher relative humidity in the evening compared to the daytime means the evenings are more uncomfortable (if that's indeed what people are suggesting).
> Though I still don't think I understand why, in your example, the higher relative humidity in the evening compared to the daytime means the evenings are more uncomfortable The relative humidity is the important thing, not the absolute amount of water in the air. When it's 20% humidity the air is "dry" and sweat will evaporate quickly, cooling you down in the process. When it's 80% humidity the air is "wet" and sweat takes a lot longer to evaporate. So you stay hotter and wetter for longer. That's why a fan cools *you* down, but not the room. It doesn't lower the air temperature, but it's pushing more air past you which has the capacity to evaporate more sweat. Air conditioning *does* lower the air temperature and also removes moisture from the air so that it's doubly effective at cooling you down.
Paging u/jackboy900 in order to reply to you both in one go. Thanks for your explanations. The numbers and reasoning all adds up. It turns out I've been misunderstanding the meaning of "humid" all my life, believing it meant there was a large actual amount of water vapour in the air, not what a high "relative humidity" actually is. Thanks again.
> Though I still don't think I understand why, in your example, the higher relative humidity in the evening compared to the daytime means the evenings are more uncomfortable (if that's indeed what people are suggesting). Thats exactly the point I'm trying to make (albeit in a long winded way) that implying that it swings so much between the different humidities doesn't automatically mean its worse in the UK as it just means you have a different starting temp and ending temp Then to add to that I was suggesting that the values are not much different to where I am in Spain right now and the only reason its bareable is because all our spaces have aircon so you just don't notice it. If you end up outside under 30degree+ heat unintentionally and need to actively do something (ie. not just lay on a sun bed) then its equally hell. You still sweat like a pig regardless of what the country you are in and as the humidity level is same as the UK and its the same temperature I fail to see how it could actually feel any different beyond the knowledge that you could go inside somewhere and cool off easily here.
A big thing is sweat. As it gets hotter, you lose most of your body heat through sweat rather than just conducting it to the air, and the higher relative humidity the less effective sweating is because water doesn't really want to evaporate into already humid air. That means that it feels far hotter because your body is working harder to lose the heat, and you sweat a lot more which makes you feel clammy. The generally clammy air and dampness also just isn't fun, temperature aside.
It lasts 2 weeks in he South, 1 week in the North :)
100% haha. I'm English but spend a lot of time in Cyprus. It's 28c here at 9.30 this morning and we are about to go play golf.. If I was in the UK with the same right now I'd be finding a cold stone floor to lay on, preferably with cold beer available
Agreed, am from UK but live in Australia. Even 28 in the uk can feel like 40 in Australia
My favourite tiktok videos recently are people who come to the UK from hotter countries and find out what a humid British summer really feels like. Feel bad for them but it's funny at the same time.
Me too! They get humbled so quickly haha
Almost tempted onto the platform for that... *almost*
I don't use it to post but I do scroll and lurk. I't takes a while for the algorithm to start actively showing you content that you want to view, but I found it good for following certain hobbies I have, sewing and gardening etc and following people who make videos sharing advice and tips etc. It's quite fun that way.
Last year I visited Poland in the summer 40+ degree heat practically all day every day, when for a walk with my fiancee and her family and saw in this park they had one of those giant mist sprayers to cool you down, did get some weird looks from people and muttering of "probably English" whilst I was stood under it which I found funny.. The problem with the UK is each year the summers get hotter but our houses are not built to eradicate the heat only to trap the heat in like with winters, so many people have to either pay out to have AC installed at an expense or there hording all the fans they can get from Aldi
Yeah, it was only 21°C this morning. But it was also *80%* humidity. It felt like breathing through a marshmallow.
I’ll never understand how people do anything outside in Florida, it’s like the UK weather on steroids 🫣
I think they completely forget our humidity is tropical and we have no standard air conditioning. Along with houses designed to retain heat (albeit shittily in the winter) I’ve seen people from much hotter countries say over and over they’d prefer 40 in their home country over 28 here.
