Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to build homes with virtually no heating (2020)

archipro.co.nz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 335 posts

Re: How to build homes with virtually no heating (2020)

#121

Post by mdp2021 »

elric wrote: post #105
mdp2021 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with good ventilation Mandate windows?! > heat pumps That means (if I understand you correctly), fans. That is noise pollution - some will not have it, and some will not bear it. And (after experience), heat pumps can be inadequate for heating: they can raise a temperature, not warm the environment.

You're wrong on both counts. Windows don't make for very good ventilation. They are prone to letting in either too much or too little air, which means you're either wasting a lot of heat, or are not getting enough fresh air. Mechanical ventilation with energy recovery is far superior. Windows, of course, are great for letting in natural light and for creating a sense of spaciousness etc. Heat pumps don't always need…

> Windows don't make for very good ventilation

The point was not with ventilation quality, but with the feasibility and compromises of alternatives. (The strict point was with defining "mandating good ventilation".) Mechanical ventilation with energy recovery may be far superior, but if that means constant noise it will be an issue - to some, a radical issue.

> They definitely can warm an entire house

And I have stated that they can be perfectly inadequate and ineffective (explicitly: which is not contradicted by your statement). Evidently, it will depend on implementation, and again on the expected effect (where temperature is only a partial factor).

Speaking of implementation, I have been in hotels where the heating pumps were unbearable in that they made the room tremble and clearly vibrate.

So, when one speaks of mandating technologies, there are critical implementational issues to be remembered, and the "embrace" drive is to be immediately criticized (just applying one's usual duly Reflection). It is relevant that I have seen in the past legislation mandating some technologies only halfway trough (e.g. mandating valves without mandating pressure control systems), creating immense damages on large territories.

Edit: also:

> Heat pumps don't always need big fans ... Not much louder than a gas furnace

You have not stated they are perfectly silent, 0db - in fact, you seem to suggest the opposite. As said, some do not tolerate background noise.

I do not see where you read anything wrong.

Re: How to build homes with virtually no heating (2020)

#122

Post by dx034 »

Mromson wrote: post #11

It saddens me that construction quality is almost irrelevant when building a new building nowadays. The profit difference between a well-isolated passive building and one that merely meets the minimal standards, is often very small, so why bother building a passive building? My personal interest in passive buildings generally revolve around maintenance. Passive houses seem to require far less maintenance.

I doubt the maintenance part. I lived in one and experienced more maintenance. You have the heat exchanger as an additional moving part which needs cleaning, new filters, etc.

Also, you need a perfect seal between inside and outside. So any cables going outside (blinds, air conditioning which you'll still want if it's 40C outside, etc) needs to be sealed and is thus much harder to replace or repair.

Re: How to build homes with virtually no heating (2020)

#123

Post by dx034 »

mdp2021 wrote: post #82
mcot2 wrote: post #15

I wish more municipalities would mandate tighter homes with good ventilation. Recently when searching for a new home it was so dishearting to see brand new developments where the homes had standard insulation, bad orientation for things like solar and passive heating and giant fossil fuel based heating systems instead of heat pumps. I decided to instead go the oppostie direction and buy a 1960’s split level that I am…

> with good ventilation Mandate windows?! > heat pumps That means (if I understand you correctly), fans. That is noise pollution - some will not have it, and some will not bear it. And (after experience), heat pumps can be inadequate for heating: they can raise a temperature, not warm the environment.

If you ventilate purely via windows, you'll need to always pay attention to avoid any mould. With a ventilation system hooked up to a heat exchanger, there's basically zero chance you'll ever experience mold.

Re: How to build homes with virtually no heating (2020)

#124

Post by dx034 »

patrickk wrote: post #96
mdp2021 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with good ventilation Mandate windows?! > heat pumps That means (if I understand you correctly), fans. That is noise pollution - some will not have it, and some will not bear it. And (after experience), heat pumps can be inadequate for heating: they can raise a temperature, not warm the environment.

Modern air or ground source heat pumps tend to be quiet, even silent, at least according to some deep dives down the Youtube rabbit hole on passive houses. Check out the "Moonstone house" on Youtube for example. https://youtu.be/sSE8PurhfQs

My neighbour has a air heat pump for a ~200m2 house with good insulation, but not a passive house. It's at the edge of his property so I regularly pass it. I'd say you need to be less than a meter away to hear it at all, and even then it sounds like a fan. There's absolutely no vibration or so.

However, the house is new, let's see how it the unit sounds in 5-10 years.

