Iceverge

Looks similar to this one. Not many for sale online in Ireland vs the UK and retailers are uninterested in selling direct here in my experience. Are you satisfied with it re noise and running cost? How does it perform at temps below 0?

Sounds like an excellent opportunity for some EWI as the render is the majority of the cost anyway.

100kPa should be fine. We used EPS with a compressive strength of 70kPa

Is this under a concrete slab or for a suspended timber floor? Assuming it's under a slab. You can use layers to build up to the required depth. I think using at least 2 is a good idea to allow joints to be staggered. Just adjust the substrate or covering slabs depth to compensate for variations in the insulation depth. Second hand stuff is fine so long an your building control can see it is a certified product. That kooltherm is k8, for cavity walls. I'm not sure of it's compressive strength. It's probably fine.

The annoying thing about this is that if proper nett metering was a thing no silly complex domestic mechanisms would be called for. Excess solar could be used in summer to offset any carbon based power generation. When all that headroom was used up we could use the power for electricity hungry industries like steel making to boost capacity. Maybe @Marvin you could install an industrial electric arc furnace in the back garden and use the spare power that way😂

Ah, months of storage. Not going to happen at a reasonable cost I'm afraid. @tonyshouse did a borehole to dump excess solar thermal I think. Not sure of the most recent results. Scanhome and University of Ulster did a project. A year in the life of a passive house with solar energy store V0.9 (energyexpertise.net) Whilst it was successful it was expensive. Stored heat was 0.79€/kWh.

I'd start with something like this. Then line the inside with foam boards with all joints crossed and foamed. Then something like dense mineral wool like that which is used for EWI that would happily take hundreds of degrees of heat. Next part is tricky, Maybe a thin steel liner, tech screwed together. Electric heating elements embedded in the sand then. Run a copper coil through it back to the house to small radiator and pump to extract the heat. 300mm of PIR plus 100mm mineral wool should give a U value of about 0.06w/m2K. Assuming the volume remaining inside is about 1.8mx1.8mx3.6m you would have an internal surface area of about 32m2 and a volume of 11.7m3. Sand with a specific heat capacity of sand at 800j/kg/K and a specific density of 1.6 would give about 1.5 Mj of storage per degree or 0.4KWh/K. If you were to assume the lowest useable temp to be 40 deg and you wanted to raise temp to 100 deg it would take 24kWh of input. Not undoable. The losses however ( assuming an average temp inside of 70 deg and 10 out side would be 32m2 x 0.06 W/m2k x 60 DeltaT would be 115w or 2.76kWh per day, say 3kWh with pipe losses. Assuming this system was charged and discharged over a 2 day period it sounds like 24kWh in and 18kWh out = 75% Efficiency. Not nearly as bad as I expected.

Seems the easiest thing to do if you're on good terms with your neighbour so, just knock a hole in the fence onto the lane.

That's a sad way to die. You can buy a 3kw bioethanol stove for about €1,000. Its another option. I would prefer the €10 fan heater to be honest but I'm tight!

A very interesting project. How much space do you have to play with and how much excess energy do you have to use? Is this a budgeted project with a payback window or a fun experiment?. In commercial systems they're claiming about 50% round trip efficiency and storage temps of up to 500 deg C.

Maybe fill them with insulation. And cap them off. Otherwise I have always thought that a vertical service void would be very handy for wires, ducting etc. Cap the chimney off, block the fireplace and go from there. Buy a small gas or kerosene stove. This particular debate has been had a few times . Many are happy to live with the localised elevated particulate levels confident that they're not harming any neighbours. Scientifically there's no doubt as to the risks to health. Shame really, I quite like a nice fire.

0.12% carbon monoxide is 1200ppm. Typical values in flue gas: Oil burners: 80 ppm - 150 ppm and Gas burners: 80 ppm - 100 ppm. Typical values for an oil boiler might be 1.8 mg/Nm3 and 0 for gas boilers. The stated figure of 23 is lightly to be the optimal combustion conditions for the given stove. Highly difficult to achieve in real life. Look at the below graph to see how bad it gets if you are a bit off with your burning. Over a hundred times worse if you throttle the fire. Note the exponential scale. Buy a couple of €10 electric heaters and hide them away for the unusual cold day if you're concerned about polluting the air.