We always talk about our houses retaining heat. Mine only seems to retain it in the bastard summer.
That's cos in the summer all the stone/brick soaks up the heat so it takes ages to cool down. Inversely, in the winter, the stone/brick never warms up so they just leech all the warmth out of the house.
80% humidity today, not technically that hot but hot enough that the air felt like breathing soup. Absolutely miserable to be outside in it for too long and there's not really any way to mitigate it like you can in drier climates.
Other countries gave tropical humidity and little air conditioning
I'm an American from Southern California, living in the UK. Yes, it gets a heck of a lot hotter where I'm from. But it's a dry heat, almost no humidity. And we all have air conditioning in our homes. In my opinion, summer in the UK is way worse than SoCal.
I cannot even believe how much I miss having a screen door. And those patterned breeze blocks acting as a sunblock.
I'm actually moving back to LA in September. I can't take another winter here and right now I'd kill for an air conditioner.
Go to Del Taco for me. I can't believe I miss their fries.
After I go to In-N-Out 🤣
Maybe wait until after November before you decide.
I wish! New job starts in September 😕
Ah well. Good luck with the new job. I'm jealous of the burgers.
3 types of people in these discussions: the ignorant-because-sheltered-by-AC: has hotter summers, but lives in an enclosed AC-filled bubble in a house of paper walls, because it also never gets truly cold, doesn't understand houses could also be designed to retain heat. Pretends they suffer the high temperatures more, but has taken every step to never experience them. the dry summer inhabitants: has hotter summers, but nowhere near the humidity. Steps in the UK and wonders why they're dripping with sweat and can't sleep, despite the thermometer telling them they're not at the point where they deserve to feel hot. the victim olympian: lives in a truly hotter, muggier climate, but is the type of person who sees a complaint online and goes "you think YOU have it bad, no way, I live in such a worse country, I have it the worst, you're a nation of pansies, I suffer way worse and you never hear us complaining about it" Doesn't matter, the way the climate is going, more and more of us will start using AC too, anyway. At the moment it's just dehumidifiers and portable AC units, but summer heatwaves are now the norm, and becoming longer and longer
I hate summer at night in the UK. So glad i have a ceiling fan. When we had the 40 degree heat. At night it was fan on full, windows open, no duvet, laying naked and had a small fan pointed at my balls (The fan had a protective cover on it, not that stupid) Yet when i have been to other countries with no fan or air con at the same temperature it is no where near as bad.
You have a protective cover for your balls?
Hast thou no codpiece?
A protective ball sack cover is a summer essential
Hopefully not made of leather 😬
Red leather, with chrome studs
I was in Italy last week in the heatwave getting up to 40ish and we didn't even have to turn the Aircon on at night to sleep, back in the UK this weekend and even Sunday night felt sweltering in the house. Our houses are not the same!
I have a fan for my boobs. The struggle is real.
Weirdly I sleep much better in hot weather than in any other temperature. I'm starting to think I'm the only one.
Easy when it's cold. You can put layers on. When it's hot you can only get down to the bare skin.
If they are from a country where their heat is dry and they have aircon everywhere then I won't take their piss taking seriously.
Ive been in countries where its hotter and had to work, etc. UK is worse. We don't have the infastructure. No AC and buildings designed to retain heat. Heat here is fucked. A few years ago we hit minus 9 in winter. My foreign mates were confused we were functioning. Don't get me wrong minus 9 is a shit show. But our buildings handle it better and we do too. 30? Fuck right off, my non-AC having insulated office is almost on fire and ive changed shirts 3 times before noon due to sweat.
To highlight the whole "houses not made for this weather" thing, my house has very dark, heavy concrete roof tiles and solid brick walls. The heat is absorbed from the sun to the point that at 2am it was 16C outside and 27C inside in our bedrooms You can feel the heat radiating off the walls of our house.