Re: How to build homes with virtually no heating (2020)

#125

Post by Gravityloss »

kitd wrote: post #64
poseva wrote: post #43

I've also built a simple and small (99sqm) PassivHaus in Romania, 5 years ago. Everybody, and I mean everybody from family to friends called me nuts, but I've got my payback this winter when the energy prices went trough the roof and I'm just slightly affected. The house is elevated from the ground on 12 concrete columns so that I can insulate under the foundation beams using glass foam, insulation on walls is 30 cm…

It is interesting that you insulate under the house. One of the more intriguing passive house designs I saw was one where the insulation went down 2-3m into the ground all around the house footprint. This trapped the natural ground heat within that area and fed it upwards into the house. It took about 18 months for the ground to warm up, but once it was there, the ground/house warmed itself with virtually no input. T…

How would that work? Average temperature in the UK is about 15 C. If your house is at 24 C, this would mean you are constantly leaking heat into the ground from the bottom...

I guess one can consider the cube of earth an insulator, it's got a lousy insulation value per meter but it makes it up in thickness.

Re: How to build homes with virtually no heating (2020)

#126

Post by dx034 »

wcoenen wrote: post #61
mattlondon wrote: post #33

I wonder how these "no heating"/"no cooling" homes work in situations like mine: my wife is permanently freezing cold, sitting around inside with multiple layers on, sometimes a blanket, and the heating on full-blast while I am walking around in shorts and t-shirt sweating? I.e. people have different ideas about what a comfortable temperature is. In my wife's example it seems like unless she can actually "feel the he…

It's the opposite for us; I'm the one feeling cold, while my wife is comfortable. I started wearing a layer of thermal underwear in the cold seasons to compensate.

For me, socks did the trick. I never had cold feet but always felt colder than colleagues in the office. An additional layer of socks made me feel warm enough to agree with the others on a thermostat setting. Still amazes me how much of an effect this had.

Re: How to build homes with virtually no heating (2020)

#127

Post by mschuster91 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #87
poseva wrote: post #43

I've also built a simple and small (99sqm) PassivHaus in Romania, 5 years ago. Everybody, and I mean everybody from family to friends called me nuts, but I've got my payback this winter when the energy prices went trough the roof and I'm just slightly affected. The house is elevated from the ground on 12 concrete columns so that I can insulate under the foundation beams using glass foam, insulation on walls is 30 cm…

We’ve just built a 45m2 log cabin to passive standards here in Portugal - heavily insulated in walls, floor, roof, lifted off the ground on concrete columns, double glazed, only heat source is a 2.5kw log stove. Everyone here (who all live in uninsulated concrete houses heated by open fireplaces) said we will freeze in the winter, roast in the summer. We situated the house on a north facing slope, to minimise sun exp…

> Insulation works. It’s also cheap. I don’t understand why people would build new structures without it.

People are a bit sceptical about many insulation forms... plastic-based stuff is either a fire hazard (see Grenfell Tower) or extremely toxic waste (if it has been treated with fire suppressants), asbestos is completely banned for good reasons, and rock/glass wool can also spread nasty ultra-fine dust.

Re: How to build homes with virtually no heating (2020)

#128

Post by morsch »

The article shows off snazzy housing for wealthy people, but as far as I know all new housing finished in the EU as of 2021 is supposed to be built to these standards. So it's not restricted to architecture magazine, it's just regular houses.

See e.g. https://www.igbc.ie/nzeb/

Re: How to build homes with virtually no heating (2020)

#129

Post by lbriner »

KaiserPro wrote: post #111
ricardo81 wrote: post #103

I'm in the UK which has one of the oldest/energy inefficient housing stocks in Europe. After buying a house built in 1890 I've been made more aware how poor they can be. After replacing the old secondary glazed windows and replacing the old inefficient gas boiler, I'm moving onto replacing the front and back door, and insulating the suspended floor, walls and room in roof. The walls are solid whinstone about 600mm th…

The next most effective thing to do is External wall insulation. However that'll mean that you'll loose the whinstone look. (unless you pay a _lot_ to get whinstone like shims put on after) The alternative is to have internal wall insulation: https://www.insulationsuperstore.co.uk/product/vacutherm-vac... This is as effective as ~150mm of rockwool, but only 20mm thick. So this can be stuck behind plaster/plasterboard…

An easier solution is plasterboard already bonded to PIR or XPS. The XPS is cheaper and I don't think it will make a massive difference depending on all the other challenges like windows and doors. You can simply stick this to existing walls with adhesive foam and then dry-line or skim the boards afterwards.

To do it well, though, you will often need to cut out/remove any laminate flooring so the boards can meet the floor and they won't do anything about leakage between floors, which can be significant.

Re: How to build homes with virtually no heating (2020)

#130

Post by sambeau »

SenHeng wrote: post #6

I'm in the middle of building a PassivHaus. The building itself is mostly done and we're working on the interior. There are still a few gaps that haven't been plugged and the heat exchangers have not yet been installed. I'm above 800m elevation, snowstorms every weekend. It's cold here. My house also actually faces West instead of South, so I'm not getting much heat from the sun. This was a surprise to use because th…

Is a stove like that not really dangerous in an air-tight house? Where do the fumes go?
Post reply on HN