Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Ground sourced heat pumps can be difficult (really expensive), if the terrain is not accommodative. Air based heat pumps only work down to moderate outside temps, since the heating coils run a significant temperature drop below ambient so they can freeze up well above freezing outdoor temps.

An oversized capacity air source unit, might operate with lower temp differentials, so work effectively down to lower outdoor temps (or not, I'm just speculating).

Heat pumps are much cheaper to operate than resistance heat (like I have). The specs on the in wall, air source unit I recently bought when my air conditioner died, looks like 1/3rd the current draw of similar output resistance heater. The active forced circulation of warm air, is far more effective than convective circulation from single wall heater. Only down side (so far) is noise from my (cheap) in-wall unit. Whole house air units are quieter.

[edit- just got my electric bill,,, 74% of same month exactly one year ago... not perfect apples to apples, but moving in the right direction. [/edit]

Another thing I am experimenting with is time of day heating. I pretty much don't heat the rest of my house at all during the night time, and my in wall heat pump has a timer so i can start it an hour before I get up in the morning.

I am considering DIY a smart controller for my bedroom that currently runs resistance heat at lower temp 24x7. If it can rig up a time of day controller for a small auxiliary heater back there, I can warm it up, just before bed time and maintain a low but comfortable temp at night while I am under the electric blanket.

For a new build, solar electricity is still limited by efficiency of current solar cell technology that I expect to improve making current units obsolete before their payback**, but solar hot water, and passive solar heat seems mature and worth taking advantage of for a new build.

JR

** Tax incentives distort this break-even math so while I am generally opposed to government distorting the economics of such decisions with my tax dollars, do what makes sense for you.
 
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Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

STORAGE, STORAGE, STORAGE!

Seriously, my house now has probably triple the amount of storage as my first one, and it's still not enough - and I'm not a pack rat. When we initially considered our current house, we were amazed by how much storage space it had. Go figure.

Figure out how much space you think you WANT (not think you need) and at least double it. (this assumes the house or house plan you are considering can accommodate this, but make it a priority).

Lots of great advice in this thread that I agree with.
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

JR.....

It has been a little fantasy of mine to reduce energy usage in two areas:

Refrigeration

Clothes drying

Up here in the North it should be possible to build a "winter refrigerator" using outside cold air for cooling for a number of months/year. I would think a fairly simple set of sensors/controls could handle the air exchange and keep things from spoiling or freezing in a well-insulated box.

As for the clothes drying..... When I was living in Scandinavia some of the houses had "closets" which would dry clothes with air exchange using interior air rather than heated air. Took a bit longer but worked well enough for a small household. Or you could use an old-fashioned clothesline.....
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Dick Rees said:
JR.....

It has been a little fantasy of mine to reduce energy usage in two areas:

Refrigeration

Clothes drying

Up here in the North it should be possible to build a "winter refrigerator" using outside cold air for cooling for a number of months/year. I would think a fairly simple set of sensors/controls could handle the air exchange and keep things from spoiling or freezing in a well-insulated box.

As for the clothes drying..... When I was living in Scandinavia some of the houses had "closets" which would dry clothes with air exchange using interior air rather than heated air. Took a bit longer but worked well enough for a small household. Or you could use an old-fashioned clothesline.....
Click to expand...

Yup... I have been thinking about this stuff for a long time.

In the dry north, when winter is often very low humidity, drying the clothes indoors could add humidity that increases personal comfort. I recall as a kid having water holders that hung off our radiators that we would fill with water in the winter months to increase indoor humidity.

A refrigerator in the winter is throwing waste heat into the room, so not a big energy waste like in the summer when it increase room cooling load. I hypothesized combining a refrigerator with a water heater so the heat extracted from cooling food gets captured and used for heating water.

Another DIY project I did just last week, is to install a small 3 lamp vanity fixture under my computer workstation with 3x 60w incandescent bulbs and a lamp dimmer for variable heat... works like a charm.

it seems a waste to run a dryer in the winter and not capture the hot humid exhaust. Another project for another day. :-)

JR
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

JR....