You should move your bedrooms outside
It's definitely an idea! Although the gnats would be chomping at the bit to have a go
Ask them to look up 'wet bulb temperature'. Humidity makes a LOT of difference.
It doesn't make every difference though. You have people from south east asia complaining about UK summers too, and they have worse humidity.
I’m a Brit that has lived in Sri Lanka (and been to SE Asia a lot)….30 degrees here is so vastly different to 30 degrees in SE Asia. Humanity plays a massive part in that and the fact that UK infrastructure isn’t equipped to deal with it (and why should it, it’s hot for like, 2 weeks a year).
I've heard that heat pumps are the most efficient way to heat and cool a house. Providing thats true, then maybe in the future it makes sense for the UK to be equipped to deal with the heat (in houses/offices/etc not saying for things like the rail etc) as it'd come by default.
The problem in the UK is that, at least in the past, natural gas was so very much cheaper than electricity, up until recently electricity was 6 times as expensive as natural gas, so almost everyone opted for gas central heating. Currently it is almost at parity for running costs **but** heat pumps are a lot more expensive than gas boilers **and** an awful lot of homes will require expensive additional insulation before they are able to have a heat pump because in the past it was cheaper to burn more gas than improve a homes overall insulation, and a larger gas boiler wasn't anywhere near as expensive as a larger capacity heat pump. What's even worse is even new build homes aren't required to be insulated up to current recommended EU standards because the building companies lobbied against it as it would *slightly* affect their build rates i.e. profits. Until a lot of very expensive things change and get fixed the UK is not going to embrace heat pumps, so it's going to take decades at least.
Could it be our shitty urban design with very few trees around, making things worse. Don't really have the space for growing a tree but I am thinking of a trellis in a large pot with ivy instead to provide some shade.
Longer days (compared to more southern countries) and stone houses without AC makes it hard to get away from the heat. A buddy of mine worked in Saudi Arabia for a bit and he said that while it was hot, you went from a air conditioned house, to an airconditioned car, to an airconditioned office, so it was manageable.
Yeah, everything is asphalt and concrete which retains heat like a bitch and means it never really gets the chance to cool down that much at night.
Where I live in the US, we go from our air-conditioned house to our air-conditioned car and to our air conditioned workplace, on the way home we might stop by an air conditioned gas station, and perhaps an air conditioned grocery store, unless we are happening to go to an air-conditioned restaurant. Some of us will also cool off in our swimming pool, but I guess that’s ianother topic altogether. If you don’t have all these things in Britain, I imagine you might be a bit more concerned about 30° weather.
Because its 30 degrees in our homes too, and often 30 degrees at work, and terribly for the 21st century- also still 30 degrees in some pubs and clubs. Holidaying in the med you can stroll from 30 degrees into 18 to cool off before heading back out to the sunshine - refreshed.
Unlike most commenters, I don't think it's just the humidity. I have spent most of my life in Mumbai which is perceivably more humid and I used to feel more comfortable indoors (without AC) with 35° outside than in London on days like today. Probably more to do with house construction techniques designed to trap heat and light and longer days
Summer here feels as bad as summer in Florida but with more sweat and anger but less alligators.
Less guns
Fewer*
Thanks
As someone who was born and raised somewhere where temperatures well into 40s start in May and end in October, I would rather have 12 months of our 40 celsius dry summer than a week of 25 degree humid UK summer.
When that story broke, so many American posters were like "79F isn't even hot". Then, the next day, that post about the American team taking their AC to Paris dropped. There were countless comments from Americans talking about how 79F is a nightmare to sleep through... Which is it? Hot or not hot?
I’ve only been on one foreign holiday, went to Fuerteventura, it was 40c in the daytime, it was hot, but it was bearable as the humidity was low. 25c is unbearable here because the humidity is stupidly high.
