maandag 29 september 2014

Energy efficient retrofitting of a private home

The last couple of month we have been very busy in upgrading our house.
We decided to decrease our energy footprint by (hopefully) 80%.
In a dedicated website we show the changes, the measurement and discuss the problems and possibilities.

The website is still in Dutch, but the pictures speaak a thousand words? In a couple of month an English version will be added.
Website Energy efficient retrofit

The system design, with the woodburning central heating unit and the 1000L buffer at the heart of it, assisted by two heatpumps.


Some of the control valves in the system, on the left a glimpse of the underfloor buffer


What is judging the improvements without measurements. Below the energy production per day of our PV system.

What are the high energy users in the house, only when you know them, you can change them, or alter behaviour. We decided to get rid of the kitchen electric boiler and of the wash dryer. I could not change the PC stuff ....


Before this project we knwe theoretically what CO2 means and does in a house. But measuring the CO2 level in the house en in different rooms was an eye opener. It can quickly be much higher than waht is good for a person and we as people are big CO2 producers. Remember those headaches one can get from a crowded party, CO2!
Cooking on gas also quickly causes high CO@ levels.


The house was pressure tested before we started retrofitting it and it proved to be very leaky as this image from the smoke test shows. The smoke was introduces inside the house below the windowsill and this is what came out, all of it and quickly.


In the retrofit we have used Kingspan OptimR vacuumpanels for isolation, miracle panels.