English word of the day: Air ducts
It is currently 112°F (44°C) outside in the sun, according to my home thermostat. The kids have been at home all week long since our town has asked that parents keep them home “if possible”.
The alternative being of course, sending them to the sauna that is their school, since it is not air conditioned. Not the most ideal conditions to write this newsletter, but there you have it.
The current canicule (heat wave) started last Thursday and is forecast to continue till the end of Saturday. And let me tell you Saturday cannot get here soon enough.
The folie (madness) of course is that barely 25% of France is air-conditioned, and most of those is private businesses. Not homes, not public buildings, not essential services. (More on that later.)
So yes, this may be a rather cranky newsletter, because have I mentioned this is the 2nd major heatwave of 10+ days and we are only in June?
“Why don’t French people just buy an air conditioner and put it in?” you might say. The reason is our English word of the day, because the French don’t have them: Air ducts.
With various governments leading a pathological level of self-sabotage for the past 40+ years in France, there are no mandated air ducts for ventilation (conduits d’air) in buildings and home construction, even in recent buildings.
I have family members living in the South of France, who live in a 1990s building where there are simply no internal air ducts for ventilation. They installed air conditioning in their apartment in accordance with planning permissions, but the only way to do so was with the ugly exterior units to evacuate the hot air outside onto a balcony.
I note that it is a building from the 1990s because every house or apartment that I have lived in in Canada was constructed before the 90s, and did have air ducts going into every single room, including the bathrooms. Normale, quoi.
This isn’t a new fan-dangled technology, and we are not talking about old historical buildings here in France.
Living and vacationing in a number of apartments and houses in France for 15+ years, I have never seen that normal North American-style ductwork here. (Only one of the apartments I lived in in France was a Hausmannian from the 1860s, which it is normal that that wouldn’t have ductwork.)
Everything else was more recent or recently renovated and you would think theoretically, would have construction norms requiring duct work. The luxury of central heat in the winter and cold air in the summers is apparently just that: a luxury.
So to answer the question earlier, only 25% of France has air conditioning is because planning permissions are not easy to get, because of course those sorts of individual units are loud, not state-of-the-art, and pretty fugly to look at.
Compare that to central air with air ducts buried in walls and ceilings, which only need one giant unit to heat and cool an entire building or home. And they usually evacuate out of roof, not stick out on a window or balcony.
Have I mentioned most French public buildings like schools, hospitals, old age homes, libraries, etc. are equally not air conditioned? Basically the weakest members of society, who don’t have a choice of where they get to be.
Case in point, a state-of-the-art hospital is currently being built in the city of Nantes for a cost of €1.2 billion to be completed in 2028 with no air con.
At a public level, governments of course don’t have to install air conditioning, if the assumption is that it is not necessary. But to speak of global warming and yet continue new building construction norms for decades without air ducts for the possibility of future cooling systems…? The mind boggles.
And it will continue to boggle, because you can read my article on why the French are so stubborn about air ducts and aircon and my newsletter from last summer when we went through the exact same thing. Please send hope and fresh air.
In other news:
- It is so hot at the moment, even the cooling system under Paris’s La Defense business district is running out of cool air. It is not traditional air conditioning, it is a cooling system that makes ice at night time and weekends when not in use, and then uses that to cool down 1.5 acres (6000 m2) of surface area. But since it is so hot, the system doesn’t have enough time to make enough ice. (Funny how I’ve never heard of this problem with a regular aircon system.)
- The regional Basque language is alive and well, with 155 students in the city of Bayonne deciding to write their high school Maths Bac exam in Basque, rather than French.
- The recent G7 summit was held in the French town of Evian, but unfortunately it was the nearby Swiss city of Geneva that saw G7 protestors and riots. Evian which is 50km away, was tightly locked down so the Swiss (who are not even part of the G7) had were the ones to pay the price.
And in the blog:
Saint Sulpice church: Historic church of Paris’s nobility
Discover the Church of Saint-Sulpice on Paris’s Left Bank. From its history, what to see inside, and whether it is worth visiting.
Pan-seared Salmon with Hollandaise sauce
Cooked in 30 minutes or less, this pan-seared salmon served with delicious homemade hollandaise sauce makes a wonderful lunch or dinner.
Potato egg salad with greek yogurt dressing
This protein-filled potato salad includes eggs and greens tossed in a tangy homemade greek yogurt dressing for a delicious side dish, family dinner, or picnic.