Welcome to the internet good morning, internet land from hr 2022 right here we are yeah las vegas, all right sweet, and this morning i'm eric kaiser with hvac school brian is uh. Not here this morning he's somewhere else yeah he couldn't couldn't join us he's lost in the either someone waved from the the crowd. Is he waving from the crowd? Oh, i think he might be in the crowd this morning he's behind the camera today. So this morning we've got uh caleb, saleem and uh mr bill spun, hi good morning, uh true tech tools.

Over here and uh. I think we're talking about net zero hvc. Is that what we're talking about yeah? Let's talk about that yeah? Okay! What is that? What is that yeah? That's a like that was my lead off question here. I made some notes sure, so i i would describe it as uh.

It's designing the kind of system in really tight coordination with the the house they're talking residential hvac right yeah. So you have to have all your ducks in a row with k's and t's um to get that yeah. Okay yeah! I just want to make sure it's early here in las vegas. It is uh and you need to make sure that uh everything works correctly.

So uh i designed a house with a builder, so i i contributed to the design i didn't actually design it, but we wanted to make it approaching passive house standards, which is like a real tight air tightness requirement like .6 ach 50.. Okay, we ended up at one. We have to test it again because we did some more fixes haven't tested that so it might be just a little bit below one and then the right amount of insulation and the right amount of solar gain through the windows and the walls, so that you sort Of use nature to the best effect and then can provide mechanical ventilation to to make up for the weather. Okay.

So let me back this up a little bit further. What is your goal with net zero and what really is net zero mean? What do? What does that term mean? Because it's something we see a lot in places all over now? What what does that mean to you and and or the industry? As a large, i decided at sort of a midpoint in the design of this whole thing to to make it a personalized performance home, not necessarily one that had a certain badge on it, but it was something that met our requirements. Maryland myself, our requirements for a house and to be able to live without you know, quote-unquote a utility bill, um is is a nice thing. I mean anybody could agree with that.

Yeah yeah um. So that's we're comfortable, yeah right right, so that that was like. That was high up on the list. I'll tell you that there were.

You know some immutable laws of this design, yep. That comfort had to be uh a factor. Everybody had to be comfortable, so um. The net zero aspect is generating on-site as much or more energy than you consume over the course of a year.

Okay, so - and this came to light uh recently because i've been doing you know, a lot of you know conversations online, a lot of digital conversations with with people about net zero and so a friend of mine in virginia his veterinarian wanted to optimize his solar, and He said he said you should talk to bill, so we had a little email conversation and the the biggest thing that came over for me was the understanding between time of generation and time of use. So you, if you need to bridge the time generation and the time of use, because the sun doesn't shine all day. The weather isn't good enough such that you get good sunshine all day for your solar panels, if you're using solar, which most people would for solar electric, you have to have some kind of battery to bridge the difference between what you need when you need it. Unless you want to live without comfort, so net metering is what we use and we have that available in in our state in pennsylvania, so that we actually our electric meter, actually is in very high numbers, because it's below zero.

So if you get that it's kind of like running an odometer backwards, so it's never gone positive. Yet, okay, which is a sign that we've always been generating more than we consumed so you're direct tied to all of your solar, then is direct tied to the grid, because that's what you generate mostly with the solar rays right so so the the utility is, my Battery okay, in this sense and that's something that people don't understand, isn't often available uh, the utility doesn't pay me and then i buy electricity from them. They bank kilowatt hours. Okay.

So it's like a piggy bank. You keep putting into when there's a lot of generation and then, when you don't have that generation available you draw from the bank uh. I checked it last week and we have about half a megawatt hour left from over generation last year as we're going through kind of the grayer days in the colder nights which consume more electricity, because it's an all-electric house. Okay, every system runs electricity, including me.

No gas at all, no gas at all, no gas that was not running you're running a coffee this morning, so the um it was so that was sort of a statement was they have no guests on the property, sure uh, so just sort of my feelings and And we agreed with it, but we got a number of questions like from the builder. Are you sure uh township person? Are you sure everybody are you sure you know it's better to put it in now we're doing all this excavation for the foundation, it's better. To put it in now: no we're not going to put in gas, so we have guests in the car diesel in the tractor and propane on the grill, but those are all outside yeah there you go yeah so um. We we all know.

You know at this point that you know the the benefit of having a net zero house is that you're generating more than you're consuming right um? But how do you actually like go about that other than you know? We talked about building, tightness and and building materials, but if someone were interested in this sort of thing, what types of building materials are you using? How do you go about picking those things out sure um so, like i said the passive house concept, um will help you can. Actually we did modeling. Okay put it that way. I think.

That's probably an easy thing for a lot of our listeners to understand, but in this case it's called a passive house planning package, a phpp. It actually allows you to model the house for load and ventilation, but very specifically with building materials like there's, actually pick lists of specific manufacturers of windows and then the sizes of the windows. So it actually gets a little bit grainier, perhaps than the typical manual j. Would so it allows you to look at trade-offs in the design to see if you get where you want to get and the biggest factor that we had was the the blower door number, the air tightness? You know we went from just you know for experiments, saying from four to two to one to half to see where that would lead, but then looked at okay to achieve those numbers, you have to have elements of construction materials, careful design, skilled trades.

