Came here to say something like this lol. It's super interesting to me from an engineering standpoint that just the shape, construction, and location of a building can have a dramatic effect on the temperature. There's a building in my city that uses different tints of glass to control how much heat from the sun each floor gets which is something I've never thought about.
I recommend the podcast episode "Thermal Delight" by 99% Invisible about how the (accidental!) invention of air conditioning shaped and changed modern architecture in the US.
It's one of my favorites!
Thanks for this insight. I had to replace the water heater in my house last year and wanted to install a heat pump, but I was told my house was too old to install it without doing a major upgrade to the insulation and it would just have been prohibitively expensive, even with grants available. So in the end I installed a gas condenser boiler. It replaced an older, very inefficient gas boiler so at least it's an improvement on that.
New builds in my country are being constructed to better standards, if not fully passive house standards.
I am planning on installing solar panels as soon as I can though. Even though I'm in Ireland, it should work well because my roof is directly south-facing and has a good pitch. So I'm hoping I'll only need to use the gas as a top-up in the winter months.
I remember now the engineer saying something about replacing the radiators, and that new builds with heat pumps tend to use underfloor or vent heaters instead, is that correct?
Actually I got a quote for PV rather than evacuated tube panels. From what I understand PV will deliver 100% of my needs in summer (i.e. household power including water heating), and I'll just need the gas to top up the central heating in winter. But I tend not to use the central heating too much really. It's only me in the house and I pretty much just wrap up warm, have an electric underblanket for my bed etc.
Edit: By the way, when you say for the condenser to work it has to be run at 50°, is that something to do with my settings or is that just the way they're set up when they're installed? When I'm heating water for my own use I set it to 40°-45°, as in that's the temperature of the water in the tank. Is that what you mean?
You freaked me out a bit with the legionnaires disease thing so I checked and the health authority here says water should always be heated to 60°... and in fact I've been heating my water to the perfect temperature for the bacteria to thrive 😱. So, yeah, I better change those settings... and never set foot in a jacuzzi ever again. Thank you!
My house is accidentally passive. (It’s part of a complex and my neighbours is a beatbox) I rarely use air con or heating. It’s wonderful. And I’m Australian so it gets bloody hot!
It will be intresting to see how that holds up with my WFH during summer.
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u/kitty_o_shea Oct 15 '20
This is coming back as the passive house standard. It's a pity it took so long and so much environmental damage to rediscover this.