The eco house of your dreams

timeforchange

Hello all,

I wanted to start a discussion here about building the ideal house from the ground up. Give me your ideas, thoughts, and possible problems you might entail. I'll start off with a little background.

I have acquired site 5 acres, (didn’t have to pay...don't tell tax man!) All above board. I am planning to build a house 2500-3000 sq ft, and I want it to be completely self-sufficient. Here are my ideas.

HEATING
I would hope for high spec insulation, sealed concept house with air heat exchanger in attic. Solid fuel fire (closed) in the sitting room for ambiance.

Hot water and under floor heating from geothermal heat pump.

Supplementary heating from small wind turbine.

WATER
Large rainwater collection system, only drawing off the mains in a dry spell.....shouldn't be a problem in Ireland.

ELEC.
One large wind turbine, big enough to provide elec during the highest consumption rate, and then selling the surplus to the grid at other times.

I have read most of the arguments about each type of energy, and how they are not Green friendly eg. heat pump. But what are your views on all these items together.

My plans would be to have a house that has no oil, gas etc, uses very little mains water, used nearly no elec from the grid, and doesn't have any bills each month.

I know that the initial outlay would be huge, but don't forget all I am paying for is the build. The cost of bills per year without renewable energy in total, maybe 6000 - 8000 euro, net pay.....the mortgage for another 80,000 euro per year to pay for the initial installation at the correct rate maybe 800 euro per month, 8000 per year maybe? This is at the curren prices, and before we have to run our cars on bannana skins!

Any architects out there that can see holes in my plan, or any that are interested in this concept, get in touch.

I am just looking for thoughts, and opinions, but based on facts only, no personal vendettas please.

Thank you.

TFC.

sinnerboy

Google Passiv House .

Start here

http://constructireland.ie/Articles/Passive-Housing/The-emergence-of-the-passive-house-in-Ireland.html

If you get this right you will not require a conventional heating system . Solar panels will provide summer hot water .

You then need only a modest heat source for winter hot water and "top up" space heating for winter .
In order of my preference
A wood stove ( no need for boiler ) can suffice . Reason will reduce CO2 count on your BER
Or small gas/oil boiler . Reason - very simple solution , very convenient to use
Or heat pump - last because the jury is out on HP . Just search around this forum and these two
http://www.constructireland.ie/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=6
http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/forum114/

Excellent air tightness and HRV are a given - i.e. must haves

Rain water recycling and wind turbines should fall in line only after your are sure you have all €€€'s in place for everything else first


.

CJhaughey

+1
Alternatively you could go to Galway and have a look at the one in Moycullen.

A Green home doesn't have to mean expensive tech, just good practice in building and design.

Chimpster

CJhaughey wrote: »

+1
Alternatively you could go to Galway and have a look at the one in Moycullen.

The statistics on that house are pretty impressive in fairness. The heating only actually came on for about 8 days over a whole year as far as I remember?

Be carefull TFC. The country is filled with green wash at the minute, from wind turbine installers to dodgy green house packages its hard to seperate the wood from the trees.

Get references and loads of them. Its only real way of proving that a company has proved itself before.

The way I see it is that there is alot of good companies providing various green services and products to the market but making sure that these are all correctly tied together on site is the important thing.

Doctor_L

This zero carbon active house built in Denmark might inspire you



http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/21/active-house-denmark-zero-carbon

If you are serious about Eco houses consider the Passive House standard. Also consider the materials used e.g. eco cement etc and the carbon costs associated with the build.

Liam

abakan

GBP500,00 it would want to be 0 carbon.

If a 0 carbon house was to take off in Ireland it would need to be in the 250K region.

Im currently looking to build and would love to build a carbon free homes but I dont think my budget would allow it.

But ill keep looking

greener&leaner

Super insulated, controlled passive ventilation, solar orientated house.
Lots of locally grown FSC timber if possible.

Solar hot water connected to super insulated tank (possibly)

If the site was good for it, probably a wind turbine, but only if it was a good place to put one.

If I could find someone to do it for me, probably PVs hooked up to low voltage wiring throughout the house, running LED lights and charging laptops/mobiles.

Cooker would run off natural gas, or possibly biomass, need to think a bit more about the pollutants from biomass and the transport implications.

Heating, and I doubt anyone else will agree on me about this one, would most likely be from mains electricity storage heaters. With the amount I'd expect to need it (see above 8 day quote) I don't think it's necessary or environmentally sound to put in heat pumps/biomass etc. Personally I have a low opinion of heat pumps anyway.

