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This required building code in all homes in Norway since 2017. It is good when the building is designed to have the system easily serviced, bad when the unit i
by olivermuty 4y ago
This required building code in all homes in Norway since 2017.
It is good when the building is designed to have the system easily serviced, bad when the unit is in a hard to get loft.
You need to change filters at least once a year to keep your indoor climate good.
I just bought an old house, sealing all the vents and installing balanced ventilation with one of these is on my list for summer of 2024. Adding 5cm of insulation (up to modern codes, from 10 to 5cm of glass wool) to keep the house even less energy demanding in winter.
- lnsru 4y agoI also bought an old house and going for 12 cm of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) insulation for outer walls in southern Germany. Plus simple combined heat pump for mild weather in living rooms and gas heating for real winter for whole house. With all this setup I am going to install central ventilation system for living rooms. It’s really really nice to have fresh air during the night. The morning in previous rental apartment was always ugly with condensed moisture on all the windows.
- stuaxo 4y agoI've been looking at spray cork. You can have it applied indoors and skimmed at only about a cm total or outdoors.
- ericd 4y agoSpray… cork? Is that just glue+cork bits? Does it end up airtight? I’ve been pretty excited about steam expanded cork boards, they apparently make for excellent (albeit expensive) exterior cladding. Ditto granules for replacing attic fiberglass, though the additional weight of a thick layer seems like it might be a problem for ceiling drywall.
- mikeyouse 4y agoNo matter the substrate, there is almost no insulation benefit to 1cm of material. It looks like cork has an R value of ~4.0/inch so 1cm is roughly R-1.5? That’s about equivalent or a single pane of glass.
- drjasonharrison 4y agoSometimes you can only economically and aesthetically add a bit until you get to the "tear it down and rebuild".
- stinos 4y agoWhy do you choose a hybrid system and not just a heatpump? I have the impression that unless your energy demand is still fairly high or the heatpump rating is too low, houses are doing fine with a heatpump and the high COP in mild weather balances the lower COP in cold winters such that overall it's still worth it.
- pitaj 4y agoMoreover, why gas instead of electric backup?
- djbusby 4y agoMaybe, like me, they've got existing gas heaters/boilers installed. When you get a heat-pump you need the backup for really cold (-20c). So you just leave the existing one in for that case.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- letitbeirie 4y agoDepending on where the furnace is located, it can be cheaper and have a lower carbon footprint. In my area of the US for example, gas costs 32￠/therm, which equates to 1.1￠/kWh. Electricity on the other hand costs 6.4￠-10.9￠/kWh (depending on time of day), and while a third of it comes from renewables, another third of it comes from coal, so it ends up being net worse for the environment than just burning the gas.
- Freak_NL 4y agoWhy EPS and not PIR?
- lnsru 4y agoEPS is like one third of PIR in €.
- Freak_NL 4y agoBut those costs are marginal in the bigger picture. With only 12cm not going for PIR while you have the chance seems just a waste of effort. It's not bad, but you're really limiting the options you have for heating.
- lnsru 4y agoThanks, I will redo my calculations. PIR 0,026 W/mK. EPS 0,035 W/mK. There is a nice difference.
- brnt 4y agoWhat costs money is mounting it onto your house. It's a really bad idea in terms of fire safety, EPS.
- tinco 4y agoEPS is a filler material for concrete structures and floating installations that easily catch fire and has mediocre thermal properties. Is it even allowed to use EPS on your walls? PIR is the typical economical material used for that kind of application. And 12cm is about the minimal thickness you'd want for decent insulation.
- lnsru 4y agoEPS will be plastered afterwards. I don’t see any problem having it between brick wall and plastered layer. 12 cm is ok for an old house. More is not economically viable.
- tinco 4y agoI got used PIR panels for cheap for my renovation. There's companies who operate large barns filled with that stuff selling it online.
- brnt 4y agoEPS is not allowed for new builds here in NL, it doesnt meet fire safety codes. To me, that means Im not using it for renovation either. PIR can be had for good prices and is superior in every metric.
- jaclaz 4y ago>You need to change filters at least once a year to keep your indoor climate good. It really depends on the location and on the specific machine/install, usually there is no need to change the filters (they are normally washable) but they should be cleaned much more often, like every 6 (or even 3) months.
- spockz 4y agoHow are you going to run the new ventilation shaft for balanced ventilation? In most houses I know that would mean tearing down/up a lot of walls and ceilings/floors. Or you have to run them on the existing ceiling and those pipes are quite large.
- ericd 4y agoUsually HVAC heat exchangers pretty close to an exterior wall, because the run to the exterior heat exchanger is ideally not too long, so you can tap into the return plenum there. But even if there’s not, there’s some flexibility in where you tap in (though some places might be more ideal than others). For us, it was just a couple 6”holes in the cinderblocks of a basement wall (at least 6 feet apart).
