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Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by jhloa2 on Friday June 21, 2019 @05:14PM (#20246349)
I wonder if this has a negative effect on the amount of fresh air that they get
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by pvaldes on Friday June 21, 2019 @07:10PM (#20247004)
Fresh air is created by plants and CO2 is taken from the air by plants, a greenhouse has plants so... probably a good amount of oxigen there

Molds are a problem and there is another, for rodents, mosquitos and cockroaches this is a dream made true. Spiders can take mosquitos easily, but the other two will need a plan

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by mncharity on Friday June 21, 2019 @11:54PM (#20247913)
> Fresh air is created by plants and CO2 is taken from the air by plants

Plants can be net CO2 consumers, but they burn O2 to CO2 just like you. Tropical forests are net CO2 producers for most of the day, except for a few hours around noon, but that's enough to become net consumers averaged over the day. Occasionally someone fills their room with plants, and then puzzles over having high CO2 levels.

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by TkTech on Friday June 21, 2019 @08:10PM (#20247241)
I imagine it's not much different from a regular residential greenhouse, in which case the plan is to throw a sufficient number of cats in there.
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by noir_lord on Friday June 21, 2019 @08:36PM (#20247313)
Not sure people in glass houses should be throwing cats.

Mine would love that environment I’m sure though.

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by _jal on Friday June 21, 2019 @08:52PM (#20247357)
They are somewhat softer than stones, but yes, cat throwing is rarely called for.

My mother has a decent sized greenhouse. Her cats spend most of the winter in there by choice - they love it.

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by aasasd on Friday June 21, 2019 @11:04PM (#20247769)
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by telotortium on Friday June 21, 2019 @05:18PM (#20246379)
No reason a ventilation fan can't be installed - that's standard on modern air-conditioned and insulated houses (a "whole-house fan") precisely in order to rotate the air.
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by bjourne on Friday June 21, 2019 @07:59PM (#20247196)
Yes, but ventilating the house itself plus the surrounding greenhouse is much more expensive than just ventilating the house itself. Reason being that the volume of air is much larger.
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by adrianmonk on Friday June 21, 2019 @09:34PM (#20247504)
I'm not an expert, but all greenhouses I've personally seen have natural ventilation with vents high up (such as at the peak of the roof) and near the ground.

The greenhouse effect makes the air inside a lot warmer than outside. This reduces its density, and it becomes buoyant and spills out the roof vent.

There may also be fans, but you can get some ventilation for free (energy-wise).

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by NickNameNick on Saturday June 22, 2019 @12:48AM (#20248078)
You can see the open vents on the ridge in the first photo.
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by mevile on Friday June 21, 2019 @06:05PM (#20246651)
That might help, but it's not quite the same as a nice summer breeze flowing through your house.
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by BubRoss on Friday June 21, 2019 @06:11PM (#20246692)
It literally is a summer breeze flowing through your house.
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by DavidAdams on Friday June 21, 2019 @06:09PM (#20246675)
In the summer, the greenhouse opens up.
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by tigershark on Saturday June 22, 2019 @01:48AM (#20248225)
Then they will lose all the advantages of the green house if they get cold air from outside...
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by dagss on Saturday June 22, 2019 @02:37AM (#20248335)
Balanced ventilation (not sure what the English term is) is standard these days and recovers about 90% of the energy (heats air going in using the air going out). I have one at home.

Dont know if they have one set up, but they could. But possibly the sun already warms it enough even in winter that it is not needed even with natural ventilation.

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by jogjayr on Saturday June 22, 2019 @03:05AM (#20248397)
> Balanced ventilation (not sure what the English term is)

Heat exchanger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_exchanger#HVAC_air_coils

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by dagss on Saturday June 22, 2019 @03:16AM (#20248423)
That may be. The word we use is more a property of the ventilation system ... that you blow as much air into the house as out of it, active airflow in both directions. (As opposed to older ventilation where only exhaust has a fan.) This facilitates plugging in a heat exchanger.

To be clear I did not mean HVAC, which requires (some) energy in itself.

At home I do not have HVAC. However, the outbound air passes through a rotating metal structure that sucks up the heat from outbound air and releases it into the colder inbound air. Just using the temperature gradient that is there naturally. Passive energy transfer.

Same principle can be used with hot water (e.g. from showers).

Then one can put HVAC on top of this for active warming.

