From the category archives:

HVAC

Possible Modifications based on Passive House Standard

April 15, 2008

Since studying the Passive House standard of energy efficient design, we have been trying to determine what we can incorporate into our project without blowing the budget. Below are some of the ideas we have so far to improve the energy efficiency of the home after consulting the Passive House Standard. Insulation Increase SIP wall [...]

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HERS Index Rating Initial Evaluation Results

April 7, 2008

We received the initial HERS Index scores from the Energy Star evaluations that MaGrann performed on our initial specs about two weeks ago. I have been crazy busy lately and forgot to post on this at the time. If you recall from our LEED Design Charrette, we need to hit a HERS Index of 50 [...]

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Is Passive Cooling + Dehumidification enough to keep us cool in Philly?

March 26, 2008

Lately the team has been struggling a bit with the HVAC budget and design. The original budget was around $10K which is doable until we starting putting things like an HRV and solar thermal into our wish list. One of the questions we have been asking ourselves from the beginning is whether or not we [...]

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Budget Priorities for an Energy Efficient Home

February 25, 2008

I arrived at the topic of this post in a round about way today. It started with a search for the best refrigerator for our project on the energy star website. While we obviously need an energy star model, the range of energy usage ranges from roughly 400 – 700 kWH / year on the [...]

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Ross Mechanical Group Hired to Design Mechanicals for 100K House

February 12, 2008

Due to our concerns over spec’ing the best mechanical system for our homes, we officially hired the Ross Mechanical Group, Inc. to design a custom mechanical package for both homes today. We originally met the owner, Ross, at the 2007 GreenFest Philly event last fall. He has been in contact ever since and has already [...]

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Water Heating Dilemma

February 8, 2008

I have been doing a bit of research over the past few weeks on the most efficient method for heating both our radiant heating system and domestic hot water. This is not meant to be an exhaustive account of that research but I am conflicted as to the best option. In the end we will [...]

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Second Radiant Heating System Quote

December 29, 2007

A few days ago we received our second quote on a radiant heating system from Don Vance at Radiantec. The quote was for an Open Direct System whereas the first quote was for a closed system that would require a bit more hardware. Radiantec came in at just over $1,200 for everything but the heat [...]

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First Radiant Heating System Quote Came in Today

December 20, 2007

We received our first quote today from Steve Haldi at Hannel RadiantDirect.com. Steve quoted pretty much everything needed for a closed system using an electric water heater. The entire package came in at just under $2,500 and included the following items: 1 – PaceMaker E3R electric water heater) 1 Trim Kit 2 Loop Supply and [...]

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Radiant Heat is Affordable! – Who Knew?

December 17, 2007

I mentioned in our last design meeting, we had decided that radiant heating was definitely a necessity and no longer a want. Well, I did a bit of research last week on various radiant heating systems and just received my first call back from a company called Radiantec who confirmed that radiant systems can in [...]

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