Entries Tagged 'HVAC' ↓

Last week I was getting nervous about our ability to incorporate all of the energy efficient features of the home in the most cost effective manner possible. I have also been pouring over other case study’s that contain very nice energy modeling data that I craved on our homes. I finally bit the bullet and […]

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 panels to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 Return Manifold with […]

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 […]

On Friday we had our second design meeting for the 100k house. This time we invited Scott from Level 5 to join us in order to give initial feedback from a cost standpoint on our initial design. Overall the meeting went very well and we all agreed that we got a lot accomplished. We left […]