The heating system has gone in, it quite unique,
but should be very efficient.
It is a combination of wood burning
stove, accumulator tank and PV panels. The wood burning stove with a back
boiler feeds the accumulator tank which is 1000 litres, storing the water at 85
degrees this will be used to provide the hot water for the heating system and
the domestic hot water cylinder through a coil in the 300 litre cylinder which
is in the house, in a similar way to a conventional gas boiler and hot water
cylinder.This will be used during the winter months, the wood-burning stove is
not a feature of the main Living Space, (but is in the garage) as it would generate too much heat and
will overheat the house. The house will need approximately one kilowatts of heating
for the entire house when it is 10 below outside.
During the summer months the PV
panels on the roof will heat the hot water cylinder which is in the house via
the immersion heater and a bit of smart technology called, i boost box. This
monitors the power being generated by the PV panels and when we are exporting
power to the National Grid it switches on the immersion heater on to make hot
water. This enables us to use 100% of the power but still get paid for the 50%
they assume goes into the grid.
Other work that has been going on is all
the pipe work for the 2 towel rails and one radiator these are all having to
run very carefully to keep the pipe runs short but also to enable pipe
insulations to go around the pipes as it in insulated pipes could cause the
house to over heat.
MVHR. This is one of the fundamental
parts of passive house. The basic concept. Build tight so no air can get out
and ventilate right. So will be recovering all the heat from hot areas of our house so the bathrooms and
the kitchen the will then do into the MVHR unit which is heat exchange unit
that recovers the heat from that air as it expels from the house and adds it to
the fresh air as it comes in. Where in normal buildings we just pump all the
hot air from bathrooms and kitchen out of the house.
