Looking into a house that needs a bit of 'doing up'..
Though this may be a pain, having the place apart and then putting it back together again could afford me the ability to have things like trapdoors, laser beams, and secret slave quarters.
It could also allow me to have underfloor heating etc etc..
Obviously this would all be an expense, but I was thinking that if you were to have a 'blank canvas' of a house, how would you heat / power it??
Are those smart thermostats (hive/nest/ much cop?
DrP
Passivhaus/ultrainsulation Mechanical Heat Recovery Ventilation, solar gain through window into slab, Mains Gas Combined Heat and Power combi with solar thermal collection/tank primarily for Domestic Hot Water. Wood stove for additional air heating in winter just for the effect. If you did all the above right you wouldnt even need a stove.
I'd spend the money making sure the heating requirement was minimal.
Edit:
Or what Stoner said.
hypocaust
Wood burner fed from outside with a small slope so I could feed entire trees and they would just slide down as they burnt without me doing anything
Sustainable and easy to do
Probably heat water run from a ground source as well,
Underfloor heating is poor IMHO
First thing I would do is insulate the house properly, from top to bottom. Then I would probably look at a combination of under floor heating and woodstove.
Why do you think under floor heating is poor, Junkyard?
No heating yet this Autumn and the solar hot water has been enough for a shower without electic top up on all but half a dozen days. 22°C in the house with overnight temperatures outside about 10°C lower. I'll replace Stoner's gas combi thing with lots of PV panels, and a 1,5kW electric radiator which is all you'll need if you can't/don't want to light the wood burner.
Our house is close to passive but doesn't have the heat recovery ventilation system. The wood burner needs air and leaving the bathroom window open provides air and ventilation enough. However, in mild and damp weather if we don't light the wood burner at least once in the day the humidity goes up so a HRVS might get installed one day (though probably not as it's so easy to open windows and light up).
PV production currently 6A, at mid day it was 8A.
Gyrating naked lovelies.
We went through this last year, as we effectively demolished our bungalow and started again.
After much deliberation we decided to stick with gas fired heating/hot water, and to put as much insulation in as possible to minimise losses.
(which considering we have 6m of bi-fold doors across the back of our house was a concern)
Not very inventive I know, but we just could justify the large capital outlay of ground source heat pumps or similar.
I'd insulate as much as possible so the fabric of the building gives the efficiency.
Then, zoned UFH throughout except bathrooms/ensuites where I'd have electric heating mats on the floor and some areas of wall.
90+% efficient boiler with weather compensator.
I'd ignore all bolt on renewables.
i would take different approaches dependant on the construction of the house.
if i was doing a new build i would be passivehaus as possible.
retrofit passivehaus isnt always possible/desirable/cost effective.
I would certainly dry-line every outside wall with Cellotex then plasterboard backed with polystyrene; we did it to a cold bedroom in an extension and are amazed at how it has transformed the room. Obviously the ceiling needs to be well insulated as well.
Then I would install a small gas boiler and small radiators or underfloor heating.
I'd ignore all bolt on renewables.
Why?
Since installing the PV over five years ago we've consumed 9700kWh and produced 17300kWh. Financial break even is only 6.5 years. The solar hot water heater will pay for itself in about 11 years. The wood burner paid for itself instantly in that is was cheaper than replacing the combi boiler would have been. It consumes about 2m3 of wood a year which would cost around 150e if I had to buy it.
retrofit passivehaus isnt always possible/desirable/cost effective.
It's always possible, always desirable and cost effective if you think long term. Houses generally last hundreds of years.
As an example I worked out that triple glazing rather than double glazing would take over thirty years to pay for itself which is probably longer than I'll live. But then I realised that the deeper frames would allow more insulation around the thermal bridges around the frames and save more energy than the extra layer of glass. So somewhat less than thirty years and we have the extra comfort for as long as we live/ stay in the house..
Dry lining is ok, but you lose internal space, features & character. External cladding in insulation & a render coat is much better for old properties.
Some of the trick heating controls from honeywell look quite interesting. I particularly like the ITTT integration meaning that as the outside temperature starts to fall the heating preemptively kicks in before the building starts to cool off.