That can do it and all those things have to come together to make it reality, so you can't always get what you want yeah. Thank you, mick jagger! Now you you approach this uh from my recollection as a modular, build yeah yeah talk about that. A little bit sure so, when we look went to look for a passive house builder, we could only find one that actually did residential it's being done a lot in multi-family and and the advantage is there is because you have so many shared surfaces and walls and Things like that, so it's actually an easier investment to do that way and there's a lot of things going around the country of passivhaus multi-family. So we found one builder and they said their passive house certified and trained, but they've never built one before and they just so happen to be a modular builder.

So we we they had like a an open house at the factory, the um father and son team that owned the company. The sun was building uh, two modular houses side by side on a city lot on an infill lot, very small, like 22 feet wide. That's the whole lot wow and you built right small right to the edges of the lot too. This is allowed by by code because of the the way the sort of the history and the heritage of the neighborhood is so we went out and toured the factory where they're building his house and then a few months later got to watch them set the house And we're like really engaged with that in in terms of uh, you know walking through the factory and seeing that all the materials of construction were undercover.

The workers uh are able to swarm around the structure without need, for you know the weather's not going to get in the way and they're coming to work in a factory. You know same day after day, so they got all their tools there, all their materials there. They got quality control, they got supervision, they got teammates and everything has to leave their factory complete. So the traits don't conflict, the traits have to harmonize and everything is done in cad beforehand, not 3d cad, but 2d cad beforehand and they've got 30 years experience at the factory, which gives us a lot of confidence that they haven't know how to do things directly.

The other another aspect of it is the they're able to you know the houses that actually the modules are individually inspected by a state housing inspector okay. So it isn't like it goes without any kind. You know any kind of formal. You know, code type oversight and the houses the modules have to withstand.

In our case, it was about an 85 mile journey on a truck. So to me that made me feel like that's got to be one sturdy structure yeah in order not to be ripped apart and after they set everything in place. I think i saw like two - maybe one inch tiny cracks at the edges of the window frames, but but nothing like nothing fell apart. Nothing was damaged.

The other thing that was amazing when they set the modules on the site is the they're about 14 feet wide and 64 feet long, because that's the max they could take on a road but they've, really skilled truck drivers. It's really cool that they they drive these in and the way they maneuver them around and up the driveway and down the road and things like that. They um the 64-foot modules they touched at one end and there was a three-eighths inch gap at the other end. So that that spoke towards the precision of construction, which sort of gives you a good feeling, like you know, if every if they can get that right, there's so many other things, they're, probably getting right yeah, you know laser alignment, jigs and fixtures things like that, so It it lends it lends towards the.

If you have to have the high performance, you need quality oversight and quality construction, and i think those elements came through in a factory in a big way too. That's an interesting journey um. It kind of leads into one question that i have as well, which is, and i think, net zero and using less energy with great comfort is, is a very admirable goal in the world today. For anyone, that's especially looking to build a new house, we have a lot of existing housing stock out there, though, that we really shouldn't be replacing in a lot of cases.

There's some good houses out there. Maybe some tweaks, have you seen anyone doing or do you have any experience with making existing housing stock into net zero? I i don't have any experience with that. I know i've gotten. You know over time.

People, you know said: hey, you see what you're doing ask questions and it usually ends up being very difficult without like a real major gut and remodel um, but that can be done depends on your budget depends on the situation. It depends on how much work you're going to do um one interesting thing that happened was uh actually sure. Oh, i was, i was uh. I had excess building materials after all, was said and done, and i put them on uh facebook, neighborhood group and just said free to pick up, and some guy says i'll be back tonight.

Okay, so this guy comes by and he's a young guy and he's building his own house like almost by himself, and so we started talking and he's like. Oh, these are good ideas. Well, i i really want to make something. That's got really great indoor air quality.

I have four daughters and i'm doing this work myself, so i can see all these details and things like that. So um, you know the net goal should or the goal shouldn't be net zero for everybody for every situation. But i think it's just like a lot of things understand how to work with your contractor. Uh understand a little bit more about building science and and that's what you know a lot of us are trying to do - is make that all more approachable, because i think um, the right kind of people have the curiosity to pursue that yeah.

So what have you found to be? I'm not sure if you've had any experience building another in any other type of house, that's my first and last year, first and last, but i'm curious as to um. If you've done any analysis on comparative costs of, you know what it costs to build: a net zero home versus your standard. You know modern day structure. Ours was totally custom designed with with a lot of features in it that just don't make sense on us per square foot budget we we could do it, thankfully, and and we did it, but if, if i were to like do this like more, it's a business, Endeavor, i would research that topic more more thoroughly.