When we moved into the house we currently occupy, the clothes dryer exhaust ran through a PVC box which allowed you to vent either outdoors or indoors. The indoor option had a nylon stocking on it to catch any lint. I can't vouch for venting the natural gas exhaust into the basement, but our gas cookstove is unvented to the outside......
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

AIr source and ground source heating units are great if your surroundings allow for them, they best serve in floor heating or air to air as the actual output temps are rarely much aboe 40 deg C, if you are able to use Natural as then a condensing system water based system (either radiators or in floor) with proper controls is probably the most efficient, of course this means a seperate A/C system for those in warmer climes, if you are building new then a getting an integrated HVAC system built in to the house along with efficient insulation is very much the way to go.
I'm involved in a project just now in which a 900 sq metre house is self sufficient in it's own energy needs ie a watermill generator with an entire roof covered with solar panels, along with deep cycle batteries supplies the power, heat pumps supply the majority of the heat and hot water with an electrical boost system. It's insulated to a very high standard and has survived the worst 2 winters my bit of the UK has had for decades without going "on grid" or using the backup diesel generator. It cost a lot to do but the technoogy is coming down in price and is readily available now indeed by 2016 it is going to be a requirement for a new build here to have some sort of renewable energy source as part of its heating or electrical supply. G
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

John Roberts said:
Ground sourced heat pumps can be difficult (really expensive), if the terrain is not accommodative. Air based heat pumps only work down to moderate outside temps, since the heating coils run a significant temperature drop below ambient so they can freeze up well above freezing outdoor temps.

An oversized capacity air source unit, might operate with lower temp differentials, so work effectively down to lower outdoor temps (or not, I'm just speculating).

Heat pumps are much cheaper to operate than resistance heat (like I have). The specs on the in wall, air source unit I recently bought when my air conditioner died, looks like 1/3rd the current draw of similar output resistance heater. The active forced circulation of warm air, is far more effective than convective circulation from single wall heater. Only down side (so far) is noise from my (cheap) in-wall unit. Whole house air units are quieter.

[edit- just got my electric bill,,, 74% of same month exactly one year ago... not perfect apples to apples, but moving in the right direction. [/edit]
Click to expand...

Typically you have three options for a ground sourced heat pump. Slinky coil beds in a pond of sufficient depth, slinky coil beds buried under the frost line, or "wells" for lack of a better word. Usually each 100 feet length of slinky coils provides 1 ton of cooling or heating. One vertical well is typically the same. There needs to be good contact between the coils or well elements and the earth for them to remain efficient. (Pond based systems are pretty easy to get high efficiency out of because the water provides 100% slinky coil surface coverage.)

Pretty much anyone can get this to work on any size of land, though wells cost a little more (figure $1500-$2000 per well). Slinky coils are cheaper, and if you can operate a backhoe and call your state utility commission to get get gas lines, electrical lines, etc. marked, it's pretty simple. Wells require much more specialized equipment.

Air source units really don't "stop working" below a certain temperature. The coefficient of performance (COP) declines as the the temperature differential goes up. Eventually it gets to a point where its just as effective as resistance heating (1:1). The maximum theoretical COP is calculated based on temperature differential, but currently the most efficient systems top out between 4 to 4.5:1. Most currently installed systems are between 2.5 and 3.5:1. Cycle time greatly affects efficiency which is why an oversized system can be so detrimental to your energy use. Not only does it take more input to drive a bigger compressor, the unit doesn't hit max efficiency until the cycle is in full swing. Once it gets there, it heats the air up fast, and shuts off. This is typically referred to as "short cycling." If the unit is large enough, and puts out enough BTU at this point, you still may not need resistance heating - but you probably aren't saving much money either. You can do a load estimation on your house and determine how many BTUs/hr your house loses on the coldest day and design for that. Although, for the sake of efficiency, I've read designing for worst case is not ideal. Basically, on the 95th percentile days you want your heat pump running almost all day long, just keeping up with losses. Then on the coldest days, you turn on an auxiliary heat source to get you through (heat strips, a fire place, whatever).

The systems can (and do) freeze up frequently, but this is why they have a defrost cycle. The defrost cycle for the outdoor part just runs the refrigerant cycle in reverse (A/C mode), stealing a little heat away from your house. Usually the fan shuts off during this part so you don't get blasted with cold air, but it depends on the system. What you DON'T want is your indoor coil freezing up because most systems don't have defrost sensors or defrost cycles for the indoor coils. However, frozen coils are almost always caused by three things: a grossly over sized A/C unit, an undersized air handler and/or ducting, or a very dirty filter. You can also freeze them up by setting the indoor temp too low.


Another thing I am experimenting with is time of day heating. I pretty much don't heat the rest of my house at all during the night time, and my in wall heat pump has a timer so i can start it an hour before I get up in the morning.

I am considering DIY a smart controller for my bedroom that currently runs resistance heat at lower temp 24x7. If it can rig up a time of day controller for a small auxiliary heater back there, I can warm it up, just before bed time and maintain a low but comfortable temp at night while I am under the electric blanket.
Click to expand...

Time based control is one of the things that new Nest thermostat relies on. It has sensors to monitor activity in the home (people passing by, etc.) and smarts to measure the lag of the HVAC system and time of day changes from solar input. Then it adjusts the heating/cooling cycle to make sure the house is comfortable when you are there and livable but probably not comfortable when you are not.

For a new build, solar electricity is still limited by efficiency of current solar cell technology that I expect to improve making current units obsolete before their payback**, but solar hot water, and passive solar heat seems mature and worth taking advantage of for a new build.

JR

** Tax incentives distort this break-even math so while I am generally opposed to government distorting the economics of such decisions with my tax dollars, do what makes sense for you.
Click to expand...

It is for this reason specifically that I oppose government incentives on wind and solar at this point rather than spending it on basic research. The efficiency is just not there yet, but may be if we put more time into research and making some breakthroughs.
 
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Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

John Roberts said:
Yup... I have been thinking about this stuff for a long time.

A refrigerator in the winter is throwing waste heat into the room, so not a big energy waste like in the summer when it increase room cooling load. I hypothesized combining a refrigerator with a water heater so the heat extracted from cooling food gets captured and used for heating water.
Click to expand...

Bingo. This is something that mostly escapes people. If your heating system is on at all during the day, all of your household appliances are magically 100% efficient at that point, providing heat for your house. This is why I think that given the dangerous chemicals involved, CCFL bulbs are even more asinine for us folks in the northern climates. In the summer, our days are so long, I don't need to turn on many lights until 8 or 9 PM. In the winter, they are nice little localized heaters, knocking off the chill in the house as you sit under one and read (even better if they are reflector types). Plus, nothing can replace the warm glow of a tungsten filament.

That said, if you have a more efficient form of heating, then the waste heat isn't exactly free - but if our supply nearly limitless *cough* nuclear *cough* it would be moot.

I think as LED bulbs get better CCFLs will be relegated to the bowels of history where they belong.
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Ok... our "house" is approx. 350 sq. ft.

The walls are 1ft. thick, double off-set 2 x 6 construction, and double insulated. The floor and ceiling are foot thick styraforam insulated. The house is 100% electric. Our monthly electric bill is < $30... even in the depths of winter. I've converted the house to all LED lighting. Our total household lighting power draw is < 100 watts.

We bought the place for cash... approx. $24K, including the acre of property it and the 1,200 sq. ft. shop sits on... the shop was constructed similar to the house.

Admittedly, our cloths closet is approx. 3ft. across.

Admittedly, our "house" only has two rooms, being the bathroom and the rest of the "house".

Admittedly, our "house" isn't set-up for entertaining... and there's few if any bragging rights... but:

We use our house for eating in, sleeping in, and freshening-up in the morning... and it does all of that very efficently.
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

W. Mark Hellinger said:
Ok... our "house" is approx. 350 sq. ft.

The walls are 1ft. thick, double off-set 2 x 6 construction, and double insulated. The floor and ceiling are foot thick styraforam insulated. The house is 100% electric. Our monthly electric bill is < $30... even in the depths of winter. I've converted the house to all LED lighting. Our total household lighting power draw is < 100 watts.

We bought the place for cash... approx. $24K, including the acre of property it and the 1,200 sq. ft. shop sits on... the shop was constructed similar to the house.

Admittedly, our cloths closet is approx. 3ft. across.

Admittedly, our "house" only has two rooms, being the bathroom and the rest of the "house".