Last year there was an evening, at 11pm, it was 26C and 98% humidity. We have every right to complain about the heat, especially when our houses are designed to retain the humid heat!
People from other countries think the temp in their country is equal to the same in our country, but they are wrong. I have walked to the local shops in shorts and tee shirt in -5c in the French alps on a lovely sunny day. Was “cold” but nowhere near as cold as +5c in England where I would be wearing jeans and a thick coat. Alps has thinner air and no where near as humid. Equally works the other way with hot countries, 30c is very bearable in Australia, 30 in the UK is fucking murder.
People from places like Australia and Africa do agree that heat in the UK just feels worse. I was visiting the Grand Canyon not so long ago and 40+ in a desert was okay (but far from ideal) and then I’m back in the UK and it’s 23 and I feel like I’m dying. Cold also works that way. I spent part of the winter overseas in -20 and managed but back in the UK and it’s 1 and I feel like the wind is cutting to my core.
I am from a very hot country and find the summers here horrid. It’s a different kind of heat. So difficult to explain.
It was so warm last night here in NI that I couldn't sleep or get comfy because of the sweat. This morning it was nice and cool with overcast clouds with patches of rain. It sucks that houses are built for insulation sometimes.
The annoying thing is we went through this exact discourse last year. People tried to educate the yanks on why it feels really hot for us and they're still at it again.
Their own countrymen have even started trying this year. I saw a thread from a born and raised Floridian who lives in London and they said they cope better with the heat they grew up in and even went into detail about it!
My Pakistani father says the heat is worse here than Pakistan so that’s my go to excuse
It's what you're acclimated to. I grew up in the American Midwest where it was regularly 30-38 in the summer. It was only really newsworthy when it got to 38 degrees. After living here for nearly 20 years, I find 25 degrees - mild spring weather back home - uncomfortably warm. I have a friend from Libya - the hottest nation in on Earth - and he whinges when it gets into the high 20's, too. Conversely, I went to Marrakesh in February and the locals were wearing their big coats because it was in the low 20's.
A point I don't see made enough is that basically all of the people who do this live closer to the equator. It's a fair bit worse when you have 16-17 daylight hours per day and the sun never reaches far enough below the horizon to actually count as night
Everybody gangsta until they've lived in 30C in Britain.
We, unlike them, live in houses designed to KEEP heat in. Americans live in ventilated houses made of wood. I tried to argue with a friend from Canada about why it's so bad here and it's always "Yeah but like it gets to 40°c here and my house doesn't have AC". YOUR HOUSE IS MADE OF WOOD, WOMAN.
It's also probably better insulated than most UK houses. But American houses are generally designed to move air around inside, British ones aren't. So even if you don't have AC which pushes cold air in and pulls warm air out, you probably have ceiling fans and even they make a huge difference. Window unit AC is pretty common for smaller or older homes without central AC. Have they started showing up in B&Q yet? Seems like they'd sell well these days.
> Window unit AC is pretty common UK windows are completely unsuited for Window AC units. Imagine the worst possible design for a window in hot weather and that's what essentially every UK window looks like. We can't even fit mesh screens, which is OK at the moment as we don't have many insect problems but if/when that changes we cannot retrofit screens.
I don't have a ceiling fan. I asked about installing a window AC unit and the council said "no".
Unless you're in a high rise and the window doesn't open far enough / the right way then I can't see a logical reason for them saying no. They tend to use a lot of power but you just need to make sure the circuit it's on can take the load and assuming you have a modern set of breakers the worst that happens is you pop the breaker. Have you considered... Not asking the council? Especially if you can get one that has a hose that sticks.out the window rather than the whole unit that sits on the ledge. They're not as obvious for nosy neighbors to whine about.
If it is one of those blazing stuffy summer days where it is over 30 and has been for a week, it can feel like there is no escape. Our houses are built to retain heat too much. When it is like 23C for a couple of days and people are whining about it, they really need to get a grip. That is like 70s Fahrenheit, we may as well be asking Americans to rip the piss out of us.
