The Big Wet

[Andy01]

Super steamy again this morning - at 7am it was 28.1° with 93% humidity, feels like 35.0° - and climbing. I think it was the first morning ride I have done where I had sweat running down my face while doing 25km/h - normally the air movement while riding keeps the sweat at bay until I stop.

Supposed to get to 36° and feels like 41° around 1pm.

[warthog1]

This thread is making me happier with Victoria.
Winter sux a bit but Summer makes up for it.

[Andy01]

Swings & roundabouts I guess.

At least in Brisbane I don't need to be treated for hypothermia after a winter morning ride

[grt046]

This thread is making me happier with Victoria.
Winter sux a bit but Summer makes up for it.

Lived in Victoria for 29 years (Bendigo, Melbourne, Robinvale and finally Beaufort ) before moving to Townsville. I will take Brisbane weather in preference to Victoria anytime

[elantra]

This thread is making me happier with Victoria.
Winter sux a bit but Summer makes up for it.

Lived in Victoria for 29 years (Bendigo, Melbourne, Robinvale and finally Beaufort ) before moving to Townsville. I will take Brisbane weather in preference to Victoria anytime

When people think of Queensland, they assume that winter is a walk in the park (climate wise)

In fact there are lots of “cold” places in Queensland !
Stanthorpe is so notoriously cold in winter that they have erected a huge granite encased thermometer in the local park, where the Tourist information centre is.
And needless to say, Stanthorpe markets itself as a “bracing” winter’s destination for Queenslanders .
Unfortunately though, climate change may be catching up with Stanthorpe.
They haven’t had roads blocked by snow since the harsh winter of 1984.

At the far north end of Queensland there is another notoriously cold town, Herberton.
In summer it is always cooler than Brisbane, even though it is 1,500 km north, inland from Cairns.

According to Wikipedia, it is the most northerly place in Australia to have recorded a temperature of MINUS FIVE degrees C. !!!

[warthog1]

This thread is making me happier with Victoria.
Winter sux a bit but Summer makes up for it.

Lived in Victoria for 29 years (Bendigo, Melbourne, Robinvale and finally Beaufort ) before moving to Townsville. I will take Brisbane weather in preference to Victoria anytime

15 years in Alice, 6 in Mildura.
Yes I miss a bit more dry heat but not humidity.
I like to cycle as my main pass time. Not a fan of humidity for doing so.

Still will see where we end up in retirement in ~10 years. I like the wood fire in winter but that is all I like and it is too long.

[Retrobyte]

Still will see where we end up in retirement in ~10 years. I like the wood fire in winter but that is all I like and it is too long.

I lived in Tassie for 12 years, and love wood fires too. Stacking, splitting and carrying firewood is good exercise but you get sick of that after a while - especially when it's raining and you get home from work and need to get the fire going.

[warthog1]

Still will see where we end up in retirement in ~10 years. I like the wood fire in winter but that is all I like and it is too long.

I lived in Tassie for 12 years, and love wood fires too. Stacking, splitting and carrying firewood is good exercise but you get sick of that after a while - especially when it's raining and you get home from work and need to get the fire going.

I like getting out in the trol to get it at the wood collection area out bush. A bit of chainsaw work I enjoy as well as just being out bush.
Splitting and stacking not so much.
I refuse to run the gas central heating with the gas price being what it is.

[foo on patrol]

This thread is making me happier with Victoria.
Winter sux a bit but Summer makes up for it.

Lived in Victoria for 29 years (Bendigo, Melbourne, Robinvale and finally Beaufort ) before moving to Townsville. I will take Brisbane weather in preference to Victoria anytime

We were training in -3 to -9 temps out Ipswich to Boonah when I was a youngin and it would take near 6-7hrs for the pain to leave my fingers.

Foo

[grt046]

15 years in Alice, 6 in Mildura.
Yes I miss a bit more dry heat but not humidity.
I like to cycle as my main pass time. Not a fan of humidity for doing so.

Still will see where we end up in retirement in ~10 years. I like the wood fire in winter but that is all I like and it is too long.

My brother is still living in Bendigo but spends most of each winter holidaying on the Sunshine Coast with other Victorians ..... would spend longer if the budget would allow. Has been doing it for 10 years now ..... books a year ahead

[warthog1]

My brother is still living in Bendigo but spends most of each winter holidaying on the Sunshine Coast with other Victorians ..... would spend longer if the budget would allow. Has been doing it for 10 years now ..... books a year ahead

Yes your Winter sounds much better (apart from all the bloody tourists )

[vbplease]

Super steamy again this morning - at 7am it was 28.1° with 93% humidity, feels like 35.0° - and climbing. I think it was the first morning ride I have done where I had sweat running down my face while doing 25km/h - normally the air movement while riding keeps the sweat at bay until I stop.