Houses generally last hundreds of years.
Have you [i]seen[/i] Uk newbuilds?
I particularly like the ITTT integration meaning that as the outside temperature starts to fall the heating preemptively kicks in before the building starts to cool off.
Weather optimisation and compensation is a strategy used in many commercial buildings (and has been for decades).
+ 1
rather than dry lining, if the building can take it, Id always aim to externally clad and insulate and get thermal mass on the inside of the insulation boundary. Then max out solar gain potential.
mrben100 - Why wouldn't you use UFH in bathrooms? Why electric pads instead?
"It's always possible, always desirable and cost effective if you think long term. Houses generally last hundreds of years."
until the uk allows property to be passed on to kids or i live to be hundreds of years old- ill stick to my original statement.
mrben100 - Why wouldn't you use UFH in bathrooms? Why electric pads instead?
for me it would be because it means the boiler doesnt need to be on in summer - when its still desirable to have the heated floor on to dry up the damp and avoid mank grout. but i dont want to run the boiler just to heat the floor.... doing it again i would also fit a hybrid towel rail as our towels dont really dry in the summer
We have a wooden floor in the bathroom. And a sponge. Family members are also trained to sponge down the shower after use. The result is a relatively low-humidity bathroom.
im pleased - how ever solid concrete floors mean that wont work for me.
i refer to my first statement - it would depend on building construction.
The best (quickest and least energy intensive) way to dry towels is with good airflow. Heating a wet thing with no forced convection is extremely slow/energy intensive/expensive.
Towels are taken outside after use to dry (covered area).
so what alternative then ? hang it out on the line in the fresh air to dry- where it could get even wetter due to the rain when we are out all day ......
did i not mention i would have solar when i do that;)
I would put a heat exchanger in the loft and pipe the heat back down under the floor.
Have you seen Uk newbuilds?
I've seen a few Victorian builds that are shocking by today's standards, and they are still up and being traded for large sums.
Building quality is self selecting anyway - there have always been crappily built houses, but the old crappy ones have either fallen down or been pulled down.
Why?Since installing the PV over five years ago we've consumed 9700kWh and produced 17300kWh. Financial break even is only 6.5 years. The solar hot water heater will pay for itself in about 11 years. The wood burner paid for itself instantly in that is was cheaper than replacing the combi boiler would have been. It consumes about 2m3 of wood a year which would cost around 150e if I had to buy it.
Depends on your aim, in the long term that's not sustainable. Everyone can't generate twice what they consume any more than they can conume twice what we generate, so it's cost effective to do, but not sustainable. Also when you get to 7 years+ payback you may be better off financialy just bunging the money in a savings account and using that to pay the bills. The advantage of that is the account never needs replacing, whereas the PV pannels degrade over time (10% in 10 years is average), and PV pannels are full of all sorts of nasty heavy metals. Summary: There are a lot of reasons why people may not want PV.
I'd go for lots of insulation, a woodburning stove if you live in the countryside and have access to wood, a heat recovery/exchanger ventilation and normal central heating.
"a woodburning stove if you live in the countryside [s]and have access to wood[/s] and are not contributing to the heavy smoke that seems to feature about 5pm in all our towns and citys now that wood burnings fashionable. "
Remove as much of the need for heating as possible. Try and reclaim some of the heat lost and stop it escaping.
After that underfloor heating. Mainly because I would love to be able to walk round in bare feet (not possible in my current house) and radiators are ugly and take up wall space.
I don't know where you got all that false information about PV panels, thisisnotaspoon. Try the Solarworld site for more accurate information.
They guarantee production for 30 years with a 10% reduction over 21 years rather than the 10 years you claim. There are probably less nasty heavy metals in the panels on my roof than in the device you are posting from and solar world have recycling programme for their panels. In the five years we've had the panels there has been no measurable reduction in production.
My savings account yields about 1%, the panels yield 15%.
PV is most definitely sustainable, the energy cost of making them is repaid in 2-4 years depending on latitude and the materials can be recycled. They are of course intermittent energy which means storage solutions need to be built into the grid, pump-storage for example.
