As part of the My Design Partner series we are going to discuss HVAC.

Choosing the best HVAC for your house is not always any easy thing to decide upon.  Especially, when you are forced to make a decision quickly when it breaks when there are extreme temperatures outside!  It is best to have a plan in place (better yet a quote) before your system breaks.

In the Southeastern US there are several options that are readily available.  Standard heat pumps (heating and cooling), Furnaces (heating) with AC (cooling) , and Geothermal (heating and cooling)  are the most popular. more…

Enjoy our latest cold snap? When it is below freezing out the first thing that we notice is how uncomfortable our homes if they have not been built or tuned up. You will see many commercials telling you to either upgrade your insulation, fix your HVAC or change out your windows. The claim is that if you make any of these improvements you will see 50% or more off of your energy bill.

This could be the case, however each home or building is different and these types of savings are based on how bad the house is in the first place.

Confused? Well- you should be. Most contractors don’t even know where to start.

If you are talking to and HVAC contractor (that only does HVAC- not home performance) they will sell you on the latest and greatest equipment.

If you got one of those “free audits” for you home- you will get sold some insulation.

If you call a window replacement company- you will get sold some super insulated vinyl windows that will be 25% less if you sign now!

Not that these products do not work (this was an intentional “double negative”), however if they applied in the wrong order, you will end having to spend the money twice or may not get the full benefit of the improvement immediately.

What is the solution? The best thing to do is do everything at once with a home performance contractor. They will do full diagnostic assessment to see where the problems are on your home and will give you a prioritized list based on safety concerns and return on investment.

Typically, you will see the ROI in this order.

1. Fix the holes Any holes in the exterior of your home is costing you money every day.  Whether it is an actual home where air or water is coming in/ going out or if it is inadequate insulation allowing for heat to be lost in the winter or gained in the summer.  This applies to foaming holes around the windows, air sealing around outlets, adding insulation to areas that do not have it (after you seal the holes), replacing windows that leak, and fixing duct work that leaks.
2. Upgrade the HVAC This needs to happen after the house is weatherized.  If not, the HVAC will be sized according an inefficient house.  Once you make it efficient, then the HVAC will be over-sized for that house.  Over-sized HVAC systems do not run long enough to pull the moisture out of the air and this can cause indoor air quality issues.  If you are going to upgrade the insulation and windows (just not now) then size the HVAC for the more efficient house.  It will just have to run longer to condition the house, but it will condition it.  Also, make sure that you fix your ductwork at the same time.  If not, you just spend tens of thousands on a system that is 10-30% more efficient that you old one (unless you are going with geothermal) and your duct system could be leaking 50% of the air to the outside.  Fixing the ductwork is a fraction of the cost and yields a faster ROI.
3. Renewable Energy-
   1. Geothermal HVAC should be considered whenever you are looking to replace or add HVAC.  Since geothermal costs more,, you need to make your house as efficient as possible by upgrading your insulation to spray foam and adding good windows.  This will decrease the size of the geothermal unit and saze you on installation and operational costs.
   2. Solar Thermal- I like heating water with the sun since the sun’s energy is currently free.  Solar Thermal is also not dependent on insulation, windows etc.  You can upgrade to solar thermal at any time as long as you plan currently for the number for bathrooms that you have in your house and how many people will be using the water at once.

PS- Whatever you do for the winter will help lower your summer bills as well!!

For more examples on Building Performance Solutions visit Fresh World

In a neighborhood where the neighbors are paying hundreds in utility costs due to inefficient homes- one of our clients just gave us this feedback on their home:

This is for their power usage…

July – 543 kwh – $60
Aug – 483 Kwh – $56
Sep – 455 kwh -   $53
Oct – 352 kwh -   $43

This was not a new home- it was a renovation!! To find out how you can get these kinds of savings on your home visit Fresh World.  We were able to accomplish this by making the home energy efficient with good insulation, windows and air sealing.  In addition to an efficient design, we were able to add solar thermal and geothermal HVAC.

I have been getting lots of questions about how geothermal works especially since the stimulus package upgraded the rebate that you get to 30% of the total cost.  To date, I have not heard any consumer or builder get the principles of geothermal exactly correct so I have asked our in-house expert to give us a quick lesson on Geothermal.  To get a more thorough explanation in person visit us this week at the SouthEastern Lifestyle Construction Conference.

GEOTHERMAL 101

By: Fresh World – Geothermal Systems design, Sales, Installation – Fresh World- Sustainable Solutions for Life

Geothermal heating and cooling technology has been around for decades, but not many people use it—compared to a conventional heat pump, it’s 2x more expensive to install. But if you’re building a new house, installing a geothermal system will only cost a few thousand dollars more than a conventional system and can pay off big through reduced energy and upkeep costs.

A geothermal Heat Pump is nothing more than a Heat Pump. A common misconception is it uses water from the earth to heat and cool your house, it does not! It works on the same principles as a regular air to air heat pump. Firstly I’m going to explain how a Heat Pump works. Compression of any gas to a liquid state (any one remember their chemistry & physics classes?) generates heat. In this case the gas we use is called refrigerant. This high pressure refrigerant is then quickly discharged to a vapor state through the use of a nozzle called an expansion valve, the same way hair spray comes out of an aerosol can. That vaporized refrigerant is now really cold. This cold refrigerant is piped through a coil where air blows past it from your air conditioner unit and the cold is what you feel in the summer time coming out of your vents. Once this refrigerant leaves the coil it begins its journey again through the compressor that puts the refrigerant back into a compressed liquid state. Imagine putting the hair spray back into the can and pressurizing it again so that the cycle can start all over again. But wait. The compressor and the refrigerant are now really hot from all this work so the Heat Pump uses a fan to cool everything off. This is what you see sitting outside your house making all kinds of racket out side your bedroom window. In the winter time this process still happens but in reverse. more…