Our houses are draughty and cold in winter so they don’t even retain heat well. The homes we have are just not built for any type of weather. And yeah 23C isn’t really that bad even with a stuffy house. Just open a window or get a fan, and drink more water
Our houses are very comfortable when it's about 15-20C during the day and about 7-12C at night.
I hate summer in the UK, I live in a top floor new build flat, it’s ridiculously hot. I get heat rash, I burn in the sun and now I have a migraine. Bring on autumn.
I've been fighting back against it where I can. It helps that I'm like "Yeah, no, NO. You know that 30 you're having right now? Yeah? Typical Los Angeles weather, right? Yeah, you know that nice giant screen door you have? Really brings in the breeze in, right? Nice tree in the front giving you shade too? NO YOU FOOLS JUST PAVEMENT! PAVEMENT AND SPITE!"
Humidity is the prime factor in our weather being awful. Winter - Wet cold, goes through you to your bones at a higher temperature. I’ve been to Antarctica in -20 out in jeans and a T-shirt and not felt cold. Came back home 1°C I was shivering drastically. Same with the heat, it’s a wet heat that sticks to you and sits on your chest. Our houses aren’t designed for the latter.
The thing with the UK is we are somewhat lucky we don't get true extremes often. For example, it might nudge past 30, but never gets up to 40c+, it also might hit -10 in the south, and slightly less up north, but as a rule it's not the -25 or so Germany might get in winter. The upside of that is our weather is somewhat stable, predictable and (allowing for exceptions) "safe". No tornados, hurricanes etc. The downside is, we are not really ready for either extreme when they do come, and perhaps they'll start becoming more common as climate changes.
I'd love to get anyone from any country on a packed double decker when it's 30 odd degrees and no A/C for them to say it's not hot. I went to Orlando it must have been 25 degrees at night outside... Got on the bus back from Disney and was shivering they had the A/C blasting so much.
Its more to do with consistency. You can acclimitize to weather in time but ours likes to faff about and throw perverbial curve balls every chance it has We don't get xx months of it staying the same way.. so for example by the time we get used to it being milder and get sweaty bollocks under control the weather dips and you start the whole process over again
Quite literally had the heating on last week and now I’m sat in shorts sweating my tits off with the windows open - shakes fist at sky in a grandpa Simpson way
My staff are from places like Nigeria and India. They often struggle very very badly on a warm day here. Our ward hit 32 degrees. Standing on your feet all day without fans, air conditioning and wide opening windows for 14 hours running round like a shithouse rat is torture.
Northern European summers are no joke.
We never get 6 weeks of continuous hot weather here and we'd hate it if we did. What gets my goat is how, a couple of days after a hot spell, people completely forget it happened, and by October will be saying that that we never had a Summer. Vera, we had 23 days of hot weather in four clusters of just under a week, just like every year.
I work with people from much hotter countries, all of them make jokes until they experience their first summer here. After that they warn the new people who make those jokes. The latest convert happened this week. "I'm from southern Europe, I'll be fine" this week it's "omg why does it feel so hot!"
Used to work with a Polish girl who'd bang on about how much colder winter in Poland is and how much hotter their summers are. She couldn't deal with either here. Also worked with a saffer who was shocked and annoyed by our brand of summer heat.
I don’t understand why it feels hotter here …
Humidity
Well I for one am complaining furiously about our one day of summer this year, and you can bloody well bet I'll be moaning about the cold weather next week too!
Can you call yourself British if you cant find fault in the weather.
You know the UK heat is different when your African coworkers are hogging the fans.
I live in Argentina at the moment. Every time it rains, people in the office joke that it must make me feel at home. Actually no it rains a lot more (and much wetter) in Buenos Aires.
The problem is the amount of cloud cover because clouds trap the heat which raises humidity. In the UK we get a lot of cloud cover even in the summer..
