Cold rooms have improved my sleep and made my life better.
District heating/cooling should be standard :)
Newer versions of these can have par levels set for the temps and I don’t know who thinks 74f is a comfortable room temp, but no… it is not.
Fortunately, internet legends went on to explain how to put these into service mode, thereby defeating their laughable levels. Just gotta remember to put it back to their mode when you’re checking out.
But, yeah, these things fkn crank coldness. And the electric bill. And the environment.
I think if a hotel billed me for resetting their AC I would throw the bill away and see if they really want to waste their time with collections and court.
and see if they really want to waste their time with collections
It would be the collections agency who’s time would be spent in court, not the hotel’s. And collection agencies are in the business of collecting debt, so I don’t think they would see it as a waste of time.
Whoever is trying to collect on it, unless they have a posted sign to not tamper with the AC controls, with a description of the fines/fees, AND they have a way of proving I was the one who did it, I wouldn’t hesitate to dispute a charge like that. Because I’ve done it a dozen times on small BS charges from companies large and small and 90% of the time the collection or credit hit were successfully dismissed.
Pro-tip on both staying in a hotel or renting an apartment: take a video tour real fast on your way in and out. It’s one thing to dispute something harmless you did do, it’s quite another disputing actual damages that someone else did. If nothing else you get a little vacation clip to remember your stay.
Afaik when talking about computers you can be charged by acessing some thing (a site or a feature) that you know you are not supposed to. The same logic may apply here. If you got into an hotel, the unit was lockedand you used some trick to get it to do what you want, it could be illegal. They do not need a sign
OK, but my point was that the hotel will have washed their hands of your debt by the time it’s at a collections agency. How much time does it take you to dispute a collection note on your credit report? I’d guess it takes less time to take the AC unit out of service mode before you check out.
How much time does it take you to dispute a collection note on your credit report?
In most cases seconds. This all works online. There are forms. You should get to know your credit history and how to manage it, it makes a huge difference in your financial life.
I know how credit bureaus work. How often are you doing this that you’re able to find the forms, fill them out, and submit them all within seconds? Not to mention logging in to your accounts…
Even if you’re doing this all the time, it will still take longer than resetting the AC unit before you leave. I don’t know why some people seem to seek out conflicts…
I will not guide you how easy and fast it is to submit disputes, because you seem to think this is contentious and as such you will resist knowledge I share now out of spite, because you’re a human on the internet. But if you’re spending more (or less) than a few minutes a month going through the charges, you either don’t need to or don’t care or never learned. Look into it if you care.
Otherwise, I’m done trying to argue the basic point that “it’s not a big deal to leave the AC reset in a chain hotel” like i’m advocating for Unibomber-level anti establishment actions, you do you.
I got it once I looked up what a Hoth is.
I am so fucking old.
Harrow-on-the-Hill station?
Edit: Oh shit, I just now understood the name of BadLip’s Hostiles on the Hill song
I once considered moving from Seattoe to Bremerton, WA to take advantage of the much cheaper real estate. In attempt to get a feel for the daily commute, I decided to stay at a Super 8 in Bremerton for a week. 5 minutes into that experiment, I flicked on the AC unit that looks just like this one and it reeked of cat pee.
I did not move to Bremerton.
In that Super 8s probably rarely see cats who enjoy urinating on electrical equipment (although I’m sure that’s happened nonzero number of times), it’s probably a ton of condensed meth. When it’s in secondhand form, exhaled or wasted, it’s hydroscopic and instantly mixes with the room humidity, which is then processed by the A/C coils, where it accumulates.
Possibly the room was actually used to manufacture meth. I mean, I used to manage REO properties on Bremerton, and I definitely cleaned up the remains of a few meth labs.
But maybe Mr Fluffy did go to urinetown on it, who knows. Bremerton.
You just vastly improved a family story that we’ve told numerous times over the years. Thank you for sharing your meth-related knowledge.
Also, I think this hotel was across the street from a house that exploded the previous year, so yeah. Bremerton.
It was Bremerton, it was most likely meth.
You judge a city by their Super 8?