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by ngold on Friday June 21, 2019 @05:19PM (#20246385)
I wonder how much fresh air they get from all the plants pumping oxygen out?
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by seanmcdirmid on Friday June 21, 2019 @05:43PM (#20246534)
Plants produce oxygen when they grow, and you would need to grow about 8 pounds a day to supply oxygen for one human. See https://www.gardenmyths.com/houseplants-increase-oxygen-leve...
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by sunjieming on Friday June 21, 2019 @07:04PM (#20246971)
I wonder if the photosynthesis from all of the plants would make the air feel fresher
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by pram on Friday June 21, 2019 @05:26PM (#20246431)
I also wonder if the increased humidity increases the chance for mold.
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by furtive808 on Friday June 21, 2019 @06:39PM (#20246843)
Most greenhouses have ventilation windows, often using a wax piston to automatically open/close windows based on the temperature.
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by noir_lord on Friday June 21, 2019 @08:40PM (#20247323)
Had never seen a wax piston, that’s a tremendously elegant design.
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by BubRoss on Friday June 21, 2019 @06:10PM (#20246685)
How does a house get fresh air?
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by ptaipale on Friday June 21, 2019 @07:31PM (#20247082)
In the Nordics, houses (that aren't very old) don't get new air through windows; the air exchange is through a central ventilation system in and out, and modern houses have a heat exchanger to collect the heat from outgoing air and transfer it to incoming air. (The need to cool down residential houses is extremely rare).

At least in Finland, newish office houses typically don't even have windows that can be opened; this seems to be a surprise to any foreign visitors.

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by chupasaurus on Friday June 21, 2019 @10:08PM (#20247606)
> At least in Finland, newish office houses typically don't even have windows that can be opened.

That's because the costs for heating of the building during winter are way cheaper than a better thermal isolation of windows and a good ventilation system combined.

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by ptaipale on Saturday June 22, 2019 @12:54AM (#20248095)
I think you express it the wrong way round. The windows cannot be opened, because that way they can be made better for thermal isolation, which is obviously a major design criteria in cold climate.
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by chupasaurus on Saturday June 22, 2019 @01:32AM (#20248189)
It's more like you got lost in the comparison spiral. Formal interpretation of my phrase: cost of heating with unlocked windows > (permalocked windows + ventilation system).

I live 55°N in Russia so I know that from practice, but we don't lock the windows throughout the summer because the cooling would cost around the same as heating in winter, just one or two opened windows in the night for convection and curtains in the daylight are enough to keep the temperature.

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by roel_v on Saturday June 22, 2019 @05:04AM (#20248711)
No, you are the one missing the point. Modern building design is based on an (ideally) thermo-proof house, minimal heating and carefully controlled ventilation. In the winter, the warmth of inhabitants plus some minuscule floor heating is enough to keep it warm. In summer, thermal insulation and shading keeps it cool indoor. The goal is to make the indoor temperature passively independent of the outdoor temperature. Nothing to do with cost optimization.
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by chupasaurus on Saturday June 22, 2019 @10:13AM (#20249653)
> The goal is to make the indoor temperature passively independent of the outdoor temperature. Nothing to do with cost optimization.

These sentences contradict with each other. The cost is not only payments for service, it's a sum of resources, time and work needed to make and maintain. You can't make a thermal system cool itself passively due to the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

The difference between Helsinki and the place I live is that they don't have temperatures above 30°C while here I have those at least 2 weeks straight each year. Passive ventilation stops in those temperatures because there are no wind outdoors besides the hot columns of air from heated surfaces, HVAC costs are the same as winter's heating while it's PITA to clean them from ice each spring, a window ventilation during the night refreshes the air good enough.

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by ptaipale on Sunday June 23, 2019 @06:00AM (#20254355)
I think you are confusing the "passive" here. It refers to heat insulation and minimizing the need for generating either heat or coolness; the house is not "passive" in the sense that it would just sit there.

So the "passive" houses are not at all passive in terms of technology (to the contrary, they are quite dependent on technical solutions enforcing airflows and exchanging heat up or down, to the point of being vulnerable; the point is just that this is not done through windows because humans intuitively don't do it so well or optimize for the whole building).

Some years ago, there was an electricity outage in the area where my office was. The basement floor had our server room with plenty of blade and rackmount servers, and some 30 kW of UPS capacity - which had been unused for years because electricity outages are extremely rare here. UPS is all very well to keep servers running, but this happened in the summer and the server room cooling system was not behind the UPS like the servers were. Thus, we suddenly have a 30 kW unbalanced heat load to the basement floor... Result was some frantic running up and down. None of the windows could be opened. We could open garage doors in the basement floor, open all the doors to stairways and halls, and run the the top floor which has the usual sauna compartment with doors to a balcony - opening all these, we could create a chimney effect to get airflow through the premises and prevent our servers from melting on the spot while we were shutting them down gracefully in priority order.

Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by BubRoss on Friday June 21, 2019 @10:00PM (#20247578)
Which part can't be done here?
Re:Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home by ptaipale on Saturday June 22, 2019 @01:00AM (#20248113)
Not sure what you mean, but the reason for sealed windows is that building code mandates all ventilation through heat exchangers for energy efficiency, and having windows open would completely ruin the designed airflow.