Do-more

greener&leaner wrote: »

Heating, and I doubt anyone else will agree on me about this one, would most likely be from mains electricity storage heaters. With the amount I'd expect to need it (see above 8 day quote) I don't think it's necessary or environmentally sound to put in heat pumps/biomass etc. Personally I have a low opinion of heat pumps anyway.

No need to go to the expense of putting in storage heaters, if you are going for a low energy house design you will have to have it airtight and have a MHRV system. If you want to have direct electric heating then just put in a coil in the MHRV ducting controlled by a stat.

Besides if you were going for storage heaters how would you know which eight days you would need them? You waste a lot of energy during the winter heating up the storage heaters with heat never required....

CJhaughey

Don't get sidetracked by the whole zero-carbon thing it is only a smokescreen IMO and as such should be left to the UK govt as their own smokescreen.
Without the necessary skills and background to run such complex systems I think there could be problems in the future with maintenance.
Also consider the fact that that house is close to €590k euro, serious build costs IMO.

Do-more

CJhaughey wrote: »

Don't get sidetracked by the whole zero-carbon thing it is only a smokescreen IMO and as such should be left to the UK govt as their own smokescreen.
Without the necessary skills and background to run such complex systems I think there could be problems in the future with maintenance.
Also consider the fact that that house is close to €590k euro, serious build costs IMO.

+1

I fail to see the logic in expending huge financial resources on energy generation systems, just so you can say our "house produces as much energy as it consumes".

If your on a very windy site or beside a good head of water and there is a justifiable payback on your investment fine, but the wasteful consumption of financial resources is not green.

Investing the money in the shares of a large scale justifiable renewable energy project (assuming you can find one) would be a far better use of resources.

Doctor_L

An ECO house should use very little energy to heat the building.

I would recommend you buy some books on passive houses or low energy houses.

At the moment Wind Turbines for domestic use are at twice the price they should be in order to be financially viable.

If you were to build and had access to a strong flowing river or stream a 1 kw micro hydro would address the majority of your energy requirements.

Solar PV is way too expensive and should be affordable in 7 - 10 years time.
Once mass manufacture of thin liquid film is achieved.

Liam

timeforchange

Hi all,

thank you for all the imputs, but I feel that some people are missing my point.

I have done a survey on the site for the last year, and the wind speeds are more than I will need for the turbine. I am not just trying to build a house that " Creates all the energy that it needs "

The idea is to have a house that will not draw off the ESB dirty energy, not have any Oil which will eventually run out, or get soo expensice, and also not have any Gas. Also I want to use as little of the mains water not just because of the price, but to use a natural resourse.

The build prces that you are talking about are mad. I would be hoping to build the house for 330,000 euro and am willing to put up to 80k into renewable energy. Total 400-450 k euro, for a 2500-3000sq ft house on a few acres of land.......how much would you pay to buy it, 10 mins from Dublin Airport??


Here is my priority for the build..

...insullation....close to airtight
...Air heat exchanger in attic
...Geothermal underfloor and hot water heating
...Wind turbine with smart meter ..enough to run everything in house
...rain water collection system.

I have read that people are saying " heat pumps....they still use esb elec, worst type of energy..." etc. I agree with most posts here, but it is better to have a house running for 50 years, being carbon free, rather than the build not using concrete cause it is soo bad, and then using mains elec for 50 years from fossil fuels....

Let me start this thread again,....

I am looking for actual ideas, problems, on integrating all these systens together, not oppinions on how much money it is worth for each item. Please look at the big picture.

If it was all about money then why would anybody put in place any renewable energy system.

CJhaughey

timeforchange wrote: »

Hi all,

Let me start this thread again,....

I am looking for actual ideas, problems, on integrating all these systens together, not oppinions on how much money it is worth for each item. Please look at the big picture.

If it was all about money then why would anybody put in place any renewable energy system.

How about you start where sinnerboy directed, and investigate passive housing?
There a quite a few already here in Ireland.
The ones I have linked to already come with an HRV unit.
Build a Passive house and you won't need any electricity for heating, if you fit a woodstove you could cook on top of it and use most of the heat to heat your DHW in Winter.
Summer DHW is supplied by solar.
Fit Low Voltage LED lighting and you won't need much electricity which can be generated by either a small PV setup and/or a small turbine.
Build a a massive seasonal heat store run by a large solar array.

There is no need to integrate any of these systems, they will all run in tandem.

Quentin Gargan in Bantry who posts on here has a big turbine in his garden and is nearly off grid, ask him for more info on building offgrid.

abakan

anyone know of any good architects in Ireland that speciliase in Passives house's?

Ive send Scanhomes and HaufHaus and some other's a mail about this so Im waiting to hear back from them.