Admittedly, our "house" isn't set-up for entertaining... and there's few if any bragging rights... but:

We use our house for eating in, sleeping in, and freshening-up in the morning... and it does all of that very efficently.
Click to expand...

I love the paid for part. I would trade utilility bills with you in a heartbeat and I see you have your priorities in order with the use of the other 1200 square foot. Bragging rights. A significant other who is into it with you........PRICELESS!
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

You also need to think about how you use the space, do you really need a formal dining room, do you need both a living room and a family room. That is why the open concept is so popular now. But then again, if you have cooked a huge dinner for guests, do you want the kitchen exposed to everyone, or is it a disaster area. The kitchen also needs lots of thought. The standard kitchen is designed to the work triangle, which is ok as long as only one person is using it. I have my own ideas about a kitchen. I hate overhead cabinets. I also like the idea of seperate work areas, the idea of a separate "scullery" is a great idea, especially if it includes dish storage. I also like a walk in pantry, none of this hiding things in cabinets with doors in the way. I also like the idea of a seperate "prep" area. I used to watch HGTV but so much stuff there makes no sense. A good drinking game is to watch house hunters, and every time some one says "it's kind of small" you have a shot. I also hate it when some name designer does a kitchen with "professional" style SS sink, the expensive ones with the square corners. Those aren't professional, they aren't allowed by NSF standards, they are impossible to keep clean.
One thing my dream home would have is a casual living space with one of these:
https://www.lehmans.com/p-2305-baker-s-oven-wood-heat-cook-stove.aspx
A few years ago, there was a major ice storm and most of the town was without power for at least a week. The roads were clear but there was nowhere to go. You had to go out of town to even buy gas.
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

High ceilings. I live in a 140 yr old Victorian. 12ft downstairs, 10ft upstairs. I feel claustrophobic with normal 8ft ceilings now. Hell, my doors are 10ft and 8ft tall, respectively.

The kitchen advice about isolating work areas is spot on. Ours was bare studs when we moved in. I built the island and cooking area specifically to isolate it from the cleanup. You turn around from the island to the cook top and stove. Sink and wash area is about 3-4 steps away. I keep thinking I'll install a bar sink in the island, but haven't done it yet.

The best money I spent was on a 95% efficiency gas furnace. Cut heating bills in half. Dead of winter we've never gone over $200 for 2400sq ft, who knows how many cubic. And it will run off my 1000w honda inverter generator if necessary. R30 in the attic, I have no idea what's in the walls. I know they were blown at some point, but it settles down the wall pretty quickly. Balloon framing, so it's probably all sitting on the sill plate.
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Another thing I really enjoy and would recommend: having a significant separate area for your gear and/or musical instruments etc.

My place has a separate driveway to a very large double-bay garage that is used as my music and gear space. A large portion of it is dedicated to my recording studio (which is also sometimes used for music rehearsals), but the remainder is gear storage space. My trailer backs right up to one of the bays, making loading and unloading very fast. It is also far enough away from the house (I have a very large lot) that I can make all the noise I want.

This has been a luxury that I have really enjoyed.
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Ryan Lantzy said:
Bingo. This is something that mostly escapes people. If your heating system is on at all during the day, all of your household appliances are magically 100% efficient at that point, providing heat for your house. This is why I think that given the dangerous chemicals involved, CCFL bulbs are even more asinine for us folks in the northern climates. In the summer, our days are so long, I don't need to turn on many lights until 8 or 9 PM. In the winter, they are nice little localized heaters, knocking off the chill in the house as you sit under one and read (even better if they are reflector types). Plus, nothing can replace the warm glow of a tungsten filament.

That said, if you have a more efficient form of heating, then the waste heat isn't exactly free - but if our supply nearly limitless *cough* nuclear *cough* it would be moot.

I think as LED bulbs get better CCFLs will be relegated to the bowels of history where they belong.
Click to expand...
Yup, CFLs kinda suck but I do appreciate the freedom from constantly having to replace burned out incandescent bulbs.

I spent last summer chasing heat out of my lighting, I now have a mix of CFL and LED lights. I even replaced the ballast in an old fluorescent fixture to improve efficiency. Ironically I now have LED light above my computer workstation and some incandescent leg warmers underneath. :-)

@Ryan if heat pump efficiency drops as temp delta increases, would setting the thermostat lower be even more efficient than the obvious reduced heat loss to ambient? TOD shifting that doesn't run the heat pump at night when it is colder outside makes sense. Some home designs increase the internal thermal mass (like interior stone or brick walls) that can hold heat and help smooth day/night temp swings.