Supposed to get to 36° and feels like 41° around 1pm.

I’ve been surviving the rides ok.. I just embrace the fully drenched kit, sweat covered sunnies etc.

What I’ve been struggling with is the heat and humidity at night time while trying to get to sleep.. living in a character qlder is tough in summer.. I’m thinking we’ll have to bite the bullet and get ducted a/c.

[elantra]

Super steamy again this morning - at 7am it was 28.1° with 93% humidity, feels like 35.0° - and climbing. I think it was the first morning ride I have done where I had sweat running down my face while doing 25km/h - normally the air movement while riding keeps the sweat at bay until I stop.

Supposed to get to 36° and feels like 41° around 1pm.

I’ve been surviving the rides ok.. I just embrace the fully drenched kit, sweat covered sunnies etc.

What I’ve been struggling with is the heat and humidity at night time while trying to get to sleep.. living in a character qlder is tough in summer.. I’m thinking we’ll have to bite the bullet and get ducted a/c.

I’m just south of the Qld border near Mur’bah.
Here the overnight minimums have been 22 - 24 degrees C most nights recently.
I feel that this is doable without A/C but anything more than that is nighttime A/C territory.
And I think Brisbane has been up to 26 degrees C some nights.

However my experience with ducted A/C was not good when I lived in Bris.
It eventually stopped working completely because of possums, geckos a perhaps rats attacking it in the roof space.
And before it stopped working it was costing a fortune.
In my (limited) experience, just a room aircon is much better !

[Andy01]

Super steamy again this morning - at 7am it was 28.1° with 93% humidity, feels like 35.0° - and climbing. I think it was the first morning ride I have done where I had sweat running down my face while doing 25km/h - normally the air movement while riding keeps the sweat at bay until I stop.

Supposed to get to 36° and feels like 41° around 1pm.

I’ve been surviving the rides ok.. I just embrace the fully drenched kit, sweat covered sunnies etc.

What I’ve been struggling with is the heat and humidity at night time while trying to get to sleep.. living in a character qlder is tough in summer.. I’m thinking we’ll have to bite the bullet and get ducted a/c.

My advice would be to pass on the ducted and get a few split units instead. Several people I know have complained (some to the point of ripping it out) about the cost of running ducted.

Most ducted systems have a single, usually centralised, air return duct, often in a hallway or even living area, so it becomes difficult to run only one or two bedrooms at night - because usually you would close the bedroom door, but this "excludes" the return duct, so the AC keeps sucking warm air from the room that contains the return duct and pumps cooled air into the closed off bedrooms, so it keeps working hard.

They are great if you want to cool the entire house, but often suck if only a couple of rooms require cooling.

My BIL (who is a sparky with an fridgy ticket) fitted a ducted system to his old house about 18 years ago, and they got a massive bill shock after the first summer (pre-solar), and were reluctant to use it for a few years. When he got his fridgy ticket he ripped the ducted system out and fitted 5 split units to replace it. The first summer saw a bill 1/3 of the one when they ran the ducted system.

They built a new house 2 years ago, and he has fitted only split units to it as well.

Another mate has had ducted for a few years and last year the compressor unit gave problems and it cost him more to replace it than having two decent split units installed.

Bunnings sells the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (very different from Mitsubishi Electric apparently) split units at a decent price, and that was what was recommended to me (by both my BIL and his experienced AC fitter) 13 months ago to replace my deceased Fujitsu bedroom unit.

https://www.bunnings.com.au/mitsubishi- ... t_p0508253 - "normal" bedroom unit.

https://www.bunnings.com.au/mitsubishi- ... t_p0508255 - this is what I got for my larger bedroom & ensuite. It works REALLY well.

[am50em]

I have ducted system with 4 zones. 2 upstairs and two downstairs. Really only need to turn the upstairs zones which includes the return. The modern Mitsubishi Electric unit is very efficient. The installers would put in any brand but were dead against Mitsubishi Heavy units mostly due to level of support in NSW. Solar PVs were installed to run a/c at no cost. Try not to run in peak period 6 to 9pm. Cool the house during the afternoon while sun is shining.