[img] 
[/img]Just insulating under a floor means you can walk around barefoot in comfort, jonba. I put 120mm of recycled polyester under our wooden floors, happy feet.
solar thermal collection/tank primarily for Domestic Hot Water.
Nah. Solar thermal is losing popularity because it's a one-trick pony and involves too much in the way of tanks/pumps/dump/etc
Surplus generation from Solar PV can be easily used to heat your hot water/air as well as anything else electrical.
Oh yeah.... and you get paid for producing power.
my own bespoke system would basically be a heating system run from a water jacket around a tandoor oven. A hot bath with fresh naan breads as a by-product
If you can put the tank above the panel then you don't need a pump. Solar thermal is more efficient than PV to heat water unless it's very cold. The only problem is that there are no/less subsidies than with PV so the pay back period is longer, 11 years in my case.
Solar thermal is far more efficient than PV though. 90% of radiation can be turned into heat, whereas PV efficiency is, what, 20%?
You would need a substantially bigger PV array to match the water heating power of Solar thermal.
Maybe but I don't care. I have a 3KW PV system on another house and an immersun-type device that sends spare power generation to a 250l tank and in the summer months the thermostat on the tank has tripped by 7.00am and the power is then sent either to a storage heater or out to the grid thus earning me money.
Even the knowledgable guys on Navitron have come to the conclusion that a PV system set up this way is better than solar thermal.
My savings account yields about 1%, the panels yield 15%.PV is most definitely sustainable, the energy cost of making them is repaid in 2-4 years depending on latitude and the materials can be recycled. They are of course intermittent energy which means storage solutions need to be built into the grid, pump-storage for example.
But is the feed in rate from the pannels the same as the cost of electricity, or is it subsidised?
Who pays for the pumped storage, and what about the embeded energy in that? In the UK about half our pumped storage is in Dinorwic, which can generate 1.5% of the winter peak demand for about 5 hours. And Dinorwic is mahoosive, about the capacity of a big coal fired station and built under a big mountain! There aren't enough mountains with lakes on top in the UK to replicate that enough to make solar sustainable!
I'm not saying solar is bad, but it doesn't really meet the definitions of sustainable, the finainces are skewed by subsidies and it'll never be practical on a large scale due to the storage issues.
The cost of PV production is higher than the cost of grid electricity in the UK but lower than grid electricity in Germany so you should forget the idea of subsidised (the nuclear industry wins the prize for the most subsidised) and think in terms of cost, factoring in the cost of climatic change in any fossil fuel generated power.
If enough people start PV production for the excess to be a problem there are solutions in addition to pump storage. The Italians have intelligent metering which controls appliances and there is a potential for significantly flattening the daily demand curve:
Under cooling freezers before demand peaks.
Over heating water in low demand times (this would require mixers on hot tank outlets to avoid scalding).
Low demand storage heating.
Running appliances at low demand or high production periods (we do this manually, the washing machine runs on dry sunny days when production is high and the clothes can be dried outside).
Limiting maximum current draw in demand peaks - exceed the amperage some circuits shut down with an audible warning to give time to reduce demand - hob, oven, kitchen sockets.
Our electricity contract has a maximum draw of 30A. Even my literary genius wife knows that if she has a couple of hob rings on, the oven, the microwave and wants to put the kettle on it's best to turn one of the other things off first.
Changing working hours in energy greedy industries to match supply.
I've seen a few Victorian builds that are shocking by today's standards, and they are still up and being traded for large sums.
And despite that theyll still be there when all of the new builds are a pile of rubble, or a pile of insulation, matchsticks and plasterboard.
Our electricity contract has a maximum draw of 30A. Even my literary genius wife knows that if she has a couple of hob rings on, the oven, the microwave and wants to put the kettle on it's best to turn one of the other things off first.
That seems a very European thing, every Ski Chalet I've stayed in has a similar system....
Was an end of lunch type and run.
Edukator - Primarily i was broadly answering the OP 'what would I do'
I'm not professing it's the best solution and i'm not saying 'don't use renewables', just I would not.