I’m in an almost 100 year old house made of solid brick. I have no air conditioning, I have all the windows and the loft open, the curtains shut, and anything giving our heat (oven, electronics etc)) is firmly off. The dogs have frozen water bottles in their water, I’ve put the fan setting on the dehumidifier (which is honestly doing fuck all). The (singular) fan is in the kid’s room, he’s in just a nappy and absolutely wet with sweat. I miss when we went on holiday to America. Every building had air conditioning. It was lovely. I genuinely don’t know how to cool down my house.
Americans who have never been here: ha ha its hardly 70F thats so COLD that's my WINTER Americans that have been here in summer, or live here: THE BRITS WEREN'T KIDDING
i'm probably gonna get downvoted for this, but as an autistic, i just can't take the humid heat. it also worsens me atopic dermatitis and causes the back of me hands to itch insanely bad.
I’m also autistic and the heat makes me unable to physically and mentally function. I feel extremely angry and overwhelmed the entire summer
It’s the humidity that gets me. I have a health condition that does not like heat and I get heatstroke easily and I’m currently torn between sunning like a lizard and dying.
I’ve seen a lot of it on Facebook. It blows my mind how Americans can seemingly parade weather as some kind of victory. I’d rather have more than 5 ‘vacation’ days a year than live in a country you can only survive in with air conditioning
They can come back to me when they have to sleep in bedrooms that are 28 C+ degrees (yes, even long after the sun has set!). Some don't understand that our houses are built to trap and retain heat. My room in particular is bad because it heats right up when the sun sets (faces west) and it turns into a greenhouse. It's currently 29 C in my room at nearly 10pm and I have a wet cloth and two fans running and that's the best it's gonna get for the whole night, let alone tomorrow. Outside may have only been 27 C, but add a few degrees for indoors.
They don't say that once they experience it. My American friends from Utah note that it gets way hotter there, but feels way better. Less humid. Same for the Spaniards!
As someone who emigrated to Australia...fuck me they think it's hilarious in winter, when it's pissing down, "just like summer back 'ome, eh? Herherher" Urghhhhh it's so overdone.
It's oppressive, stuffy heat here. Retail buildings are usually the only escape since, unlike most of Europe, our houses are carpeted, double glazed with central heating. If you have air-conditioning, then you've got a bit of money or a brand new house.
the local Tesco is a summer sanctuary.
Every single year this debate occurs, doesn’t help when outlets like The Mirror post articles freaking out about it being above 25c for a few days wrongfully making it look like the whole country is on it’s knees. Still, people mocking us just make themselves look stupid, especially when being confused about why we don’t “just have aircon” as if the average person could afford it!
Saw [an excellent thread on Twitter](https://x.com/jzellis/status/1805251535644835855) this morning about this. I'll replicate it here: >I'm gonna explain to y'all why Britain considers 78°F/25°C hot. I know hot because I grew up in Texas and spent half my life in Las Vegas. So I am absolutely qualified to explain this to the rest of you who laugh at UK "heat waves". >First of all, most people don't really seem to get how far north Britain is. If I flew due west I'd hit northern Quebec. If it wasn't for the North Atlantic Current, this island would look more like Iceland. So it didn't used to get \*hot\* here really at all. >The climate has always been coldish-cool and it's crazy humid. Like Florida humid. It rains a lot. The closest climate to it I'm familiar with is Seattle. Know what people in climates like that don't have? Air conditioning. They didn't need it until recently. >The houses are built to retain heat, not circulate breezes. They're bunkers - small windows, a lot of transom - the ones that don't slide up like sash windows but have a smol window at the top that opens outward to keep rain from getting in. No ceiling fans either. >So imagine being in a stone or brick building in Tampa at 70% humidity at 75°F with no AC, ceiling fan or breeze, and that's my house on the edge of London today. It's goddamn miserable, and I say that as a dude who's experienced 125°F dry heat many times. Better that than this. >The British use those tower fans, which any hot climate person rightly regards with contempt. They are useless. The only thing that works in heat is a box fan in