Next summer I want to make a crock pot using a peltier heat element so I can cook and cool my kitchen at the same time. I found a patent for one, but the guy was not in production. Seems simple enough to DIY with an old crock pot.

====
Another consideration is privacy/isolation. I recall living in a cheap condo (In CT) where my neighbor getting up in the middle of the night to pee would wake me up through the paper thin walls. I suspect the specific family situation can influence such considerations. Another apartment I lived in (NJ) was irritating to hear the kids running and playing on the floor above. In-law apartments with separate entrances, play-rooms where children can run amok, etc.

I'm not that big on entertaining anymore, but back when I did, being able to put a 4 pc band in my great room (open kitchen-living-dining room) was better than squeezing them into one smaller normal sized room.

JR
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Down here it's all about keeping things cool. I dream of a place with a white metal roof with styrofoam under it. Heated/cooled square feet are taxed higher than unheated/uncooled so my daydream house has the whole upstairs area as a screened in open space with clear plastic roll down flaps like they use on the tiki bars and boats to keep the rain out. If it had big roof overhangs it would insulate the lower floor quite a bit and keep the heat out to reduce AC costs. We like open air old style cracker houses but eventually they all heat up in the summer so the idea of having a giant screened in porch over the house seems like it might be a way to keep the lower half cool.

What really bugs me is the old outdated inefficient construction methods that continue to dominate new housing. There are so many improvements that rarely get used. Roofing material is my pet peeve. I hate asphalt shingles.
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Gene Hardage said:
Down here it's all about keeping things cool. I dream of a place with a white metal roof with styrofoam under it. Heated/cooled square feet are taxed higher than unheated/uncooled so my daydream house has the whole upstairs area as a screened in open space with clear plastic roll down flaps like they use on the tiki bars and boats to keep the rain out. If it had big roof overhangs it would insulate the lower floor quite a bit and keep the heat out to reduce AC costs. We like open air old style cracker houses but eventually they all heat up in the summer so the idea of having a giant screened in porch over the house seems like it might be a way to keep the lower half cool.

What really bugs me is the old outdated inefficient construction methods that continue to dominate new housing. There are so many improvements that rarely get used. Roofing material is my pet peeve. I hate asphalt shingles.
Click to expand...

I worked on a house plan where one end of the attic-top level was a working green-house, In the summer this would absorb the sunlight for good use, in the winter it would serve as passive solar collection. Perhaps not very practical, and knowing me, I wouldn't deal well with the maintenance required from anything more than growing a hydroponic garden. maybe not even that. I've seem discussion of inner city high rise buildings with grass planted on top of the roof as a thermal barrier and passive solar system. (Who mows the roof?)

I have posted, only half in jest, that congress could pass a law that we all paint our roofs white in the summer and black in the winter to save energy... Seriously I suspect in some not so distant future, but not soon, we will have roofing materials that resemble solar cells that literally connect and stack in series parallel like batteries. Maybe even water cooled, to generate hot water and electricity, where practical. That and better insulation could reduce energy usage a bunch.

JR
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

Dave Barnett said:
I've been in the same place for 22 years, and have some incandescents that are that old.
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I have several a number well older than that, but all of them are in fixtures I rarely use. A front door lamp I only run a few hours every halloween, a carport lamp I only use a few times a year.

All my indoor incandescents that were used regularly are long gone, replaced by CFL or LED. Rarely used interior lamps may last another few decades.

JR
 
Re: Home building/living suggestions wanted.

John Roberts said:
I have several a number well older than that, but all of them are in fixtures I rarely use. A front door lamp I only run a few hours every halloween, a carport lamp I only use a few times a year.

All my indoor incandescents that were used regularly are long gone, replaced by CFL or LED. Rarely used interior lamps may last another few decades.

JR
Click to expand...

I've just killed 5 CFL bulbs in the last 2 months. Turns out they don't like being used outside in temps below freezing :-(
(the things that dumb californians learn when moving north)
 
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