Reply to Are all houses just cold?

Forum Index » Home Improvement, Design, and Decorating

Reply to "Are all houses just cold?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Houses are like snowflakes, every one is unique.

That said,  a house built today, following modern codes and using modern techniques, is going to be much more comfortable in the winter. Modern codes call for houses to be pretty air-tight, and that air tightness should be tested during construction using a blower door. Good modern windows don't leak cold air and aren't cold to sit next to when it's cold out. The same with doors.

A well-engineered heating system will distribute the heat evenly throughout the house.

The temperature in a house will be determined by how much heat is dumped into it. How comfortable the house is depends on how evenly that heat is distributed.

Unfortunately, if a house wasn't built to be comfortable it's a pretty big job to upgrade it. [/quote]

Airtight also means more humidity trapped, which affects wet bulb readings and how a place feels (usually colder in winter and hotter in summer) so a humidity regulator is necessary in modern pods that don't breathe well.

Mold is also big issue in modern houses. [/quote]

This. I've done the Passive House program and after weeks of ingesting their material, I'm convinced there is a lot of problems with their philosophy.
Basically, they want you to live in a ziploc bag with specific controlled holes for fresh air.
I'm an architect and have worked on traditional homes and extremely modernist commercial buildings. The building wrap for airtightness is a problem. If it's on the wrong side of insulation, the condensation will drip on the wrong side and you have a disaster slowly brewing (think about how a glass of ice water sweats in humid weather). It's also a problem in wrapping, i.e. imagine gift wrapping a modern building with extreme angles. The wrap can't by nature be clean, you'll need lots of glues and adhesives to deal with the funky corners, angles and window openings. Glues and adhesives almost always eventually fail.
And then there are all the silicone and acrylic sprays on modernist flat rooves. The roofers are under strictures about how and where they spray because it's airborne and can land on cars. Guess where else it can go - the local inhabitants breathe it in. Once a upon a time most rooves were sloped to shed water. Now we can entertain a flat roof and assume water will never pool and always move towards the gently sloped drain.
So all these modern plastics - they are a wonder and a pose problems. A layperson friend asked me why buildings are only guaranteed for about 20 years these days. I think this is why.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics