This BLOG discusses the causes and suggests steps to improve your house heat loss in winter and heat gain in summer. The causes come broadly from 3 areas, about one third each: (1) ceilings, (2) windows and (3) walls, floors and general air leaks. Your choices on what do depend firstly on whether you are building a new house, renovating an existing house or improving the thermal performance of an existing house.
Heating, Ventilation and Cooling (HVAC) Design starts with thinking through your needs. Good building design has low heating and cooling requirements. This enables all-electric solutions with energy efficient appliances such as inverter heat pumps and air conditioners. These appliances can be largely powered by solar panels. The thermal energy can be stored in the mass inside your home during the day and released at night.
Reduce heat loss and running costs, and improve air quality with Heat Recovery Ventilation (HRV). This BLOG explores HRV and ERV ventilation systems. Homes built years ago were not designed for efficiency and so they leaked air everywhere. Modern homes with 6+ Star rating are much more air tight and require ventilation systems to keep a fresh feel inside without needing open windows in winter and summer. Air leaks and open windows can account for a quarter of your energy costs.
An energy assessment identifies areas to better manage. It leads to a plan for better energy management that reduces energy costs. Do an energy assessment to help you understand, measure, verify and better manage your energy use. This is more important for a large house or commercial facility, where energy use is higher. If you can measure it, you can manage it!
This BLOG discusses slab insulation so that you can effectively store energy and reduce heat loss from your slab-on-ground. Insulate underneath and also the slab edges. This is very important if you have solar power because you can store excess solar energy in your insulated slab. However, a slab with no insulation creates a thermal bridge for heat to flow outside, draining away your solar energy.
This Victorian house in Castlemaine was transformed into a comfortable, low energy home. It features all-electric heat pump hydronic heating/cooling, heat recovery ventilation and heat pump hot water. The new home married its Victorian past to a modern extension using passive home principles.
A cool temperate climate zone such as Victoria is well suited to hydronic heat pumps. This is an efficient and effective way of heating and cooling if your home is well insulated. It will give you low operating costs and can be largely powered by your solar panels. Cool Temperate zones have: low humidity,
high diurnal range (temperature swings), cold to very cold winters and hot dry summers.
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