You can have it applied indoors and skimmed at only about a cm total or outdoors.
I’ve been pretty excited about steam expanded cork boards, they apparently make for excellent (albeit expensive) exterior cladding. Ditto granules for replacing attic fiberglass, though the additional weight of a thick layer seems like it might be a problem for ceiling drywall.
When you get a heat-pump you need the backup for really cold (-20c). So you just leave the existing one in for that case.
In my area of the US for example, gas costs 32￠/therm, which equates to 1.1￠/kWh.
Electricity on the other hand costs 6.4￠-10.9￠/kWh (depending on time of day), and while a third of it comes from renewables, another third of it comes from coal, so it ends up being net worse for the environment than just burning the gas.
Hum, I do not know in you country but here in France the maximum you can get from the grid is 36kW, 12kW per phase, 3 phases. And while the electricity is still far cheaper than in Germany if you try to heat a classic badly insulated home (who have a typical 34-40kW gas heating) with electricity you final bill will be a bit astronomical....
So 48-96kw, technically.
Installing a pump without installing insulation (if you need it) is silly.
Classic homes here are built with rocks and mortar, laid down on grownd, often stitched together in villages to spare a wall or two. As a result they are essentially impossible to insulate: insulating from the outside means agree with others for a job often as expensive al living the home for a new one. From the inside it's even more costly and not always doable since old homes tend to be irregular and with low ceiling resulting a too much internal space loss, not counting the effect of having loss much thermal mass. Toll buildings from just after WWII to the sixties are in even worse shapes, at that time almost no one care about insulation or thermal design because heating was veeeeeery cheap. The old rule in winter was "if it's too hot just open a window, it's cheaper than a thermostat".
These buildings are the MAJORITY of the buildings and their own tend to be not so rich so they'll reach both natural and economical EOL soon and non one have a viable idea of what to do. Rebuilding anything is possible in mere theoretical terms, but in 30+ years, not tomorrow, and only with a public hand keeping costs low and plan with a bit of design instead of building a new real estate rush with similar results of those of the recent past in few decades. In practice though it's next to impossible because vast majority do not want to relocate. In south EU most home owners are middle class or even some low incomes, not just few rich and all other rent from big society.
That's the real point. For EVs and p.v. it's essentially the same: those who live in modern homes have both in mean or can have at least. Almost all others can't. Those who lives in cities have already big parking issues since cities was build far before cars, so with not much room for them, and as well no room for reasonable domestic p.v. systems. Classic homes tend to be badly oriented and many still have no garages. As a result most can only recharge cars from public stations who are spread enough not too few but most are 22kW 3-phase as homes, so you need to find one, occupy it for maybe 4+ hours, move the car thereafter to live the place for another and find a parking for yours now charged. Something stressful enough that most who do not have a private garage simply do not buy EVs.
Evolving civil infrastructures is not such a quick and easy things, especially in dense areas and during economic/social crisis of various kind.
Also, opening a window if it's too hot (in winter) was never a rule here, we must save a penny wherever we can ;)
PIR is the typical economical material used for that kind of application. And 12cm is about the minimal thickness you'd want for decent insulation.
12 cm is ok for an old house. More is not economically viable.
It really depends on the location and on the specific machine/install, usually there is no need to change the filters (they are normally washable) but they should be cleaned much more often, like every 6 (or even 3) months.
For us, it was just a couple 6”holes in the cinderblocks of a basement wall (at least 6 feet apart).
Obviously it depends on the architecture but we where able to place the central unit beneath the roof. All rooms on the first floor are connected through the roof space. A central column runs through the first floor and goes to the corridor on the ground floor. From there we where able to connect all rooms. The floor lost 15 cm height but it has 250 cm so it did not matter much.
If you cannot do it you can run the pipes on the exterior walls and insulate them with ,20 cm Styropor.
PIR is a great solution for space-constrained insulation though: 0.022W/m²K, so 100mm gives you a thermal resistance of 4.54m²K/W. It's the equivalent of 200mm of mineral wool with a thermal insulance of 0.044W/m²K.
In Philadelphia in 1996, I had a company blow in insulation to my wood-framed, plaster+wood-lathe covered cavity walls without removing the inner walls. They created a series of 4"/10cm holes at the top of each bay and blew the insulation in that way.
ps. I later found out that this is a terrible idea for vapor control reasons.
Another benefit: when you take out the inner walls in an old house, you are going to find layers and layers of… stuff. Like 2cm of styrofoam (insulation in a nineties way) and a new layer of drywall on top of whatever chipboard/grout/newspapers where put in in a distant past (at least in my old house).
https://www.nachi.org/knob-and-tube.htm
In any case, if you overheat Romex and destroy the insulation, you can create a line-to-ground-or-neutral arc or short. If you overheat knob and tube and destroy the insulation, you are quite unlikely to cause an actual problem — there’s nothing nearby for it to short to.
Modern insulation tolerates rather higher temperature than old insulation, and knob and tube has plenty of other problems, but this isn’t really one of them.
(If GCFIs on branch circuits or feeders were widely deployed, even at higher thresholds than 5mA, and everyone used either grounded metallic conduit or bundles of wire with a bare ground in the middle (like Romex or NM-B), then insulation failures would be quickly detected.)
"K&T wiring is designed to dissipate heat into free air, and insulation will disturb this process. Insulation around K&T wires will cause heat to build up, and this creates a fire hazard. The 2008 National Electrical Code (NEC) requires that this wiring system not be covered by insulation."
"I'm sorry sir but your grandparents didn't have grounded outlets so you can't install have them either."
I have no affection for the wiring - nostalgic or otherwise.
And, yes, vapor issues.
I live in a house with this tech in. Also with a heat pump (ground version) and solar panels/battery to offset some of the running cost of this system.
The house is uncomfortably warm during summer but ok during the rest of the year. The air is not humid enough for my tastes.
The Danish company called Danfoss sells complete systems used to heat and ventilate houses. There are other systems perhaps better in terms of communication with others (control systems). My main problem with Danfoss is that I'm unable to control their products without mayor hacking. So I'm never going to buy from them again.
Humans don't sense temperature or wetness. We sense thermal energy flow. Two materials at the same temperature, one highly heat conductive and another poor at conducting heat will feel like they are are different temperatures. Eg, at room temperature, water and wool.
I read this elsewhere too and think it’s worded incorrectly. Maybe our _bodies_ don’t have sensory receptors for wetness, but humans can “sense” it by other means (e.g. by observing change in friction, stickiness, etc)
Our bodies don’t have receptors for our spouse’s emotions, but I can “sense” when my spouse is in a bad mood.
Or maybe my English is just bad and it’s worded fine.
The house is very well insolatated and therefore difficult to keep cool during the warm months. We installed film blocking some of the light on the HUGE windows which are part of the problem.
So we are able to regulate the temperature but the house is warmed up during hot days and not always cooled down enough during the night.
Why can’t your heat pump run both ways? It’s not that much more expensive!
But a heat pump has an internal and external part. The internal part needs to be where it cools and it's ugly too look at.
There are Aircon devices where everything is hidden away but they are expensive.
It is good when the building is designed to have the system easily serviced, bad when the unit is in a hard to get loft.
You need to change filters at least once a year to keep your indoor climate good.
I just bought an old house, sealing all the vents and installing balanced ventilation with one of these is on my list for summer of 2024. Adding 5cm of insulation (up to modern codes, from 10 to 5cm of glass wool) to keep the house even less energy demanding in winter.