Does it make sense to build a house today without a heating system? | Hacker News Reader

Does it make sense to build a house today without a heating system?

3 pointstakahit17 comments

I want to build a house from scratch, but looking at the fact that we are promised energy at crazy prices, I think about the need for a heating system.

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It seems that you have little experience in construction and you meant a passive house. This is not a bad idea, but it is important to take into account the peculiarities of the terrain. A friend of mine built such a house, but decided to play it safe and bought a pair of radiators on https://www.radiatoroutlet.co.uk/designer-radiators/vertical... During the cold winter, the operation of a two-storey Passive house with an area of 160 sq.m will cost 14,500 kW, including 9200 kW for heating. If desired, as I wrote above, the house can be equipped with any additional energy sources, such as a fireplace, an oven, a heat pump, a solar collector for heating water, a wind farm, solar panels, etc.

I don't get this logic. If roofing will get crazy expensive, you will "think about the need" for a roof too?

So called "passive houses" with good insulation that don't need heating do exist.. but that's expensive too.

Tin roof.

Why not think differently?

Still a roof.

You seem to be intentionally missing the point — but I'll enunciate anyhow.

Is it still "a roof" if I don't need roofers, etc etc etc?

Sorry, I tend to be quite literal. I like the tin roof, though.

You can build a house without a heating system. What you do is build it to better than PassivHaus insulation standards and then use the active ventilation system to cool down the house in summer when the sun is shining and the solar panels are working.

It's always struck me as odd that we continue to try to heat up houses in winter when solar panels work better in summer.

Highly insulated and airtight houses always seem to me to be candidates for cooling down rather than heating up.

Build with excess heat in the building, move that to the hot water cylinder, or vent outside as required.

Based on your question, I presume you are planning to build in an area where heating is normally required. The key is careful design and cost estimations. For example, smaller houses are cheaper to build and to adequately insulate. A heat-pump is more effective for heating than a gas fired boiler. You can store heat in thick concrete flooring, but it costs more than regular flooring, etc.

You're going to have to give more information.

I grew up in Florida, in a house with no heat, so, yes.

There's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house .

Or, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellet_heating .

A modern house and heating system will also help cool the house down. This is if you live in an area where temperature oscillates.

I'd considering finding a way to design the house such that you can install DIY ductless mini-split systems. They can be very energy efficient, and installed DIY can be very inexpensive (relatively). Plus, if you're in a humid climate, you can find some that have de-humidification ability as an option.

No, and it is such a foot-gun that building codes tend to prohibit it.

How much of a foot-gun?

The kind that kills people with carbon monoxide when they improvise a heating systems in cold weather. Not everyone all the time of course. But rather produces corpses at a statistically non-trivial rate.

Good luck.

If the prices are your only concern, consider heating with wood, pellets, geothermal, solar, etc.

Look into rocket mass stoves and thermal mass storage.

Where? this wouldn't work here in Sweden for example, but around the Mediterranean it is somewhat doable in some areas.

https://www.passivehouse-international.org/index.php?page_id...: The Swedish Passive House Association IG Passivhus Sverige is a national network of Passive House stakeholders working to safeguard the international Passive House Standard as well as the quality for which it stands

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sweden-pass... (2014): “According to Johansson, even though the city has endured three extremely cold winters since the buildings went up, the apartments have not been cold, noting that "there's actually a bigger risk that they get too hot in the summer". The city does, however, provide each apartment with a battery that can be used to generate a small amount of heat, primarily when residents are away.”

The second article doesn't mention no heating at all, from the little I know some heating is necessary.

> Each of the Växjö highrises also has a ventilator in the attic that transports the human-generated heat back into the apartments

Heat recovery systems are very popular even in non-passive houses, combined with Ground source heat pumps and decent isolation you get excellent results and low costs for heating and as the article says the bigger problem is cooling in the summer as many houses are built facing sun-wards to catch more heat in the winter.

passive geothermal heating and cooling for a home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4nMsHqCTeI&list=PLuTmAc3bBO...

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