[jasonc]

I have 5 split systems, about to be 6. Not a fan of the single point of failure of a ducted system in these conditions. Yes, we've recently replaced one that was 12 years old. They don't last forever
My boss had his outdoor unit fail on his ducted system. Was between 10 and 12k to replace

[vbplease]

Some great advice there regarding ducted vs split system- much appreciated. I’ll do a bit more research before making the investment.

I’ve found summers in the past to be “uncomfortable”, but the past few nights have been the first to inhibit sleep.. which kinda sucks if a $10k+ investment is necessitated by only a handful of extreme days out of the year.. but I suppose our summers aren’t getting any cooler.

[Andy01]

I think it also depends on individual circumstances. For example, we are empty nesters, so running a ducted system to cool at least half the house would be lunacy compared with running one 3.5kW system in our bedroom. If, however, you need to cool 3-4 bedrooms then the ducted may make a little more sense.

It is also worth noting (because some people don't know) that the kW rating quoted for AC units bears little resemblance to the power used. For example a 2.5kW bedroom is 2.5kW of effective cooling power. It doesn't ever draw 2.5kW of power. The peak power draw for a 2.5kW unit is closer to 0.75kW, and even that is only when it is running flat out lowering the temp initially. Then the modern inverter units just modulate their power to maintain the chosen temp, which uses FAR less power, especially at night.

I generally run my bedroom AC (3.5kW split - my bedroom, dual walk-in robes & large ensuite total about 39m² with 2.55m ceilings) every night (unless we get an unusually cool spell) from early December to mid March. I usually start it around 8:30pm, set to 20° and Auto fan, and when I get to the bedroom usually between 9:30-10pm, the bedroom is around 20° and significantly lower humidity than the rest of the house (setting a low temp seems to help the dehumidifying effect). I turn it back to 23° and a low (quiet) fan speed when I go to bed around 10pm. I turn it off at 5:45am usually when we wake up - I suspect that most of the night (excepting recent stupidly hot nights in Brisbane) it is just idling to maintain the temp.

Looking back at some summer & winter Origin bills (that show start & end readings as both Actual, rather than one Estimated reading), my typical winter usage is around 11kWh per day, and my typical summer usage is around 14.5kWh per day.

To note;

- My "winter" bill runs from early June to early September (so truly winter).

- My "summer" bill runs from early December to early March (so truly summer).

- I NEVER run any AC for heating (or any other heater for that matter) in winter, so it is only ever used in summer.

- My loungeroom AC, which is a 5kW split unit and I only do if the room itself is over 27° around 7pm - then it runs usually from about 7pm to 9:30-10pm. I don't keep a record of how often it runs, but over the 3 months, probably around 15-30 times most summers, maybe a bit more, so not too often.

- These readings are my "normal" meter only and exclude my electric water heater and also exclude any power consumed during the day directly from my solar. This means that my bedroom AC (which only ever runs outside of solar hours) would be a distinct difference.

So, from this I would guess that the ±3.5kWh (coincidental, but unrelated to the AC unit's 3.5kW rating) difference (between winter & summer) per day is mostly (perhaps 75-80% ?) from the bedroom AC, making it consume around maybe 2.5kWh per day, which at even the current tariff of $0.31/kWh means it costs under $0.80/day for a great night's sleep every night. In my book it is worth every penny to have a super-pleasant "refuge" to go to every night.

Obviously for a smaller bedroom with a 2.5kW split unit the running cost would be even lower - probably closer to $0.50/night.

I have no idea what it would cost to keep a 14kW or larger ducted system cooling half the house (at least - depends on the house) running, but it would certainly be a LOT more than my 80 cents/night for my house.

[mikesbytes]

My house has a ducted system to the 4 bedrooms and you can select which of the 4 bedrooms receive the cooling/heating. I have seen some older systems that don't have the ability to select which rooms receive, I'm assuming that most if not all modern ducted systems do room selection. What you can't do with the room selection is have different settings for different rooms, so if the occupant(s) of one bedroom want a different setting to the occupants of another bedroom then ducted won't provide it. In those cases an overhead fan makes a noticeable difference.

My lounge room has a split system and tends to get used for short bursts when the room is first occupied, it seems to cool the room a lot quicker than the ducted system in the bedrooms. Could be a number of factors about my house that are influencing that.

[am50em]

Each outlet in my ducted system has simple mechanical adjustment of airflow from none to full so can individually adjust per room.

