Seeking Cost Efficient Silver Standard Homes

[Mark Siddall]

The Concept:
Heat the primary habitable rooms (and bathroom) only and use MVHR to distribute the heat to the remaining rooms i.e. bedrooms (can be cooler anyway). This allows you to do away with radiator heating to the bedrooms and use the saved money to help pay for MVHR.

Seems like a nice idea but not being a services bod I have no way of figuring out whether the concept really works. Concerns are that the MVHR will be introducing air that will be a tad to cold. The questions:

1) Has anyone done this?
2) Does it provide adequate comfort in the bedrooms etc?

Mark

[Nick Grant]

Mark

I think people (even in Germany) have come unstuck if building too big.

We designed our house to use the temp gradient with heat source in living room, works fine for us although a bit of bathroom heat might have been a good idea for really cold weather. Our house isnt particularly compact and doesn't have MVHR.

Nick

[David OLIVIER]

I know a Silver house which eliminated rads. from some bedrooms and they're too cold in severe weather. German/Swiss houses - i.e., a similar standard of heat loss - still have rads. below the windows.

D.

[Peter Wilkinson]

We've just completed a barn conversion that has underfloor heating to ground floor and rads to first floor. Even in the past 2 months (ie summer) the first floor heating has occassionally been needed for the bathrooms. Client likes cooler bedrooms (not every ones taste) but come winter months the first floor heating will be needed. House is built to near Silver standard. Heavy weight construction, high thermal mass.

[Steve Macken]

Mark
- this is what we are planning to do for our AECB Silver house, with the UFH pipes in the ground floor slab and 1st floor en-suite + family bathroom only, with MVHR to be used to 'distribute heat' throughout.  Our insurance policy is to intall a manifold and piping for 1st floor bedroom radiators in case we go soft in our old age during a particularly cold Scottish winter!

Being a 1.5 storey house the insulation for the 1st floor rooms will mainly be in the roof rafters (the internal vertical wall height is around 900mm) which are fully filled 352mm I-beams, ie easily exceeding Silver u-value recomendations. Wall u-values will be around 0.2.

Steve

[Mark Siddall]

I've been reading one of the docs on the Stamford Brook web apge (Deliverable 4: CONSTRUCTION PROCESS V. 10 – July 22 2005.) It seems that Leeds MET considered that the rads could be omitted (they weren't due to the concerns of the spec house builders and the potential impact upon marketing and sales.)

http://www.leedsmet.ac.uk/as/cebe/projects/stamford/index.htm

Mark