I think there are ways to do it um, but i didn't simply put well just. It occurs to me that it's like, of course this. This all sounds like this sounds great and i believe that's. It should be more, you know, involved in in our future um in the future of building right.

But why aren't we there yet like? Why? Because there's a lot of listeners they've, never probably even heard of net zero housing right um. So, but what so? Why is that again? I think it was just like my journey was uh finding one person, one one builder, who understood that we actually went to uh a home show the year before and we were starting to think about building and we asked all the builders there. Just one question: you're familiar with passive house construction and got these stairs. Yes, so the like the professionals either don't know about it or aren't communicating it um in any way shape or form for for people to get there.

So that's part of why i'm i'm doing what i'm doing. Why i'm here doing this is, i think, more people need to hear about it to make decisions. There's one builder nate adams introduced me to his name is ed keesel he's in cleveland. I would have had him stick build my house to the level that we wanted, but he couldn't travel that far with his work, crews and things like 120 miles, but he builds really high performing homes with all standard construction.

I think, in some cases even does two by four walls. You know we we did two by six um, but he he's there like every night with sealing up every air gap and he understands the importance of all of that. So he builds these really beautiful homes. A lot of beautiful, fake features on the the face on the surface, like a lot of people want, but also a lot of beautiful to me, invisible features that are beneath the surface and he tests them too.

So he understands the performance and you know he he tests afterwards. You know the uh, the energy usage and things like that, so it's um it can be done and and it doesn't have to be done like to any extreme. But you know builders should be paying attention to this yeah. You think part of that has to do with the codes, and because i mean you, we all know that yeah.

Typically, the building codes is really on a grade scale. A d yeah. Well, i mean passing, but it's not great. The building something to code is the the very minimum that you can legally build out anything below that's illegal, yeah, right, yeah, right yeah, so there's um some some areas of country.

Excuse me, then things called stretch codes where they're looking to encourage builders and uh homeowners to to ask for more to actually look further and deeper into design. Before i came, someone said the voice, may the voice be with you apparently may the voice be with you? I, like that, that's a good line to use um so say somebody wanted to get into to try doing net zero and, specifically, you know, net zero house that net zero hvac, because hvac is obviously a very, very large energy use in a house. I know in my house i i track a lot of stuff and just the fan now my house isn't very well set up at this point, but just the blower motor on my furnace uses somewhere around 20 to 25 percent of the electricity in my house. Correct wow yeah it's an older psc blower motor, yeah, yeah, okay, so there's some upgrades that need to be done there you got ta get on that.

There's a lot of possibilities there, ecm yeah, just ecm, just ecm, i think the so. For for net zero. You need to have this tightly built, enclosure, um and you have to manage the sun. So we actually, we chose the solar heat gain coefficient of the windows.

There are like three or four levels we could have chosen. We showed something that wasn't the maximum gain, but was near the top, and we've really appreciated it in the winter time, because we have a lot of front-facing, south-facing, glass and there's days when the heat pump just doesn't run and uh. The temperature inside will be 75 76 77 degrees just by natural heat gain. However, in the summer we have solar shades that are angled such that they block the high summer sun from coming in the windows, but the low winter sun.

What can can come in the window? So it's those kind of um. I call them permanent investments and passive features that are always working for you, so so that could be done in any house yeah. You know tuning the solar heat gain south facing uh orientation. Uh.

You know solar shades to block the summer sun, so so all that all that can work together so going back to also the tight structure, the the v, the the you know. We actually have an h, a c system and a v system, two separate systems. So a heating heating, cooling system and ventilation system right yeah, so the ventilation system, which is a serve two ce rv conditioning erv by build equinox out of champlain champaign urbana illinois, uh brian's had ty newell on the podcast too he's the inventor of that product. He actually signed mine, oh wow, autographed version.

He happened to be in the area before we moved in visiting his daughter and he wanted to see how the house looked and everything. So i had a got a sharpie on. He had him sign the top of the unit, and you have you have one or two serves one one serving one serve two so so the the concept i have is is that the ventilation system brings in fresh air, and it does some modulation of the heat And humidity, depending on the season, and then the hac system heats and cools the fresh air, so it the the two systems, don't interact at all: they just they have their own set points, their own parameters, uh the erv. Actually, the the set point is uh to keep my my my chosen set points to keep co2 level by this aggregate sensor.

That's inside the unit takes it from all over. The house keeps co2 low below 800 ppm, okay and - and so it's it'll run just enough to take it a little bit below that and then, as it runs up again, it'll yeah, so it'll cycle to keep the um the air fresh. If you will okay, so i'm curious about design, how long did it take you from starting your big beginning, your design process to actually starting the building the construction of it? How long did it take you to do that design, process and and what kind of some of the steps that were involved sure. So i have a number of friends in the industry which i'll include in this group too.

One of them is a guy named rhett major he's he's called the energy doctors, his business. He first did remodeling. Then he did energy auditing weatherization work construction, so he he knows a lot of different things and he's just a very straightforward kind of person. He'll he'll tell it like it is: he happens to live only 40 minutes from where i live, and so i hired him as a third-party qa if you will, but also to contribute to design, because i know that he knows from a first-hand standpoint things that i Know of he knows gotcha, so the building science aspects.