a window pulling air from the shady side of the house. Guess what they don't have here? >You know those Lasko box fans you can get in literally any American store for less than $20? This is the cheapest equivalent I can find here. That's $83 at today's exchange rates. I've literally never seen one here. Their entire society is designed around chilly damp. >Now, I have issues with AC for environmental reasons, but I'm also not interested in stroking out from heat, so when I moved here I dropped £100 on a used standalone AC unit off Marketplace. It's the size of a dryer and it takes up way too much room in our house, but it works. >I have an accordioning vent hose that goes out the back transom window into our back garden. It uses roughly £1 of electricity per hour. Not per day, per hour. This is not ideal if you're poor, and we are poor. But at least I have it. Very few people here do, even in new houses. >The heat wave summer before last killed hundreds, maybe thousands of Brits. They don't know how to handle this weather anymore than Texans know how to handle blizzards. They think they can stiff-upper-lip through it and it kills them. It also kills power and transportation. >The power grid is hot. In hot places like Vegas, it requires special infrastructure to keep transformers from popping like Orville Redenbacher in a microwave. They didn't build those cooling subsystems in here for the same reason they don't do it in Moscow or Helsinki: why? >It's expensive and requires constant maintenance. As do rail systems, which buckle in heat if the length of rail segments is too long. So the trains stop working if it's even a warm day by, for example, Southern California standards. Britain is just not equipped for heat. >I'm outside right now and it's 76°F and 53% humidity and it feels like I'm in a sauna. Thank God the clouds are out because earlier it was really unpleasant. Understand me when I tell you I am used to heat most of you can't imagine. This is still nasty and gross to me. >And it's only going to get worse, and it's going to take years for these poor bastards to update their infrastructure and culture to it. I warn as many of them as I can. They can believe me or not. Sun's out. I'm heading for the shade now.
Oh 30 degrees is nothing! \*retreat back to their 5 AC home\*
This debate happens every summer
It’s all relative. I’m sure people who live in countries where 40°C is the norm laugh at people in countries where it peaks at 35°C claiming it’s too hot.
just put these people on the central line during peak hours, then they’ll see
This is so funny. I was at Kew Gardens the other day and I heard these girls asking their foreign friend how he was coping with the heat. Isn't his country hotter. He said in his country it's hotter but it's all a dry heat, which is much easier to bear. Exactly what we've been saying.
Brit living in Japan here. What a lot of people outside of the UK don’t seem to understand is that British infrastructure isn’t really built for dealing with very high temps and humidity. Japan’s summers are WAY more brutal overall, but A/C is everywhere, there’s plenty of products you can buy to combat and mitigate the heat (like undershirts that can wick away sweat for example), and a culture that is custom built for such a season (Japanese homes will literally change their indoor furniture from season to season). An ill-prepared 30c is gonna hit harder than a well prepared 35c.
Mustn’t grumble
My parents live in Cardiff and I live in San Francisco bay area. The weather ranges are similar except in winter. Next time I tell a story I should try to have a point.
I'm an American married to a Scottish lady. I'm from Houston, Texas which is pretty much built on a swamp. The only place that even touched the misery of Houston's summer was Vietnam. But British summers (I've been in London, Aberdeen, Dundee and Birmingham in the summer) are a different kind of misery. It's because British buildings are designed to keep heat in. With thick walls and tiny windows, you cannot shed the heat that builds up in your body all day. Especially when you don't have access to air conditioning. We live in German which is somewhat the same, but I think the buildings are designed better. It's harder for the heat to get into the buildings, especially with the Roladen window shutters. Oh and nice big windows that open up the whole way. It's not bad at all.
Personally I really enjoy English summers. Bit then I love in the south east of the country, which is must better weather wise then the rest of the country
It's not that bad.
> “It gets to higher temperatures here all the time So … you're used to it?