You know from staying in multiple super 8s, this would be a pretty accurate way to gauge a town
Fuck PTACs, and the developers who install them.
All over NYC, Brooklyn, Queens, Jersey City, you see fucking 1.2 million dollar condos or $5000/mo “luxury apartments” with these fuckers in every room.
It’s a giant hole in the wall, you literally can see outside if you take the plastic cover off to change/clean the filter.
They’re window units that have a dedicated window.
They’re also monstrously inefficient compared to mini splits even before you account for leaving a giant uninsulated hole in your wall with free movement of air between the inside and the outside.
I laugh every time I see one of these shoved in right below a brand new quadruple pane low-e argon filled latest ultra efficiency mega R value vinyl window. Yeah, the window is not where your air leak is, bro.
They also look huge, in Europe the standard is to have an outside unit and an inside unit.
That’s the standard in North America as well for single family homes or even condo buildings where they might put the condenser on the balcony or use a heat pump with a central loop.
I would guess these are popular in New York because they have many many old buildings with central heat and it’s easier to punch a hole in the wall then hang somethings off the building 8 floors up. Also easier to work on the unit.
On Hoth, you philistine.
Eh.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Echo_Base
The Echo Base was the facility established by the Rebel Alliance on the frigid planet of Hoth
The interior of Echo Base extended seven levels below the surface, with the lower levels for barracks, rec rooms, maintenance hangars and fuel stores.
seven levels
HOW DEEP IS A LEVEL THOUGH???
on the frigid planet of Hoth
on […] Hoth
The interior […] extended seven levels below the surface
Yeah but they probably had heat down there.
So.
The pedantry dies by the fires of warmed lower levels.
Maybe they were talking about in the wompa cave
Just like when your on a tunnel tens of feet on the Earth
“I’m in a tunnel, somewhere on Earth” – this checks out for me. Can’t add a “the,” since it’s not the Hoth.
In a tunnel
On Hoth, you philistine.
Not if they mean inside the Wampa cave
If only they weren’t so goddamn noisy.
Nah the noise is perfect to drown out every single noise in the hallway because the doors aren’t soundproof at all.
So true. Hotels, you have one job: provide somewhere for me to sleep. That means make an attempt at soundproofing. Ah well.
They’re noisy because they are inefficient. But still more efficient than any ceiling fan
I don’t know how you measure efficiency but if you measure the amount of energy required for each degree of apparent temperature dropped then a fan is way way more efficient.
efficiently doesn’t raise my energy bill :/
They’re noisy because they are inefficient.
It’s probably both noisy and inefficient if it’s made really cheap, but is that causation true?
But still more efficient than any ceiling fan
Not really comparable since ACs change the air temperature, while fans just move air.
And so energy inefficient.
Second time I’ve seen this meme… Never experienced it. They always sucked compared to even cheap window units. Half the time barely able to push below 22*. Granted I spent a lot of time as a kid on summer break locked up in a room with an 80s high end window unit that could get the room to 10* on a 25+* day.
Perhaps it’s more of an American thing, these are super common in budget hotels and have the ability to freeze you to death
I met one for the first time ever on a work trip to NC and can confim i nearly died overnight…
I think it’s down to lack of maintenance. Either there’s a refrigerant leak, or the condenser side is clogged. Most budget hotels don’t have the best maintenance.
Fuck those A/C units that require leaving a card in them to work
Eh, if you’re leaving your ac on all day when you’re out, that’s quite a waste. Card operation helps avoid accidentally leaving ac and lights on.
Is it more efficient to cycle the room temperature though? I’ve heard it’s better to get a room to temp and the machine can work less to maintain it. But maybe that’s old advice…
That is old advice. AC works pretty fast, especially in a small hotel room. If you have floor heating/cooling and a heat pump then it would make sense to leave it on all day.
Air conditioners are heat pumps.
Yes I know, I meant air/water heat pumps which heat/cool the mass of a building instead of the air. AC units are oversized more often than not and are not that efficient at modulating. I think it’s safe to say that it’s more efficient to turn it of when you leave for more than an hour or two
I think that advice is specific to the “underground heat exchanger” type of heat pump.