You know all the things from building science corporation. All the things from he actually was one of the first group of contractors trained in passive house. He won a scholarship to go to austria to be trained in passivhaus, so he knows how to get there, but he also is very practical um and he just understands sort of like you know the limitations of you know both the contracting you know base in the Area, uh and the materials, so he helped an awful lot of making. He actually made some models.

He made some dummy models like of the way he wanted to see my windows installed. Now when you're saying models, is he making physical models or physical models? Oh wow? Okay, yeah, i'm thinking you know physical or computer model computerized models here. Well, wow! That's exactly what it is! That's dedication, yeah it is and uh it was worth worth every cent. So he he was my uh yeah.

He was the the bolster that i stood against to say no builder. We got to do it this way. I and i feel like they're just in you know round numbers. I say we got like 85 percent of what we wanted to do.

Some of us look just like we can't do this in a factory or or we're not going to do this or look at the cost of doing that so um. So there were trade-offs, so the the process started. I want to say around february, and by august we were signing the final documents. The factory has what they call a hard card which is like this is it any changes are going to cost you and it's not going to be cheap because we have to buy all the materials we have to put it in the schedule.

Uh, you know the model, it can only put so many modules through their factory. So you know you, you have a spot um. You know you have a spot in line, so we we signed that uh made just a couple of adjustments. Actually some take backs and and some puts in - and they started construction around october 1st of 2019 and finished by october 31st, so 2019.

yeah. So it was, it was nothing and then there was four modules that were wrapped up in the parking lot wow. So you've mentioned before, like some of the details, like the the wall detail i'll go through that a little bit, so it's it's a two by six on 24 inch centers. So the the topic - the building science topic of thermal bridging, is embedded in that execution and there aren't a lot of heat conductors moving through the walls.

Standard wall board in the factory could not do foam, although i'm not sure i would have gone for foam, but they could only do fiberglass, so it was fiberglass bats laid inside those cavities. Then, outside of that is a zip wall sheathing to provide air barrier. You know uh structural integrity, that kind of thing uh, rhett recommended. He said you know you you want to get.

You want to make this as tight as possible by the means of construction. So every fastener head that attached the zip wall to the framing. We had them go back through and hit it with the sealant over the outside of it. That's to help seal that outside was that a glue or a tape um, it was something from 475 supply provides a lot of the building materials for passive house construction.

They sourced them from all over, i want to say it was a prosoco brand of some kind of sealant that was put on there, but again rhett specified that he knew what he was talking about. He had used it before later on. I realized, like you know, continue to study and dialogue with people about this that water resistance that would also be poured for water resistance if water did happen to get through, it could uh, because you know zip wall is basically osb. So it's once you get moisture in there.

It's gon na expand that kind of thing. So that was also important for that aspect. Then, after that, we placed on an inch and a half of a foam, neopor foam, that's graphite, impregnated and that helps with the thermal characteristics of it. There's actually a graph of this material that it um the r value rises, as the temperature goes down interesting.

There's some kind of physical effect in there wow so that actually added about uh 7.5, our 7.5 to the outside. So basically, there's a foam core foam all around and though all those joints are taped and sealed and faster as possible, and that's on the outside of the zipper it's on the outside so again for the zip, i'm sorry it right, yeah, yeah, so um, there's the Air tightness of the zip and then there's the thermal, the diminishing the thermal, bridging with with the foam being placed around the outside uh and then a weather resistant barrier was placed around that we used a brand called intello mento 1000. It's a material that allows. You know vapor water to come out, but liquid water doesn't go in it's a material made in germany.

So all that was wrapped around the house and then we had actually vinyl siding put on the outside, so a little bit thicker than normal, .040 thickness um. But again, another hint from rhett appreciate really appreciate his advice. I'm sure he'll, listen to this, the um buying uh largest lengths we could get from the factory, especially for the front of the house, so it looks seamless yeah. So from a distance, you wonder like what? What kind of materials it doesn't look like? Vinyl siding put it that way, okay, but it was like you know, he's like.

So, where do you want to put your money? You know it features inside or you know this will work pretty well. This will get you where you want to be. The other thing is we, we limited at an inch and a half of foam, because we went with two inch nails to fasten on the siding. If we went with more foam, we need to build a substructure or something called a rain screen to hang the siding on, so that would have been another layer of material that was really not working for us.

It would have been so it would. The phone would have worked for us, but then the extra material wouldn't work for us. So um we decided not to go with the extra phone because you know already you're. You know, you know how these curves go.

Most listeners should know how these curves go. There's like diminishing returns with more and more insulation right yeah, going from our two to our four like wow, our four-door fight. Oh then our r8 to our 40, and it's like um yeah. I think it's somewhere around 22 or 20, r22 or 24.