Exactly the converse. If you are aiming for a minimum cost house you may be able to spare extra insulation and 3G windows if you achieve excellent airtightness. Airtightness is the single cheapest and best thing you can do to reduce bills and improve comfort. Passivhaus is 0.6ACH and probably the best standard although many on here have beaten that by quite a margin. Good design and about €900 of tape and membrane got us to 0.31ACH. The execution took thought however.

The PIR manufacturers have tremendous marketing. Every merchant and builder in the land cannot seem to see beyond it. Saved €1300 from memory in our floor insulation by using EPS.

Here Here, With SE's thumbs up just install more insulation to mitigate the wall floor thermal bridge.

Brill. What airtightness and ventilation strategy did you opt for?

Correct, this way they "pinch" the membrane nicely between the battens as well as providing a good thermal break. Yes. Some providers have a k value of 0.038W/mK- 0.04W-mK. The one we used (Ecocel) has a NSAI cert of 0.034W/mK. In practice it's probably more important to ensure its installed correctly rather than the last 0.00X W/mK .

This is where it's at. From memory about double the cost of mineral wool but it includes install. Similar to spray foam I think. Ask your engineer about decrement delay if you want to see their knowledge come to an abrupt end. Slates, 38mm slate battens. 22mm counter battens along the rafters. Breather membrane taped at all joints. (Optional 11mm OSB sarking) 220x44mm joists full filled with cellulose @600cc. 47x44 battens run at 90deg and full filled with cellulose. Airtight membrane. 47*44mm battened service void full fill with batt insulation. Plasterboard and skim. I value about 0.12-0.14 depending on whose cellulose you use.

Welcome, welcome. Passive house in Cork here, glad to share any experiences we've had. Plans plus pics are always appreciated.

Here's an article. https://www.jlconline.com/how-to/foundations/insulating-over-a-structural-slab_o I'll attach a PDF from Huber in the USA. 2-Layer-Floating-Subfloor-with-AdvanTech-subflooring-Technical-Tip-Subflooring-AdvanTech.pdf2-Layer-Floating-Subfloor-with-AdvanTech-subflooring-Technical-Tip-Subflooring-AdvanTech.pdf

I would say 2 layers of 11mm would be fine. Screwed and glued. Kingspan recommend 18mm T&G but I feel properly overlapped sheets would be stronger. Don't forget to leave enough space for expansion and contraction. https://www.kingspan.com/gb/en/knowledge-articles/a-guide-to-constructing-a-floating-floor/ Here's a project from the states. https://youtu.be/NbC-EfQ_u3E

Proair 600li. No problems so far. Bought direct from Proair in Galway. Played with a Vent Axia in my mates rental flat once. Wasn't too enticed with the build quality. No other experience.

Using EPS will be more forgiving to bumps than PIR. Cheaper too if you have the height to accomodation the extra depth for the same U Value. You could mix some cement into the sand like a biscuit mix to prevent it moving when the boards go down. Alternatively. DPM, Insulation boards in 2 layers. Slip membrane Pumped screed, this can be as little as 35mm AFAIK and will remove any small undulations of the floor .

Why the joists if you have a concrete base? Level with sand. 2 layers of insulation crossed. Then 2 layers of OSB crossing all joints and final flooring.

I'm with you @Alan Ambrose. It would be nice to be able to add extra wiring and or pipes at a suitable point in the future with minimal disruption. Occupants needs change , tech changes, it's impossible to foresee everything from day 1. Dropping from the top down via a service void is very handy, for example in a bungalow with vertically battens. Everything can go up to the attic and then across and down. Just a small hole in the plasterboard to make and fish out your wire . This is more of an issue in a two story as you're faced with either pulling up the floor or pulling down the ceiling. A suspended ceiling with push up tiles is the obviously solution off the shelf but they are ugly.