Live self-Builds - mod warning in post no. 1

just do it wrote: »

That's a large celtic tiger apartment you've got in that one area alone:D. I wonder would such an apartment heat comfortably in 30mins?

Last night it was up to 20 - 21 degrees within an hour of turning on the rad.
Once it got turned off though, it was down to 16 after about an hour also. Felt really cold actually.
Yet this morning, it was 15 and felt much warmer. I'm figuring there is a psychological effect, 16 degrees when it's dark and wet outside feels colder than 15 degrees on a bright sunny morning.

The rest of the house must be drawing the heat out of the heated room once the rad is turned off, he said hopefully!

just do it wrote: »

Sas - how long does this area hold the heat? This is surely where the difference is given you've not had much passive heat thus far to heat the place.

Not long enough yet.

I also got to experience the joy of a warm (not hot) shower this morning as 2 days of crap weather resulted in us exhausting the heat reserve. Tank was down to 27 after showers today.

We wanted a contemporary feel for our stairs. We already had a concrete stairs in situ so our options revolved around the hand rail and cladding of steps.

I would have preferred an entirely glass hand rail but it was proving cost prohibitive.

This is what I came up with by mixing a few themes.

The cut outs in the pic will be filled with glass. The timber is oak. It's not quite finished but looking good so far.

sas wrote: »

Hopefully it's good early signs. I'm upping my timescale plan for the oil backup. I'd like to have it in place asap.

Will report back again in a few weeks.

I guess it will take time for the thermal mass to warm all the way through - but once this happens then you should be in business

sas wrote: »

Hopefully it's good early signs. I'm upping my timescale plan for the oil backup. I'd like to have it in place asap.

Will report back again in a few weeks.

SAS
I've been thinking about where you are at the moment and depending on how much work is required to commission the HRV this may prove a more cost effect short term solution. This cold spell is unseasonal and with the current length of day the daylight should be providing ample passive heat given your glazing. I assume the 2 large holes you metioned will be closed at the time of HRV commissioning. With these open your airtightness is poor and therefore what passive heat gain there is is disappearing out these holes and the building mass isn't getting a chance to capture and store the passive heat.

Theoretically I would have thought airtightness and HRV would heat your house until at least October and possibly December. Your secondary heat source (oil) would come into play then. Commissioning the oil heating ahead of the HRV and airtightness will mean your wasting oil.

I'm open to correction on this postulate!

best of luck sas with the new home stead

what area of solar thermal have you for the 1000ltr buffer and what dhw volume have you and is the dhw cylinder seperate to the buffer or tank in tank.

(cant seem to find that) :rolleyes:

yea think i get it, so the dhw when called for at the hot tap it is run through at the lower point and out at the top of big long coil through the buffer? or is there an external plate heatexchanger transfering the heat across the dhw and heating waters.

did your solar system stagnate today? 23*c at home and solar tank full at 12pm today. 2 panels and 280ltr cylinder.

what volumes of fresh cold water are is stored in the external h exchanger,
could you possibly post a pic or pm the product name.

heard of a german company about 1 year ago working on at 'jelly' type substrate which would be capible of storing large volumes of heat energy when the sun was out for periods of time and then the energy cuold br extracted to form a heating circuit at night to run steam genertors producing electricity.
havent seen any thing on this 'jelly' product since, with the domestic solar collectors in mind wouldent it be great to store the solar energy generated over the last few days and use it to get us over the long winter months.

esox28 wrote: »

what volumes of fresh cold water are is stored in the external h exchanger,
could you possibly post a pic or pm the product name.

I'm not sure I follow. There isn't any cold water stored as such in the h exchanger. I'll pm on the tank details.

esox28 wrote: »

heard of a german company about 1 year ago working on at 'jelly' type substrate which would be capible of storing large volumes of heat energy when the sun was out for periods of time and then the energy cuold br extracted to form a heating circuit at night to run steam genertors producing electricity.
havent seen any thing on this 'jelly' product since, with the domestic solar collectors in mind wouldent it be great to store the solar energy generated over the last few days and use it to get us over the long winter months.