You really start to lose a lot of return on investment right, yep, so um, that's that's! Basically the the wall structure. So that's the how we maintain the heat, air and moisture control uh. You know the ham control of the house so does that type of structure? Then continue up onto the roof as well, because the roof is obviously a big right right, a loss and gain point in houses. I i should know this off the top of my head on the spot.

Here you live in the house bill. I think it's our 49 is our roof: okay, um, the the construction, so there's there's a solid foam and there's bat and then there's also blown in in certain areas. So because of the the design of the house, it had to have like a number of different facets for the roof insulation. But i've walked around with a pretty high resolution, high sensitivity, thermal imager at times on cold days and really don't see much, which is good.

Um, like not a lot of thermal contrast, so uh heat is you know, and then that was really important too. I think from the comfort standpoint is understanding, um mean radiant temperature and the impact of surfaces and how they make your body feel um. So that was really important with the windows and the solar gain the insulation, the walls and things like that and draftiness, of course, yeah, and of course that's all goes back to the intentional design and thinking about things before you before. You really do them.

Yep yeah. It was really there was a whole process of maybe six to nine months before that of the intentional design. You know talking with people putting together factors putting together our checklist um. You know, i think it sometimes.

Maybe i should write this up and share it. Ask yourself this question: uh, learn about this facet! Ask your professionals, this question it just sort of like you actually become a better customer for for a lot of contractors of all types um customers that are knowledgeable but not bossy. Okay, yeah right, agreed agreed. So, let's uh, let's talk a little bit about the your hvac system, then like what are you using um and how was it you know, sort of designed and how is it operating for you? Did you run into any problems with it? You know so sure.

So the hvac system - it just so happened - the builder - has a favorite uh brand. They use called detsin and they're. Actually, here at the show, i got to stop by and visit them. They make systems for lower load homes, so both gas and electric.

So what we chose uh would fit our design both the cool calc manual, j calculation, michael house, did it for us uh off of house plans which were not complete, uh no fault of his, but he he designed off of what i gave him, which wasn't a Complete plan, but the basement plan wasn't in there there's a challenge yeah, but he came up with right around two tons of heating and cooling and the the passive house planning package came up with the same thing and then russ king after the fact did a model For me and came up at basically the same place, so we felt very comfortable choosing a two-ton air source heat pump. Uh it detzen uses a unit uh that has uh low temperature capability. I think it's down to like minus 22f is where it can still put out heat, so um i'll, just jump to performance, because it's recent we had a really cold uh spell and we had temperatures like minus four minus seven overnight, and our design temperature was nine. But - and it was only till we hit those sub-zero temperatures that we were running pretty much in some of the zones.

Uh 24 7 right around the clock, but i think we lost one night. We lost two degrees off the set point uh and then, when the sun came up, solar gain everything caught up again, so hovering like just below zero. Like five degrees is like, where we're sort of at the max the system um go on. Are you hitting? Do you have any backup heat or any supplemental heat in that we do, but i purposely turned it off okay sort of, like i purposely didn't, put a gas line.

I could go there if i had to yeah - and i know it works because uh when our first winter there well, they set up the air conditioning. The builder has a tech set up the air conditioning. It ran fine, kept the house, nice and cool, but then we switched on heating mode. We discovered a month and a half later that there was a correct flare joint.

So when the system reversed, it actually lost, charge lost all the charge, oops yeah, so that then it just jumped to resistance heat, and i was looking at the. I put an electrical energy monitor on right after christmas that year and i was looking at the consumption like this - is way more than i thought it was going to be. What's going on here. Did we really mess up here? Yeah so - and i put my probes in uh to measure the the temperature rise over the the heating coils over the you know, the you know the heat pump coil, as well as the resistance heat and just monitored that and realized.

There's nothing happening with the heat pump, so uh. It resulted because it was uh it sort of aspirated air. It was. The whole system had to be replaced.

Oh everything to touch the refrigerant. Jim bergman actually came by really kind of came by the day. After new year's he thought it was just simple, like loss of a little bit of charge, so he came by and he goes now. This is messed up.

He says you're you're, starting off your house's life with something that's crippled. Don't don't do that, so the builder did agree to pay for a replacement and uh that was installed um by a contractor recommended tim portman and uh important mechanical came by and they installed the system like pletco uh. It's been running fine ever since, except anyway, we ask for problems, yeah, i'm being just totally open here. Um.

I think another problem was it's a zone system uh. Well, let me get jump back to sort of the more the details. So it's a the air handler is a high pressure air handler and it's a um called medium velocity duct system. So dudson has it's a two and a half inch round hose if you will, but it's like a thermoflex.

So it's similar to like a small deck high velocity or not quite but it's called medium velocity, okay, so it's about 30 cfm max per outlet, so those are all distributed. I think there's like 28 or 29 of them around the house and they all there's a trunk line that runs through the basement for each zone. These uh hoses come out and then they run up through the walls, and this is all pre-built into the house and then there's these uh, not so much nozzle vents, but you know an open port uh in the various rooms to handle. You know the heating and the cooling load, but it seems like the this main space was not correctly calculated and it runs a lot and all the time and it actually caused a trip out on high head pressure, because all the other zones were closed and and The air handlers trying to get more heat to that zone, so we kept on getting tripping and that we figured it out.