- HdS84 4y agoWe did this for our house built in 68. Obviously it depends on the architecture but we where able to place the central unit beneath the roof. All rooms on the first floor are connected through the roof space. A central column runs through the first floor and goes to the corridor on the ground floor. From there we where able to connect all rooms. The floor lost 15 cm height but it has 250 cm so it did not matter much. If you cannot do it you can run the pipes on the exterior walls and insulate them with ,20 cm Styropor.
- lnsru 4y agoUsing old obsolete way oversized chimney. Enough place for pipes and cables.
- drjasonharrison 4y agoLaundry chutes too
- brnt 4y agoI planned out ceiling suspended pipes in only corridors, where I figured the visual annoyance is least. 2 years in, I don't regret it at all.
- oliwarner 4y ago100mm? Not sure what your climate is but the recommendation in the UK has been 270mm for two decades (based on 0.044W/m²K fluff). It's a relatively cheap and easy upgrade.
- Freak_NL 4y agoIn an old house? Rarely. I've been able to fit 100mm of PIR (Polyisocyanurate) under my roof (1920s Dutch terraced brick house), and that is pushing it without eating too much into your living space. PIR is a great solution for space-constrained insulation though: 0.022W/m²K, so 100mm gives you a thermal resistance of 4.54m²K/W. It's the equivalent of 200mm of mineral wool with a thermal insulance of 0.044W/m²K.
- lnsru 4y ago270 mm for roof or walls? For roof yes, for walls I don’t know. I have no plan to create passive home from an old one.
- mhb 4y agoHow old? You can't put insulation around knob and tube wires since they need air around them for cooling.
- Freak_NL 4y agoIf you are doing retrofit insulation, updating the electrical stuff to modern standards is pretty much something you'll have to do anyway.
- germinalphrase 4y agoPresumably, you are entirely removing interior plaster&lathe/drywall to access wall cavity (and replace wires) rather than drill holes and blowing insulation?
- Freak_NL 4y agoIf you are upgrading the insulation from the inside you'll have whatever is the inner wall out anyway, it's pointless otherwise; if you're doing it from the outside (possible with some roofs) it doesn't matter; and filling the wall cavity is done from the outside too, unless you have a really weird house no wiring goes there.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago> If you are upgrading the insulation from the inside you'll have whatever is the inner wall out anyway In Philadelphia in 1996, I had a company blow in insulation to my wood-framed, plaster+wood-lathe covered cavity walls without removing the inner walls. They created a series of 4"/10cm holes at the top of each bay and blew the insulation in that way. ps. I later found out that this is a terrible idea for vapor control reasons.
- Freak_NL 4y agoYeah, that's basically why just putting up new walls is the long term solution. And as a bonus you can put in some sweet CAT6 cabling and enough electrical sockets while you're at it. :) Another benefit: when you take out the inner walls in an old house, you are going to find layers and layers of… stuff. Like 2cm of styrofoam (insulation in a nineties way) and a new layer of drywall on top of whatever chipboard/grout/newspapers where put in in a distant past (at least in my old house).
- wojciii 4y agoSame story in DK. I live in a house with this tech in. Also with a heat pump (ground version) and solar panels/battery to offset some of the running cost of this system. The house is uncomfortably warm during summer but ok during the rest of the year. The air is not humid enough for my tastes. The Danish company called Danfoss sells complete systems used to heat and ventilate houses. There are other systems perhaps better in terms of communication with others (control systems). My main problem with Danfoss is that I'm unable to control their products without mayor hacking. So I'm never going to buy from them again.
- jupp0r 4y agoYou are unable to regulate the temperature of the heating in your house?
- drjasonharrison 4y agoProbably unable to enjoy as much cooling as possible given existing insulation, unit size, etc. Humans don't sense temperature or wetness. We sense thermal energy flow. Two materials at the same temperature, one highly heat conductive and another poor at conducting heat will feel like they are are different temperatures. Eg, at room temperature, water and wool.
- dv_dt 4y agoPeople know if they step into a hot humid environment vs a hot dry environment. Perhaps they're just sensing some level of thermal energy flow at the skin and how fast sweat cools, but I think you sinuses, sense of taste, and lungs may also also add additional senses to differentiate.
- jannyfer 4y ago> “Humans don’t sense … wetness” I read this elsewhere too and think it’s worded incorrectly. Maybe our _bodies_ don’t have sensory receptors for wetness, but humans can “sense” it by other means (e.g. by observing change in friction, stickiness, etc) Our bodies don’t have receptors for our spouse’s emotions, but I can “sense” when my spouse is in a bad mood. Or maybe my English is just bad and it’s worded fine.
- kkfx 4y agoHum, IME the cleaning cycle of both my old and new one is three months, I generally try to flush them one time but no filter last more than 6 month. Did you have some other filters in the chain like an electrical one? No pine pollen etc around in spring?
- HyperSane 4y agoI really like the fresh air system were air from these is piped to rooms in small diameter pipes.