2 ms·

Heat pumps need plumbing and installation which increases the construction cost. Agreed that they are the way to go, but it's not going to bring down construct

• throw0101a 5y ago
  > Heat pumps need plumbing and installation which increases the construction cost. So do radiant floor heating or straight-out radiators. And force air needs ducting, which takes up a lot of volume: and unless you use floor trusses instead joists, you have to be a creative with the design of your runs. What HVAC system would you suggest?
  • wffurr 5y ago
    How should I know? It depends on what you are trying to optimize for. The author seems to think if you want to minimize on-site construction costs, a radioisotope thermal generator is the way to go. That's pretty far out there. My comment was simply explaining why the author brought up resistive electric heat at all. Though why not just use the waste heat from the RTG, but then we are back to needing ducting I guess. Ultimately it depends on what tradeoffs you want to make and your local climate. I think district-based aka neighborhood scale geothermal is promising from a sustainability perspective, but introduces a significant coordination problem.