Super energy efficient home

Unknown

strongly disagreed.

Highest comfort is a natural byproduct of a superinsulated envelope. True, it may not be obvious comfort, but it is still comfort.

Jim Erhardt_3

Rob, this would no doubt make a good point/counter point discussion.

At least to me, the ultimate "heating comfort" is sitting outside on a 50 degree day, soaking up the sun and feeling the cool breeze against my skin. It's a tough balance to achieve, but when it's just right IMO there's nothing like it.

Tight homes with restricted infiltration are great for energy conservation but can feel "stuffy" without mechanical ventilation. While an 77 degree floor surface temp. (the ideal floor temp according to ASHRAE studies) would be out of the question in such a home, the fact remains most people love warm floors, and even warmer floors in bathrooms. Without introducing intentional heat loss, there's simply no way to do that in a super insulated/energy efficient home.

I think energy efficiency must be paramount. For those who can afford the luxury of extreme comfort, having a system that provides both with the flip of a switch would be a pretty neat thing to do.

Unknown

I would never argue against ventilation being an integral part of a superinsulated home. That's just a basic requirement; completely agreed.

77 May be an "ideal" floor temp, but comfort is very high in a superinsulated envelope. Studies on comfort are a bit lacking, IMHO, because they cannot take into account the psychology of comfort, which is set largely on expectation. If you are not expecting a warm floor, you will be very happy with the comfort of a lower temperature floor IF the other conditions required for comfort are present.

You could figure out an "ideal" room temperature too. But as we all know, 60 degree air temp when the windows are warm is very different than 60 degrees when the windows are cold. You can't tease out just one aspect of comfort, and call it "comfort".

I lived in a superinsulated house with a monitor heater on a slab with a wood floor on sleepers over it. When they set back the monitor at night, the house was never comfortable and hugging the monitor was the only way to stand it. But, left it at a temp for several days and suddenly, walking around in the skivvies isn't painful anymore... because the surfaces had finally made it up to room temp (roughly).

Efficiency is great, and adding a few degrees to a floor can be nice too, but it's not a prerequisite for comfort. Says the guy who only gets paid if it goes radiant

Jim Erhardt_3

Striking the right balance..

..of controlling body heat emmission via radiant, convective and evaporative losses is something that our current technology does not address very well. Controlling air movement, air temperature, humidity and "hard" surface temperatures will be the ultimate way of providing comfort once "comfort models" are established and control systems developed to apply the models to mechanical heating/cooling/ventilation systems. In that case, I suspect that "extreme comfort" and super energy efficent construction will go happily hand-in-hand (not that the current state of technology doesn't render a level of comfort).

For those contractors who remain on the cutting edge of this stuff, the future is both promising and exciting.