But id like to be in contact with someone who know what they are doing

sas

abakan wrote: »

anyone know of any good architects in Ireland that speciliase in Passives house's?

But id like to be in contact with someone who know what they are doing

Goes without saying but be careful. Ask them if they actually have a certified passive house to their name. If not they simply can't claim to be experienced in my opinion.

You won't find too many at all that actually know what they are doing. I'm only aware of 1 and I'm only 90% confident in them. Any of the Irish ones will absolutely fleece you for the service too. If you email the PHI directly they sometimes offer a consultation service where they will work with any architect and correspond by email.

greener&leaner

timeforchange wrote: »

Hi all,

Here is my priority for the build..

...insullation....close to airtight
...Air heat exchanger in attic
...Geothermal underfloor and hot water heating
...Wind turbine with smart meter ..enough to run everything in house
...rain water collection system.

If you get the orientation, insulation, air tightness and ventilation strategies correct then I would see absolutely not need for either an air heat exchanger or any geothermal.
Passive solar should provide most of your hot water, possibly topped up by wind turbine electric heating at a very infrequent basis.

How do you plan to cook though?

syklops

Have you thought about using wood for the house rather than concrete? There are a number of them here in Ireland, and from what I have read, the heating bills for them tend to be half nothing. One person told me they spent something like 200 euro last year on heating the house, which was from a normal wood burning stove. If you include underfloor heating, you could probably reduce that to very little.

I understand your point, and this is where me and the rest of the green alliance disagree, on electricity. In my opinion it does not matter if you leave your lights switched on all day and all night, and run a small data centre from your basement, so long as you are generating the electricity from a renewable resource such as Wind. If your turbine is going to produce enough for your own needs, then by all means use underfloor heating.

The only problem I can see for your situation for getting a timber frame house, is they usually come in kits, where as you will want a custom job, to incorporate your other technlogies(such as rain collection system), however there is a company in Finland, unfortunately I cant remember the name, who allow you to design the house your self, you get an architect to look over the design, and then they cut the pieces for you. They then ship it to you, and you can get a builder who is familiar in this area to put it together for you.

You can build a simple and cheap water collection system using a few barrels and a few lengths of guttering, and this is fine as surplus water if the mains stops for some reason(Or you live in galway), but have you estimated how much water you will need in a day? And then estimated how much room you will need to store the water over a long period of time? While it is rare, there are times when you can have 2 weeks without rain in Ireland, and if global warming is happening as they say, then, occasions when there is no rain for a fortnight, will increase in frequency. Have you found out how much space you need to store 2 weeks worth of water, without it going bad?

Do-more

syklops wrote: »

You can build a simple and cheap water collection system using a few barrels and a few lengths of guttering, and this is fine as surplus water if the mains stops for some reason(Or you live in galway), but have you estimated how much water you will need in a day? And then estimated how much room you will need to store the water over a long period of time? While it is rare, there are times when you can have 2 weeks without rain in Ireland, and if global warming is happening as they say, then, occasions when there is no rain for a fortnight, will increase in frequency. Have you found out how much space you need to store 2 weeks worth of water, without it going bad?

There are quite a few companies which can supply a rain water harvesting setup, only thing to look out for is a filtration system to make the water potable, remember all the bird poo from your roof will be collected as well!

You can always have a mains supply or your own well for potable water and the rainwater for all other uses.

greener&leaner

syklops wrote: »

I understand your point, and this is where me and the rest of the green alliance disagree, on electricity. In my opinion it does not matter if you leave your lights switched on all day and all night, and run a small data centre from your basement, so long as you are generating the electricity from a renewable resource such as Wind. If your turbine is going to produce enough for your own needs, then by all means use underfloor heating.

I think you're overestimating the capabilities of small scale renewable electricity generation and overestimating the benefits of things like heat pumps and geothermal.

syklops

greener&leaner wrote: »

I think you're overestimating the capabilities of small scale renewable electricity generation and overestimating the benefits of things like heat pumps and geothermal.

Fair enough, I am willing to learn. What do you mean?

syklops

syklops wrote: »

Fair enough, I am willing to learn. What do you mean?

Rereading your post I think I know what you mean.

For overestimating the capabilities of small scale renewable electricity generation, obviously I dont think you can run a datacentre on one. What I meant is it does not matter too much if you use the electricity wastefully, if the way it was generated is clean, i.e. from the wind. I was responding to the opinion that underfloor heating is not green as it uses electricity.