Fundamentally i would want good fabric insulation values, good airtightness and ventilation strategy - adding renewables to me means designing in 'potential' maintenance issues.
I would want a comfortable property with as little to think about as possible.
My old combi boiler cost more in maintenance per year than the renewable things have cost in five years. I don't need a bill from a qualified technician like I did with the gas combi. Count the number of STW threads concerning failed combis, cold combi showers, leaking radiators, radiators not working... .
Cleaning the wood burner flue is a once-a-year, two-hour job. The PV panels have self-cleaning glass and require a scrub once-a-year to maintain efficiency. The solar thermal panel needs a regular scrub to remove pollen, dust etc. in dry periods.
To me potential maintenance includes additional penetrations in the fabric of the building, particularly on the roof.
You confusing running costs with general building maintenance.
An economically efficient building isn't necessarily a thermally efficient one.
The tiles fitted in this part of the world generally last at least 30 years. The steel waterproofing kit and panels will last about the same. The initial "plastic" waterproofing kit failed and was replaced with steel under guarantee - the German plastic failed to cope with the temperature range and expansion/contraction in France. The new kit uses the same steel parts used to cover industrial buildings and has a proven track record. I'm confident.
The fact the tiled roof needed maintenance was part of the investment decision. The panels only cost 30% more than having the south-facing roof retiled. I sorted the tiles I recovered from the south face and used them to replace the weathered ones on the rest of the house. Win, win, win.
Given that every investment I've made to make the building thermally efficient pays for itself in heating costs I disagree.An economically efficient building isn't necessarily a thermally efficient one.
Approximate return periods.
Wood burner - immediate as the combi packed up and the stove was cheaper than a replacement, wood being cheaper than gas per kWh it would have paid for itself on fuel saving alone in around 10 years.
Roof insulation - first layer: 3 years, second layer; 6 years. third layer and gable ends; 12 years
PV panels 6.5 years
More energy efficient oven 10 years
LED bulbs - variable depending on use
Wall insulation - around 10 years
Solar thermal - 11 years
Floor insulation - harder to calculate (because values for heat loss through floor vary so much) but my lifetime.
Triple glazing - less than 30 years
the German plastic failed to cope with the temperature range and expansion/contraction in France
I think you'll find it just had the wrong specification of plasticisers in it to cope with the temperature range rather than being 'German'...
Do not get a woodburner, they are the work of the devil.
On the PV v Solar heating I would probably max out my allowance of PV first and then fit solar heating with what roof space is left. I am a big fan of solar water heating due to the efficiency but due to feed in tariffs and my use of electricity more than hot water I would get the PVs sorted first and then fit the heating in what space is left.
Insulation first. How much depends on the existing building fabric. Obviously a complete new build can be done with almost zero heating energy required... an existing 400 year old stone cottage, erm, not so much possibility for improvement.
Heating:
none? great
some? stove in a central location, or maybe ASHP/GSHP
lots? fairly normal wet setup, UFH preferably. I like fires, so it'd be nice to have a big multifuel stove in a living space, linked up with a regular timed automatic boiler, but not necessary.
Plenty of interesting points, ta.
It's a 60 year old place, but needs a bit of input.
I just thought that whilst I had the empty place to bits (I've got a few months overlap before we move in) I'd see what I could do...
I think a woodburner will be fitted - just cos they look great are a nice fire is nice!!
DrP
I've got a 6 year old house. It's got underfloor heating:
+ creates a lovely "warm all over the house" feeling - no hot spots / cold spots
+ Nice under your feet
+ provides a stable all day level of comfort - we find it works best with it coming on and off a few times a day to sort of "top up" the heat in the floor
- Can be expensive if you have it on constantly
- Can take a while for it to deal with quick changes in outdoor temperature e.g. come back from holiday, house is v cold...it can take a day or 2 to get back up to temp again
- It's more expensive / complicated than a regular radiator system
On balance, I'd miss it if we moved.
I've also got 2 water heating solar panels. These are great - lots of hot water on sunny days and it's effectively free hot water as you don't need the boiler on anywhere as much. Of course, you do need sunshine!