It was there's too much pressure on it, so we uh disabled some of the zones part and just have them all partially open. So there's pressure relief, it's sort of like it's like a dump zone, but it's actually going to be used, but it's not being used on demand, it's being just just gon na be mixed in with the rest of the year. So that's solved it so far, but we think we have to do a little redesign of the zoning system, but it actually shouldn't be hard because it isn't hard duct it's this hose, so i just have to you know, move over from one collar to another. Another collar, but that that's the other problem and it would when it tripped out on high um it just it wouldn't reset, wouldn't auto reset.

He had to go down and shut off the whole system and then bring it back up again. So that was that's a pain if it happens in the middle of the night and you wake up and it's you know supposed to be 69 or 70 and it's 63 and falling. But that was a good thing. I mean other people said: oh you've, just you know, tested the uh, the bulk uh heat loss, yeah yeah of the house, by letting it drift on a cold night, see what happens well.

I know you said that you uh you disconnected your your electric heat heat strips right um. I would still recommend, maybe once a year, cycling them on just so you don't smoke yourself out, like brian did at the hospital that one time really oh yeah, he has that story. Something got on them. Oh you! No! No! He was uh yeah.

I think that they had not been turned on in like years and well i mean you guys, made a dust on the right, yeah, an electric heat coil or it was a bank. It was a bank, it's a bank yeah. I can see that happening. Yeah yeah.

I mean we all, you know anytime. You turn on that electric heat strip for the first time after that smell you get that little bit of burning something smell, so so that was the problem main problem, the hvc it was. I think it was it's nice, though, to have the serve running because it actually does it can recirculate and heat the air too, because it has a quarter ton heat pump in it, so it it can precondition the air coming in, but it does it by heat Exchange with the air going out so in the winter time, it'll heat up the air using the heat from the exhaust air, so it uses a heat pump then to transfer the heat between the air streams rather than just the cross heat exchanger, and it's got dampers In it, so it can also uh just run the heat pump with the supplies and the returns and actually be a small heat source as a heat pump or small cooling, it does have a condensed condensate line. Jim bergman's comment about my basement looks like you know.

The control room of the starship, because this is coming from bergman. This is way too complex. There's like five condensate lines, running into a trap and we've all seen pictures of his basement because it doesn't look like a starship right. We have the luxury of uh.

You know so knowledge and uh space. So it's a it's a very broad, a very wide open mechanical. I decided to be contractor friendly as a mechanical room. There.

You go. That's good. We all! Thank you. Yes, all of us.

Thank you. Even though we don't get to work at your house, we all thank you. So what kind of um? What kind of steps are you taking from a monitoring standpoint? Other than obviously you know your meter um? What sort of data logging are you doing for? Overall, you know indoor air quality and you know just in general comfort like you are you logging, you know, sort of like that. What what that's like yeah, so i i tend to the go-to - tends to be the serve um because it it monitors co2 um.

It manages the outdoor conditions for temperature and humidity, and the indoor conditions for co2 and vocs the vocs are an equivalence based off of co2. So it's not a direct voc measurement, but my house is always high. I just it's. I think it's because of the new materials of construction, so i go to that a lot uh to sort of check the performance and and because it's also a bulk measurements in aggregate.

I have um a haven installed in the serve system, because the serve tends to run more frequently because it also has in order to keep the air quality. It has to check the air quality periodically. So it takes a little sip, a little sample every now and then a little sip, a little sip and then the uh pinky he's got he's got the key up. So we all do that.

Yeah yeah a little sip of your coffee yeah. So the haven then can run it pulls data off of that so yeah been it's been read, approved, put it in the return of the erv, which is a non standard installation. So i can see the air quality from that um. I have little co2 monitor that joe maddosh sent me it's just like a breadboard kit.

That's sitting on my desk. I have somebody sent me something new from belgium, an aeros monitor, so a bunch of things going on monitoring that i do measure using emporia view to measure the electrical consumption we talked about that online. We have yeah. I have one in my house as well and i love that thing yeah so to look at uh yeah.

I i like right now i'll look at the heat pump uh and it consumes like up to peak it's like, like almost four and a half kilowatt hours. Uh instantaneous, which um some people said is like negan adam said: that's that seems it's operating more like a three-ton system than a two-ton system. So it's like you know so sometimes you have to run it hard uh or it runs itself hard put it that way. Um - and we can look at you - know, like you, know, running the induction stove and you know the hot water actually hot water.

I don't monitor because it has its own electrical monitor that doesn't consume very much at all gotcha. So you talked about sizing a little bit earlier and you said two-ton system nominal 24. 000.. I'm assuming that that's an inverter, yes compressor in the depths, and so it's going to ramp up as it goes down how many square foot is your house? How many square foot are you conditioning with this two-ton system? Because i think that's something that yeah people look at yeah, so the first and second floor is around 2800 and the basement is also a condition.