As for overestimating the benefits of things like heat pumps and geothermal, I don't think I am. If the house is properly insulated, particularly, a wooden house, you will need very little to warm the house, and it should stay warm.

sinnerboy

timeforchange wrote: »

Please look at the big picture.

Build or refurbish

• a smaller house ,
• in an urban setting
• close to existing public
• transport
• health
• education
• retail and leisure
• utilities infrastructures

If it is not all about €€€€'s

What use a carbon neutral house of you discharge lots of carbon because of its location?

.

sinnerboy

http://www.greenbuildingpress.co.uk/products.php?category_id=121

they have an excellent forum ( like this one ) too

and

http://constructireland.ie/Back-Issues/Volume-4/

Again another fine forum

Pat Green here makes the case here far better than I can about the "wisdom" of passiv houses in the sticks

http://constructireland.ie/vb/showthread.php?t=516&highlight=advice

sinnerboy

timeforchange wrote: »

If it was all about money then why would anybody put in place any renewable energy system.

Because unless you get your house completed by end June ..... you do not have any choice . B Regs compel you to provide renewables after that date

Which begs another question - why do you think this is compelled ? Would people install renewables en masse if there was a reasonable return on investments ?

CJhaughey

greener&leaner wrote: »

If you get the orientation, insulation, air tightness and ventilation strategies correct then I would see absolutely not need for either an air heat exchanger or any geothermal.

If you have an airtight house how else are you going to ventilate it apart from a HRV unit?
Granted, you may not need a GSHP but by golly If you live in an airtight house you are going to need some kind of ventilation or you are going to be in big trouble.

greener&leaner wrote:

Passive solar should provide most of your hot water, possibly topped up by wind turbine electric heating at a very infrequent basis.

Passive solar is direct solar heating by house design and window arrangement, do you mean an active solar array with either flat panel or tube collectors?
Wind turbine electric heating? I don't think this is a runner, not even a big Proven turbine will provide enough juice to heat a house.

sinnerboy

+1

Draft part F ( Ventilation ) requires that if Q50 < 7 - you must increase natural vent provision by 50% .

Wind turbine powered heating ? Don't think so . We often get very cold spells coupled with low wind speeds

One smart innovation is to combine solar thermal panels ( STP) with HRV as follows -
During summer STP's provide hot water .
In winter STP's cannot do this - but they can harness enough power to HRV pre heat supply air if the system is configured correctly

.

greener&leaner

You are correct, I'm getting my terminologies mixed up.
For solar hot water I meant solar hot water panels, not passive solar where sunshine heats the house.

I did say getting the air tightness strategy correct, not getting the house completely air tight. A completely air tight house would be one you can't get into or out of!

I think we interpreted the OPs "Air heat exchanger" differently. I was thinking of a air to air heat pump system, something I genuinely don't see the need for in such a low heat demand house. Heat recovery ventilation, I can see the need for.

I do agree that the power available from wind is limited, however with a smart meter, he's talking about feeding electricity back into the grid which would be pulled back at times of high heating demand, hence electric heating.

I wouldn't forsee that running directly off a turbine. An air to air heat pump or a ground source heat pump would still require electricity, if there's no wind they run into the same problems as straight forward electric heating. While the efficiencies quoted by manufacturers for those systems are usually up around 4, people I've spoken to who've studied sites using them have given me figures quoting 2 and lower.

I'm still awaiting an answer on the cooking. TBH, whatever is used there, is probably the most likely source of additional heat during weather extremes.

greener&leaner

syklops wrote: »

Fair enough, I am willing to learn. What do you mean?

Taking a non-green typical house and providing energy by wind power, here are some of the electricity usage figures:

Electricity requirements of a normal 2 person house start adding up very quickly roughly:

Kettle - 3kW, 20mins, 1kWh/d
Washing Machine - 2.5kW, 3 times a week, 1.1kWh/d
Dishwasher -2.5kW, every 2nd day, 1.25kWh/d
Fridge - 0.02kW, 24h, 0.5kWh/d
Freezer - 0.09kW, 24h, 2.3kWh/d
Lighting - 2 100W bulbs on for 8 hours, 1.6kWh/d

That's 7.75kWh/d

That's without the any hot water boosting, cooking, microwave, television, a vacuum cleaner, dvd player, computer, hair dryer . . . all of which add up very rapidly.

While I can see the argument that if you're generating electricity renewably, it doesn't matter how much you're using. The reality is that for small scale wind you're very unlikely to give yourself any room for manoeuvre unless you first limit your electricity consumption with other strategies.

whos_rowan

Doctor_L wrote: »

An ECO house should use very little energy to heat the building.

I would recommend you buy some books on passive houses or low energy houses.

