Air conditioning in France

Even the cinemas in France aren’t air-conditioned! That’s what an American with us the other day watching “The Interpreter” would surely have said. In fact, they usually are air-conditioned; it just happened the air conditioning wasn’t working in that cinema that evening. Interestingly, this didn’t bother most people, who went in anyway.

Southeastern France has just been through ten days or so of this-is-as-hot-as-it-gets. Temperatures have been in the mid-90’s (33-36°C). Yesterday the mercury allegedly hit 38°C (100°F). People seem very stoic about it, especially when you consider that the last time it happened in June (2003), August was even worse. For the most part, though, people also know it won’t last, in contrast to many regions of the US, where it’s this hot from May until September. Nevertheless ....

Air conditioning is a complicated business in France. Office buildings constructed within the last 10 years are often, but not always, air conditioned; older ones rarely are. Schools, many government buildings, museums, some stores, and – as we all know since the summer of 2003 – many hospitals, are not. Apartment buildings, even newly constructed ones like ours, almost never are. An air-conditioned apartment building in France is the lap of luxury.

In the US, even if your building has no central air, putting in your own (window) air conditioner is easy. You open the window, position the air conditioner, being careful not to drop it onto the sidewalk below, pull down the window, tighten a couple of screws, and you’re in business. In France, however, ….

To begin with, there are no sash windows in France (they’re called fenêtres à guillotine here!), only – you guessed it – French windows, those lovely, floor-to-ceiling affairs that let you gaze out onto the countryside or cityscape and take in the fresh morning air. So you’d have to use a free-standing unit with a tube sticking out the (open) window. Then as much hot air comes in as is evacuated by the air conditioner. When the wind blows, the very air you’ve just sent out comes blowing back in.

If this is unsatisfactory and you want to install a central air-conditioning system in your city apartment in France, you first have to deal with your neighbors. Air conditioners are noisy, especially someone else’s, and noise is one of the chief complaints of the residents of French apartment buildings. Not that French people are noisier than, say, Americans. On the contrary, they’re quieter. While Americans are taught as they grow up to speak loudly and clearly, that it is impolite to mumble, French children are taught to speak softly, especially in public. So the slightest noise bothers them: children playing in the courtyard of an apartment building, someone speaking into a cell phone on the train, etc. Even if you are installing central air conditioning in an unattached house, you should make sure the compressor unit in the backyard isn’t too close to the neighbors’ property or you will get complaints about the noise. (Funny, in our apartment building, people seem to object to the hum of an air conditioner, but not to people partying on their balconies until midnight or so, with the accompanying bursts of laughter, but I’m digressing again.)

To complicate matters further, in France you are generally not allowed to install anything in your apartment that changes the outside appearance of the building, and air conditioners do. Things that change the outside appearance, such as shutters, must be approved by a majority of the apartment owners in such a way as to give the building a uniform appearance. In other words, everyone must select the same shutters. Now in a building like ours, where most apartments have balconies that face the courtyard, not the street, it is unclear to what extent this rule applies. There is general agreement that the prohibition against hanging laundry out to dry on your balcony (most people don’t have dryers) is a firm one. Satellite dishes are a gray area, because people cannot be deprived of their droit à l’image, some kind of fundamental right to receive TV broadcasts (I wonder if that was in the European constitution...). Anyway, it clearly doesn’t apply strictly, or you wouldn’t be able to plant geraniums (or only if all owners voted to plant geraniums, but then you wouldn’t be able to plant petunias). Then there’s a whole category of items people find simply unsightly or unesthetic. In other words, they won’t want to see your stuff on your balcony, whether it’s your gardening tools, your bicycles, your fishing rods, your extra refrigerator, etc., if it happens to face their balcony. In short, there’s no way round it: you will have to get the owners of all units to approve your air conditioner by a majority vote.

What is air conditioned in France is franco-cooled, not ameri-cooled. Mind you, this has advantages. For example, you don’t need a down jacket to go into the frozen-food aisle of the supermarket. In fact, when you first walk into an air-conditioned building in France, the difference compared with the outside is relatively subtle, and only after a while do you realize that it’s actually quite comfortable. So if you want your apartment ameri-cooled (soon I’ll get rid of the hyphen), you will have to order double the recommended power ratings.

Yesterday my singing group gave a concert in a rehabilitation center. The center has existed for 30 years or so, but a spanking new wing – you know what’s coming – has just been built in the last two years. We sang in the conference center in the new wing. When we first walked into the building, it seemed air conditioned, but I wasn’t sure. Then I noticed all the windows in the conference room were open. A half-hour later I noticed sweat trickling down my back as I sang. But no one seemed to find this unusual. No one (including me!) said “For crying out loud, even this brand new building has no air conditioning!” No, everyone accepted it as normal on a hot day. I was too embarrassed to ask if the building had air conditioning.

In addition to the cost of energy, this preference for francocooling (told you) is in part because French people simply don’t like air conditioning. They think it’s unhealthy and spreads germs and diseases, such as legionellosis (it does, but only in rare cases). They think that it creates too much of a difference between indoor and outdoor temperatures, so that when you go from one to the other, the body undergoes a sort of shock. We even have one friend who insists that the difference in temperature between an air-conditioned room and the outdoors should not exceed 6°C (11°F). Thus, if it is 35°C (95°F) outside, it should be no less than 29°C (84°F) indoors. Ever work in a 29°C (84°F) office? Does this 6° rule apply in the winter, too?

Since the summer of 2003, a plan canicule or “heat wave plan” has been devised. The plan bears a lot of resemblance to the color-coded terrorist alert levels in the US. A lot of money was spent creating it; no one knows what it actually means.

Hospitals are no more air conditioned than they were two years ago. I heard a TV news report two days ago about elderly people in a small rest home or extended care facility somewhere in the south. They had 11 fans for 22 rooms.

In August 2003, when there was a power failure in New York, it was treated virtually as a healthcare emergency. People with heart conditions and other vulnerabilities were without air conditioning and this was considered very dangerous. Yet it wasn’t even terribly hot, maybe 30°C (86°F). Back in that small French rest home, the social workers said the heat was insidious. The elderly didn’t notice the heat and had to be told to drink, they said.

I remember the last time I went to a baseball game with my father. The temperature was in the mid-eighties (28-30°C) at game time and it was humid. By the seventh inning, my father’s congestive heart failure was making it hard for him to breathe. He noticed it and so did I. He said needed to get into air conditioning, which he did as soon as we got to the car.

What happens to these people in France, even in “normal” summers? Do they all pop off without anyone taking notice? I’ve been here 16 years, but this is still a topic that confuses me. Another French paradox?

When you look at these differences between France and the US – and presumably between other European countries and the US – you begin to realize the enormous amounts of energy that must be consumed air conditioning all those buildings in America and to understand why the statistics show that the United States alone emits 25% of the planet’s greenhouse gases. France could do with more air conditioning, particularly in hospitals, but couldn’t America do with a few less 65°F frozen-food aisles and air-conditioned sports stadiums?