That's another 1600, so i think it's 4 400, so you're you're doing 4 400. With with two tons yeah. The ratio is pretty absurd. Yeah yeah yeah so 500 possible 500 square foot per ton, guys out there.

Listen to that 2200. That's neil compareto ground! Isn't it yeah and the the also the foundation was factory made? Precast modules were foundation, uh, so they're uh concrete. They used to the company used to make uh parking lot decking and then they flipped it on the side and put caps on the top and the bottom, and then uh cust really tightly cut and put in foam insulation in about an eight inch cavity, oh wow. So the basement doesn't lose or gain a lot of heat.

It's almost within one or two degrees year-round with almost no additional conditioning wow hours a month, perhaps um, but but not you know, all the time have you looked at run time on any specific zones to see like where you're you're getting most of your users that I can't see okay, the system doesn't have that kind of uh knowledge or insight, and now because it's sort of i call messed up, because i have to basically the two of the actuators - i just pulled them off - that's like they're meaningless, i'm going to set it Here so it sounds like manually zoned, that's like. Ah this isn't working, but we'll see story to be continued, so um. How do you like it so far? Are you pleased with the designs that you put together and what would you do differently if you had to do this over again now? Looking back at you know because, as we say, hindsight is 20 20 and we can learn from our past actions here. Well, one thing: we have a radon problem uh, so i would have paid more attention to the installation of the passive radon system.

I'm still trying to get details sort of after the fact of that um. But it looks like we'll need a radon fan. We thought we could get away with a passive radon uh, which is just a pipe that goes into the foil, the soil beneath the slab and just pour it in the basement um, so that that's one thing, i'm disappointed and check on that detail. The other thing is acoustics which are hard to imagine, but we have this beautiful, open space of about 14 by 17.

That goes up two stories about 21 feet in the air: a lot of reflective surfaces and hard countertops hard cabinets, hardwood floors. Uh, you know appropriate amount of furniture, but it's still it's. It's got some weird echoes in it, uh that that bother me and it's probably because i think about them. I would just stop thinking about them.

They wouldn't bother me right marilyn. So what you're saying is brian would like to come up and do a podcast yeah in your echo chamber. Brian would really be happy with this, i'm sure so, really that that's that's about it, um very happy with all the uh, the vendors that polio, we did use a local vendor for triple pane windows, passive house uh, rated windows. That was important going back to that phpp design.

We actually we pulled those out and said: okay, we can save a bunch of money by going with. You know more standard construction, double pane windows, but what impact does that have on the overall energy consumption and the comfort and things like that, so you put them back in decide. That was a good permanent investment. So that's you know every day they're in place.

They they do something for us, so those are the kind of aspects like you know: the solar shades they're permanent in place. They do something for us every day that i mean. That brings up a great point, because we hear a lot about windows and how great windows and in the marketing aspect of things, how much windows will save us, sometimes how much really different? How much difference did those windows make for you, um in in real numbers? Do you know those numbers off the top of your head? I know i'm putting you on the spot yeah. No, if there's only a couple that leak a little bit, but some of them just don't leak.

So there's no air infiltration or exfiltration uh from the windows. Um, we have a a very large patio door, that's a triple plane. It's a passive house, patio door, it's uh, eight by nine holy cow with a slider in it uh, so it slides out on a rail and it it pops in like a plug. You know passive house windows tend to be like more like plugs and corks.

If you will, with the ceiling on the side, they don't run on sashes, which, which typically leak so one thing and saw last year, saw it again this year when there's enough snow, the snow will actually climb up the window surface and you can sort of see Like a cross cross-section of the snow wow, so it's not melting when it hits the window yeah yeah! That's what i'm getting out of that! That's a lot of good insulation, exactly right, yeah, so yeah right! And so it's just you know. You know a beautiful choice that we made for for the windows it's having passed about windows because they allow you to. You know see when the weather is bad um. I forgot the question the number uh.

I was kind of looking for a number like how big of a difference did that make. Would you have had to say, go up another half a ton in your measurements about numbers? That's what i want to know. How dare you eric, i mean bill, doesn't like he doesn't collect data. You know it's kind of a weird thing that i that that just kicked in my head here and, like i said i know i'm putting you on the spot.

I didn't know if that was something you would put in the back of your head, yeah. No, i hadn't thought about it. Sorry, like that was like, like the one feature: if we're not going to do a passive house use passive house windows that stuck with me from all the conversations i had it's it's an important enough thing not to overlook. We don't have passive house doors, though uh, because those are too expensive, yeah and hard to get the other hard to get aspect.

We found a local factory that was only 60 miles away, that made passive house windows - oh wow, in that patio door. So it was that was a big boom, because our builder had used an irish based clear wall and he had some trouble getting replacement parts and things like that from them because they had to be shipped overseas, whereas ours like. I can call out the sales rep to to do an adjustment and he'll be there. You know in the next couple days: yeah we actually - and we toured the factory for that too, so got a lot of comfort level with the elements of construction going in the whole learning aspect.