[Andy01]

My house has a ducted system to the 4 bedrooms and you can select which of the 4 bedrooms receive the cooling/heating. I have seen some older systems that don't have the ability to select which rooms receive, I'm assuming that most if not all modern ducted systems do room selection. What you can't do with the room selection is have different settings for different rooms, so if the occupant(s) of one bedroom want a different setting to the occupants of another bedroom then ducted won't provide it. In those cases an overhead fan makes a noticeable difference.

My lounge room has a split system and tends to get used for short bursts when the room is first occupied, it seems to cool the room a lot quicker than the ducted system in the bedrooms. Could be a number of factors about my house that are influencing that.

Curious how it works if you just wanted one bedroom cooled ? Is there a return duct in each bedroom ?

The issue I've seen with them is that the cooling unit always sucks air via the return duct, so if the room being cooled doesn't have the return duct in it (eg. if the return duct is in a hallway outside a closed bedroom door), warm air is continually sucked in to be cooled which makes the system work much harder than if the already cooled air is drawn back into the cooling unit (like happens with a split system).

This, of course, doesn't affect the room being cooled (it still receives cool air) - it just means that the AC system is working at a higher work load due to the continuous supply of warm air instead of being supplied with increasingly cool air.

Perhaps the newer (or more costly) systems are different and maybe have return ducts for each room as well so that a single room can be cooled efficiently ?

[mikesbytes]

My house has a ducted system to the 4 bedrooms and you can select which of the 4 bedrooms receive the cooling/heating. I have seen some older systems that don't have the ability to select which rooms receive, I'm assuming that most if not all modern ducted systems do room selection. What you can't do with the room selection is have different settings for different rooms, so if the occupant(s) of one bedroom want a different setting to the occupants of another bedroom then ducted won't provide it. In those cases an overhead fan makes a noticeable difference.

My lounge room has a split system and tends to get used for short bursts when the room is first occupied, it seems to cool the room a lot quicker than the ducted system in the bedrooms. Could be a number of factors about my house that are influencing that.

Curious how it works if you just wanted one bedroom cooled ? Is there a return duct in each bedroom ?

The issue I've seen with them is that the cooling unit always sucks air via the return duct, so if the room being cooled doesn't have the return duct in it (eg. if the return duct is in a hallway outside a closed bedroom door), warm air is continually sucked in to be cooled which makes the system work much harder than if the already cooled air is drawn back into the cooling unit (like happens with a split system).

This, of course, doesn't affect the room being cooled (it still receives cool air) - it just means that the AC system is working at a higher work load due to the continuous supply of warm air instead of being supplied with increasingly cool air.

Perhaps the newer (or more costly) systems are different and maybe have return ducts for each room as well so that a single room can be cooled efficiently ?

The configuration of the house is 2 bedrooms upstairs with 2 bedrooms downstairs directly below the upstairs bedrooms. There's a staircase that has a landing and turnaround stairs continuing. The duct is above the end of the stairwell upstairs so is taking in the warm air from the staircase area which would be replenished with more warm air raising from down stairs. It isn't as efficient as taking the air from the bedroom(s) being cooled but it does indirectly contribute to the cooling of the front of the house.

Hopefully I'll have solar later this year if the reno plans work out

[Andy01]

Interesting, thanks.

[mikesbytes]

Adding to the split vs ducted debate. In my situation it would be difficult but not impossible to locate 4 split systems outdoors, one bedroom in particular. The one large outdoor system is a bit of bother as it is though.

[robbo mcs]

Ducted systems are getting a bit of a bad rap on here, not all deserved.

The thing about then sucking warm air in the inlet is a bit of furphy. The air circulates from the high pressure area (rooms with outlet vents) to a central low pressure area with the inlet vent, usually in a hall. Normally the area where the vent is only 1-2C warmer than the rooms with outlet at the most, more often the same temperature. It is not like you are sucking it from 40C outside. So if you are just running a zone in one room, then it is only cooling that room and the hall.

Ducted generally is more efficient at keeping temperatures even within a room and across the house.
Also generally quieter than a split, talking about the air circulation, not the compressor which is the same.

The other thing about ducted systems is they are very efficient at equalising temps and spreading cool or warm air, even when not used in heating or cooling mode, just with the fan. So if you have a hot half of the house facing west, and a cool half facing east, you can run in low speed fan mode, and equalise the temps, even without running the compressor.

The modern ducted control systems are generally extremely flexible, and tend to offer a lot more fancy remote access options and smart control systems than splits

I have a house with ducted, and a holiday place with splits. I travel a lot, and stay in a lot of accomodation mostly with splits. I would rather have ducted any day for a house, unless it is tiny. A small apartment, then split is probably just as good