Friday 28 November 2008

Heating using flueless gas fires

Idea:

Use a (thermostat controlled?) flueless gas fire as the heater in a passivhaus.

Upsides: Simple. Visible flame/focal point. Cheaper than central heating. Practically 100% efficient. Low power is OK for this application. Provides humidity!
Downsides: Emissions (esp. particulates). May not be safe/allowed as MHRV does not provide passive ventilation. Still need to provide hot water.

If not, a small balanced flue one may be good, although far less efficient.

Sunday 23 November 2008

Piracy in Somalia

Radical Islamists in Somalia have declared that they will rescue the hijacked Saudi oil tanker. The Russian Navy has vowed to prevent any further hijacking. Nato and the EU will also cooperate to do the same.

I am extremely impressed at such a united effort to defend liberty and property from such a varied and generally mistrustful range of military powers.

Such a spectacle of cordial international harmony only confirms what we already knew:

The world needs more pirates.

You know it makes sense. Let us sincerely hope that when gallant John, Abdul and Dmitri storm this stricken vessel they find its captors dressed in 18th century attire, wearing peg legs and eyepatches, quaffing rum and/or sherry and teaching obscenities to a parrot. If that happens, as I pray it will, it will be an omen for peace in the 21st Century.

Arr!

Wednesday 19 November 2008

imagesofyourhouse.org.uk

English Heritage - the UK government agency that acts as a latter-day feudal landlord for almost all old buildings in England - has a project: imagesofengland.org.uk, which aims to publish on its website pictures of all the listed (i.e. "protected") buildings in the country.

This is bad. It's a waste of money and it's intrusive and slightly creepy. Flickr (along with the internet in general) has just as interesting a collection of building photos, hasn't cost the taxpayer a penny, and doesn't have them all neatly catalogued by their addresses. The pictures on the government site are just single photos taken from the nearest road. They show no details, making them as useless as they are intrusive.

On the plus side, I find this house attractive.

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Cellular Shades

I like the look of these shades (or blinds, as I think both blinds and shades are usually called in British English):

http://www.ecosmartshades.com/

These shades appear to be not only aesthetic, but potentially very useful for making energy-efficient buildings.

This is because, in a low energy building (in a cold climate), the fenestration is usually responsible for a large proportion of the heat loss. For example, in a Passivhaus design, the u-value of the wall will typically be about 0.15 Wm-2K-1, but the u-value of the windows will be about 0.8 Wm-2K-1. This is a much higher rate of heat loss (although admittedly of course the area of the windows will be much smaller than that of the wall). The reason for the greater conductivity is that currently we don't have any way to make building materials both highly transparent and highly insulating.

Because of this problem, it would be very useful when making buildings to have a removable insulation layer that can be placed over the window when transparency is not needed and removed when it is. Unfortunately, this hasn't really proved practical in most cases. Insulated shutters are bulky and not mass-produced, and typically occupants won't use them extensively anyway. This is why cellular shades have such potential; they're a collapsible insulation layer that the occupant can use for privacy exactly like as a normal window covering, a window covering being needed for most windows in any case.

I am particularly impressed by the manufacturer EcoSmart mainly because they offer so many options (including sidetracks, which surely must be vital for decent insulation) and have such an informative website, which also appears to actually have a useable ordering system (although I have not actually used it to buy anything).

I do have one serious criticism of their marketing, however, which is that the r-values they quote for their product are cumulative i.e. they include the r-value of the window as well as that of the shade. One can therefore only guess what the r-value of the shade itself is. In addition, the r-values are based on figures supplied by the manufacturer of the cellular fabric, rather than on independent testing, although I don't think this is actually a big problem.

I emailed EcoSmart to ask about the lack of a definitive r-value for their product, and in their reply they claimed that the r-value of the standard light-filtering shade with sidetracks is about 0.65 m2KW-1. I note that they have not added this claim to their website, however.

If correct, this represents a considerable energy saving, as it would reduce the u-value of a typical double glazed window from, say, 1.5 Wm-2K-1 to 0.75 Wm-2K-1 i.e. the shade would be as insulating as the window itself, and, albeit only when covering the window as at night, would reduce the u-value to Passivhaus levels. Impressive!

One thing that does trouble me about the whole concept is that the shades are not vapour-proof. This suggests that, because they necessarily reduce the temperature of the inner surface of the window, they probably promote condensation at that point, leading in all likelihood to mildew. I don't know whether or not this is a significant issue in practice, though. Condensation forms on double glazed windows in cold conditions even without coverings.