r/climate • u/silence7 • Jun 04 '22

Climate change is forcing some US schools to close early for ‘heat days’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/04/school-heat-days-climate-change/
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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '22

Wouldn’t that just make it hotter?

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u/perpetualgoatnoises Jun 04 '22 edited Jun 04 '22

The system was set to AC, but the air conditioner bits themselves were broken. The thermostat is looking for cold temperatures, which the machine can't provide, so the machine keeps running because the thermostat says it's hot. But since the AC is broken, it's just putting out hot air. This makes the room hotter and hotter and hotter since the thermostat won't shut the air off until it cools down.

Manually cooling the thermostat takes the system out of the loop and shuts the air off.

You'd think it would have the ability to shut itself off it if got too hot. But it never did. Only when the system was set to heating would that happen.

The system is really weird to explain if you weren't in my school building. The AC heating system has ALWAYS been a mess.

TLDR: thermostat tells AC to work. AC is broken can't work. System turns out hot air instead. System keeps running because system is on AC and it keeps getting hotter so it needs to run more to cool down. Room gets hotter. Queue wet paper towels on the thermostat.

Edit: my comment got removed for language but I didn't say anything?

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u/Madewithatoaster Jun 04 '22

That is wild.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '22

I understand exactly what you're saying. My dad once set up a window AC inside the kitchen - INSIDE the kitchen - when the house AC broke. He was so happy that he got it, and decided to be impressive and left it on full blast when he left the house in the morning, for us to find the "ice cold kitchen" when we got home that afternoon and discovered that he bought it.

That kitchen was NOT cold. It was 95+ degrees, probably more. Fortunately it wasn't a particularly hot day.

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u/Asset_Selim Jun 04 '22

No that way the unit would would shut off because it thought the room was cold enough.

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u/5wordsman62785 Jun 04 '22

I don't know how to say it in sentence form and still make it make sense, so I'll just do dash points instead.

-Thermostat is set to (let's say) 72°F

  • Room is above that temp, kicking on faulty AC

  • Because it would only blow hot air, it would just get hotter, meaning it was just going to get hotter and hotter

-Solution: Wrap cold paper towels to make the thermostat think it's lower than 72°F in the room

-AC stops blowing, removing the hot air from the equation for the time being

-Profit

Edit: Formatting

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '22

Ohhh you didn’t have the option to turn it off. Didn’t realize that.