There is a storage tank that a friend of mine is using which has both water and a wax within it. The wax changes state to absorb energy, it has a higher storage capacity than water is my basic understanding.

Interseasonal storage is proving cost prohibitive if you go with large insulated tanks of water based on a study I read. If you go for specialist jellsy etc. I can only imagine that it's ridiculously cost prohibitive.

Time and the 25 degree heat beat the lads in the end but they put in a huge days work of 13 and a half hours flat out all the way.

This photo isn't from the very end of the day, they just have one gable to swing in tomorrow.

kboc wrote: »

impressive in the efficientcy in which it was errected.

Sure 'tis hard to beat the Galway lads!

Although they are much happier with the weather today, 12 C and soft rain, much more like what their used to than the 25C and blazing sunshine yesterday.

kboc wrote: »

Any info on the wall build-up in your new project and why you choose this over other wall build-up's?

You might see from some of the photos that the walls come in a closed panel from the factory here in Sweden with the windows and doors pre-installed.

There is calcium silicate board on the outside then a ventilation gap and then bitumen paper then 145mm mineral wool batts then plasterboard which is redundant.

Next week I will start on putting up another 145mm of mineral wool batts



Then the airtightness layer and then a 70mm stud insulated with more mineral wool and then the plasterboard.

The main reason for going this way was one of the supplier having the experience, cost and material. The main alternative for passive or low energy houses here is to build with massive slabs of aerated concrete up to 475mm thick but that didn't appeal to me.

sas wrote: »

I was wondering why it all looked so familiar.

House building in Sweden must be expensive when you would choose them under the cost category!

When I was building my last time in Ireland in 2001 I had a look at their price list then and thought they were very expensive. But I now realise that I wasn't comparing like for like and considering how much is included and the quality of what you are getting I now consider them to be very fair value.

The biggest difficulty I have at the moment is working around all the materials that are in the house. In terms of the structure of the house the only significant thing that isn't included is the stairs, they have supplied almost everything else required including the HRV and ducting. I will have very little in the way of materials to purchase to finish the house.

And in terms of quality, my engineer who is overseeing the build is a master carpenter by trade originally and he considers the house to be top of the league in build quality.

As for building costs here in Sweden when we were organising our 10 year building failures insurance I got quotes from the 2 major companies who do that cover here. One of them was significantly higher than the other and when we queried it one had taken my detailed estimated price of 2.2 million SEK (about €245,000 at today's rate) and the other had disregarded it and used a price from their database of prices, they estimated that by average Swedish prices our 215m2 house would cost us a minimum of 4.3 million SEK to build (about €488,000 at today's rate).

I was discussing prices with the Irish lads today and they reckon that what I have to pay for the plumbing is almost three times the current rate in Ireland and the electrics is double the Irish rate, but I am snookered as for the insurance I must have locally certified trades doing that work, I can't fly lads in.

The cost for applying the render system is 50% higher than bringing lads over even allowing for air fares and B&B's but that could turn pear shaped if the weather was bad and they ended up sitting around here for some while so I will probably have to just swallow the Swedish price on that as well.

To keep the overall cost in check I will do most of the internal work myself and the overall cost will be about the same as if I weren't having to lift a finger in Ireland.

I'd imagine (but only guessing) that the spec I am building to here would probably reach certified levels for Irish weather data and I think that allowing for all costs from a green field to moving in furniture at €1140/m2 is probably fair value.

Do-more wrote: »

Should be weather tight in another hour or two...

Great stuff do-more, it must be a great feeling to see it suddenly appear before your eyes after all the planning

Cpngrats Do-More . Hollowcore being craned in today for me...looking forward to it. Still cant establish how to post photos so if anyone knows pm rather than diluting thread

about2build wrote: »

Cpngrats Do-More . Hollowcore being craned in today for me...looking forward to it. Still cant establish how to post photos so if anyone knows pm rather than diluting thread

PM sent