141–150 of 494 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much electricity was the fan using? :)
Indeed, sounds like a problem with the fan. My 3000sf house uses 1100W for the fan, and about 4000W for the heat pump. I expect converting to mini-splits would increase, not decrease my overall power usage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much electricity was the fan using? :)
Indeed, sounds like a problem with the fan. My 3000sf house uses 1100W for the fan, and about 4000W for the heat pump. I expect converting to mini-splits would increase, not decrease my overall power usage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree, ducts are wonderful! If you don't have ducts, go ductless for sure.
Am I crazy, or are those two sentences completely contradictory?
Installing good insulation is also really important even if you're not using heat pumps! With bad insulation, you're wasting energy no matter what technology you're using.
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Different geographies have different requirements. You're not likely to need to face a week or more of no power after an ice storm in -10'C in Ireland.
We don't have power outages after ice storms. Temperatures of -10°C are regularly in Scandinavia as well as in Austria, Swiss and Germany. We are living in a developed world with working infrastructure. Power outages happens only by accident like when an US helicopter tries weird landings: https://www-abendzeitung--muenchen-de.translate.goog/bayern/...
You're welcome, we bombed all your infrastructure into oblivion about 80 years ago, now it's all new! And also, your country is quite a lot denser than North America, so you can bury every single power cable (though you don't, obviously) and if you think -10C is cold, just wait until you see what much of North America experiences during the winter.
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> Ducts are dead. Ducted heatpumps are a thing here in NZ and make sense to me, not that I have used one. The heatpump sits in the roof and air is pushed into three or so rooms through ducts. If building a new house I think ducts would be the way to go.
You have to think carefully about where you run the ducts. They can be a huge source of energy loss. 40% is the number quoted by the EPA. Most roofs in Australia still aren’t sealed. The air barrier and insulation barrier is the ceiling. The roof space itself is not insulated, so the ducts are exposed to extreme temperatures, thus destroying the efficiency. Here is just one article on it: https://newenergythinking.co…
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> Ducts are dead. Ducts are still needed to circulate air, especially if you want to remove stale air (e.g., bathrooms, kitchen) and bring in (filtered) fresh air (to bedrooms).
Not being snarky but why don't you just open the window for that? I have a CO2 detector that I believe is a reasonable proxy for stale air. When it goes above 1000 I simply open the windows. By the time I remember to close the windows the reading is almost always below 500.
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> Ducts are dead. Ducts are still needed to circulate air, especially if you want to remove stale air (e.g., bathrooms, kitchen) and bring in (filtered) fresh air (to bedrooms).
Not being snarky but why don't you just open the window for that? I have a CO2 detector that I believe is a reasonable proxy for stale air. When it goes above 1000 I simply open the windows. By the time I remember to close the windows the reading is almost always below 500.
A great option for keeping CO2 levels down in a house is with an HRV (or ERV) [1] that will heat the fresh air coming in to cycle it throughout the house.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Ducts are dead. Ducts are still needed to circulate air, especially if you want to remove stale air (e.g., bathrooms, kitchen) and bring in (filtered) fresh air (to bedrooms).
Not being snarky but why don't you just open the window for that? I have a CO2 detector that I believe is a reasonable proxy for stale air. When it goes above 1000 I simply open the windows. By the time I remember to close the windows the reading is almost always below 500.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't it be cheaper/easier to dig a well, fill it with tubing, and pouring concrete all over? The concrete being the constant-ish temperature heat reservoir ?
My parents built a new home a couple years ago. The property had a well despite being on city water. They have other homes with ground source heat pumps. When asking the geothermal contractor if they could use the same well borehole, the contractor said why don’t we just circulate the water and not bother the existing well. So that’s what they do - their geothermal system uses the well water, circulates it through th…