At the moment Wind Turbines for domestic use are at twice the price they should be in order to be financially viable.

If you were to build and had access to a strong flowing river or stream a 1 kw micro hydro would address the majority of your energy requirements.

Solar PV is way too expensive and should be affordable in 7 - 10 years time.
Once mass manufacture of thin liquid film is achieved.

Liam

I thought an Eco house was a house that is at one with nature ie. does effect the land or atmosphere. An eco house can consume as much energy as it wants so long as the energy being used comes from green energy. This whole green concept is about become self sufficiant.

whos_rowan

syklops wrote: »

Rereading your post I think I know what you mean.

For overestimating the capabilities of small scale renewable electricity generation, obviously I dont think you can run a datacentre on one. What I meant is it does not matter too much if you use the electricity wastefully, if the way it was generated is clean, i.e. from the wind. I was responding to the opinion that underfloor heating is not green as it uses electricity.

As for overestimating the benefits of things like heat pumps and geothermal, I don't think I am. If the house is properly insulated, particularly, a wooden house, you will need very little to warm the house, and it should stay warm.

Geothermal heating does not heat your house. The concept of geothermal is that it heats the core water temp to above 10 degree centigrade. The reason it does this is because the energy used to heat water gets greatly reduced because the bulk of that energy is used to get the water up to that temp. Once water has reached this temp far less energy is used.

whos_rowan

greener&leaner wrote: »

If you get the orientation, insulation, air tightness and ventilation strategies correct then I would see absolutely not need for either an air heat exchanger or any geothermal.
Passive solar should provide most of your hot water, possibly topped up by wind turbine electric heating at a very infrequent basis.

How do you plan to cook though?

Without an exchanger you wouldnt be able to breath in an airtight house. How do you suppose oxygen gets around the house?

sinnerboy

whos_rowan wrote: »

Geothermal heating does not heat your house. The concept of geothermal is that it heats the core water temp to above 10 degree centigrade. The reason it does this is because the energy used to heat water gets greatly reduced because the bulk of that energy is used to get the water up to that temp. Once water has reached this temp far less energy is used.

Every sentence is wrong and mis conceived . You don't know what you are talking about .

whos_rowan

sinnerboy wrote: »

Every sentence is wrong and mis conceived . You don't know what you are talking about .

Then enlighten me on the subject, please.....

sinnerboy

whos_rowan wrote: »

Then enlighten me on the subject, please.....

Do your own research before you post . Start here

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055263818

Doctor_L

I wrote a short article on the whole house book, which I have just finished reading

http://www.irishsilicon.com/2009/06/building-an-eco-home-read-the.html

I would recommend you read the book as it will give you several ideas on your eco house build.

The Sunday Times on 21st June 2009 had a greener homes supplements which featured some adverts and an article on White Young Green a Passive Haus certified architectural company.

For a complete list have a look at the SEI list http://www.sustainable.ie/directory/subcategory.php?id=47

Hope this helps
Liam

elainevbarry

Hi,

We will be starting to build our house over the next month or so and have spent quite a considerable amount of time doing out calculations on the costs and Benefits attached to going green. Would anyone mind having a look at the attached and letting me know what they think of my assumptions? It appears to us, from the financial point of view that green is the way to go!

My assumptions are as follows:

• Interest rates are likely to increase and expect to rise to approximately 6%.
• ESB and Oil costs are likely to increase at a steady rate of 3% each year.
• The capital costs are an average of the quotes that we have received to date.
• Depreciation rate of 13% - I have been in touch with a few geothermal suppliers and they have stated that although the useful life is approx. 20/25 years, the depreciation is around 13% p.a. However, as this is a non cash flow item, I have not taken this into account in my calculations as it is not a real cost.
• As there will only be 2 of us in the house for a little while, the ESB and OIL costs are relatively low but at yr. 6 and yr. 10 I have increased the costs as hopefully our family size would have increased by then!

We have also taken the following into consideration after we found these were important in our analysis also:

Supply and Demand
The current retraction of the global economy is keeping oil prices low.
Oil companies postponing investment programs - falling prices no longer justify the extra output
Depleting oil stocks
Global dependancy on the Chinese market
Finance
Gains more apparent if anticipated increases in oil prices take effect
The introduction of a carbon tax is a real threat in the next budget

I think these are all the assumptions and costs that we took into consideration in our cost benefit analysis. Should anyone think that we are missing anything, please let me know. Also, I would be particularly interested in hearing from people who have been through this already and let me know if they are happy with the system that they have in place and what things to be careful of when we go to build!
Many thanks!
Let me know if the attachment is not here!