It’s not; air source are also not particularly fast to make significant temperature changes compared with gas or electric heat when appropriately sized.
It is more specific to radiant (water/steam/in-floor) solutions though, as that is very slow to adjust
Exactly. It’s an energy conservation measure
it really depends on for how long people leave and come back.
I haven’t seen that but I believe you. Can you not just get an extra card from the front desk, or do they have it further enshittified in some way?
I’ve been in hotels where it’s just detecting that the slot is filled the card doesn’t matter. So you just use the cardboard sleeve the card came in.
Also been in newer ones that have RFID cards though that are harder but not impossible to spoof
Oh really? I can’t say I’ve come across the RFID style—basically every hotel I’ve stayed in over the past few years still happily takes my supermarket loyalty card in the power switch thing
How do you go about the spoofing of those and is it anything simpler than just creating a duplicate card?
Yeah you’d need cheap RFID blanks and a reader/writer. I do it with my phone easily enough. Just read the hotel card, copy, write to new card
Any card works though, you can probably buy blank ones for this purpose.
A library/gym membership card or supermarket points card will work nicely. I’ve yet to find a hotel that takes electricity conservation so seriously to install card switches with RFID readers.
I haven’t gone on a vaction where I needed a hotel in a LONG time, but yes. the Ac units in every hotel room I’ve ever been in are pretty baws
I hope you’ll think about not using vacation rentals like airbnb. I obviously have no clue what you actually do on vacation.
They’re so destructive to local communities. Homes are for living, not some
entrepreneursdickbags financial instrument.Well, I prefer airbnbs and I don’t give a shit about “local communities”. If they don’t like it there, they can move. So there’s that.
Wow. Just owning it huh? What a nasty attitude.
May you be blessed with the convenience of Airbnb neighbors.
Couch surfing and hostels for the win.
This is true but I think it’s worth noting that the most impactful and worst aspects of AirBnB and its ilk are from investors buying old apartment buildings and renting them out like hotels, while dodging all the living standards and financial regulations of actual hotels. If they get away with this it absolutely wrecks the local low-income housing market.
Private homeowners renting out rooms in their houses, or even renting out their whole house, for vacationers are not really the problem.
I live in Hawai’i and I approve this message
I will never understand people who WANT to be cold. I’d rather be a sweatball than a little chilly. When I see one of these it usually get immediately turned off, because yeah, they do some fucking work.
edit: Apparently people who like to be cold are really sensitive about not being understood. 😂
Because I can’t take off my skin but I can put on more clothes/blankets. As a human nuclear furnace, I sweat and get uncomfortable as rooms start going over 70f. It’s miserable.
Calculates weird units to celsius…
What the f-
Okay. I tend to, in winter, live in ~60f. When temperature hits and stays at 70, I am moving onto the floor (ground level so cellar cools down the floors a bit)
Edit: Although I just got reminded about a coworker I knew that in winter, where we had around 5f outside, cranked his home heat to 82f. Straight up horror story for me xD
Trade ya. My feet and hands will start turning to ice in a room below 70F.
And I experience both! Thanks, Raynaud’s.
I’m the same. Usually still in a blanket even in the 70s.
I don’t want to be cold. I want to be comfortable. I want to not sweat. And for that to happen, I need the room to be cold.
Warm hotel rooms always feel stuffy, no thank you
…and smell. They’re stuffy and they smell.
Humid climates really necessitate it unless you want to swim in bed.
iirc people believe that cold environment warm insulated blanket promotes better sleeping.
because you are wrapped up burrito style like in the womb I guess. and most human heat exchange happens through the head (I read somewhere).
Yeah but straight up I’m not getting out of bed in the morning in those temperatures
Maybe it’s Placebo but I definitely get much better quality of sleep in the winter time. I keep my room very cold and I have some nice big heavy blankets to keep me warm in the bed. And winter is by far the time of year that I regularly wake up feeling refreshed and not groggy
Well I don’t want to be cold, but I crank the AC and snuggle up under the covers. It’s a treat somehow.
Amana Distinction PTAC Air Conditioner or something like it