What are some things that you would suggest to people wanting to build? A a really good house, but maybe don't have the time that, because it sounds to me like you, invested a lot of time and a lot of research, it just seems like there's a lot of hours. What are some things that people that maybe don't have quite that much time, but still want to to do some really good building on a house or do something on a house? What are some suggestions for people like that? I think you need to understand a few basic things. You need to understand solar heat gain, so you need to so you can pick the right windows. You really understand that concept.

You got to understand air tightness and then you have to understand if you start to move down their path than the necessity for ventilation um. So it's it's. You know beyond just being able to pick interior fit and finish features. You have to think about the invisible aspects of it yeah i will put in a plug for pearl certification, which uh i don't know.

If you've heard about them, they're they're, basically uh allowing you can get a home certified for a lot of different aspects of it. A lot of them are energy related, but they're, comfort related um, that they look at the invisible features um and that can be done on existing construction too. So it can be done after the fact like some, some home ratings are done as the homes are being built like a hers rating, but a pearl certification can be done in a home after it's built and uh. You know professional can help us assess that.

So i guess insane if you look at like a pearl certification, look at their process. Look at some of their uh certification reports see the kind of things that are important, learn about them and don't don't treat it like it's a amount of information that you can never climb. Um. Just you know, chip away at ask questions.

Uh find good resources. So there's um, essentially you know if you guys, are looking to to do more of this. What he's saying is: go listen to his podcast, because a lot of these things he's already discussed on his podcast. Thank you.

Yeah building, hvc science. That's right! There we go building hvac science. What is that yeah so that that's uh been doing that since brian encouraged me to start uh, i think around 2017 fall of 2017.. I've been sporadic a little bit, but i'm back into it now had a couple new episodes released.

Um the way i characterize it as things that are interesting to me, um and you know people that i've met over the years that have interesting things to say so like to bring their ideas to voice. That's fantastic, getting more information out there for everybody to learn. I think is a great thing because there's a ton of information but getting the good information out yeah yeah and it's it's the way you know sort of like the way i think that's going on yeah sure understood are there. I know we're we're alive right now.

So i don't know if there's any questions from in the youtube chat. There's about a million questions over here. I looked over at one point and saw them scrolling past and went wow. That's a lot, i'm not keeping up with that.

Oh fair enough! So sorry youtube! You're asking way too many questions for me to keep up with cherry pick one all right. Cherry pick, one um, let's see what can we find here because i'm so shy and don't like talking? Did everybody get that it's on video? Now, let's see question for bill. This is totally non-house related. This is true tech tools related.

Do we want to start that sure? Okay, when, when is true tech tools, opening a branch in eu - oh in europe, um i'd, say it's on a road map, but it's more like an atlas. It's a few pages back sorry yeah, uh yeah. We get a lot of requests for that and thank you because that means you appreciate what we do. That's what i hear from that message.

So i think a lot of us appreciate what truetech does for this industry and has given us a source for um all things, test related and cool fun tools that maybe we can't get locally, unfortunately yeah, but it's a great resource and you guys do a great Job your support is top notch. Um training is is top-notch as well. So i'm just looking back through here um. Oh here's, jacob he's he's watching live from a passive solar, greenhouse negative 26, 25 c ambient zero c indoors wow.

So, let's see have you guys ever heard of sentry ac remote monitoring system that monitors temps and pressures bill's a data guy? He loves data, so i'm going to throw that one to him. I haven't heard of that one, but there's there's one that um called ivx a-v-i-e-x-x gary mccready's uh spoken about that a little bit. Okay, so we're in some discussions with them um they have some really neat remote monitoring, not so much. It doesn't deliver like a diagnostic result, but it delivers you the data remotely and it ties in with the thermostat.

So you know now you know about the control and this again residential primary, like commercial. You know about what's happening on control, then also how the equipment's responding to that control, gotcha, so you're looking at a command and then the response to that command. So you can see if it's actually doing what the command wants it to do. Yep interesting, interesting, yeah, that's pretty neat data logging is a it's a large subject that well we could do a couple hour podcast on that probably yeah.

I think it's the the ability to get the right quality of data at the right time delivered in an easy to digest, assessed way, and that's that's, i think, the struggle with all all data systems, yeah and gathering, knowing where to gather the data when to gather The data and then being able to interpret it into a meaningful output right, i think, is challenging and whether or not you want it to be interpreted for you, yeah you may not want to. You know, rely on uh, algorithms or advice of others. You may just want information yeah. Are there any other data logging systems? We haven't discussed in your house um, because you've got how many, how much solar d you've got solar yeah, so so the solar inverters, which would convert the dc to ac it's a ground.

Mount array that sits about 150 feet from the house faces south, of course, about a 30 degree angle uh, which is and they're not tilt, mounted or wrecked.