The future of energy efficiency and houses

[Capt Worley PE]

^I think instead of moving back to window units and the like, we'll move toward much smarter HVAC systems that will have motion detectors in each room and a central hub that allows you to turn on and off the air/heat to certain zones of your house.

Yeah...how well does that work with lights?

WAVE YOUR HANDS FOR THE HEAT!!! SAY YAY-UH!!!

 

[Ble_PE]

but you still need to heat some room whether people are there or not to keep the pipes from freezing...but those of you in the warmer climates that doesn't really matter

I wouldn't think it would shut the heat off completely, just reduce it similar to programmable thermostats. It's just a thought.

^I think instead of moving back to window units and the like, we'll move toward much smarter HVAC systems that will have motion detectors in each room and a central hub that allows you to turn on and off the air/heat to certain zones of your house.

Yeah...how well does that work with lights?

WAVE YOUR HANDS FOR THE HEAT!!! SAY YAY-UH!!!

We're talking the future here folks, you gotta think outside the box!!

 

[roadwreck]

but you still need to heat some room whether people are there or not to keep the pipes from freezing...but those of you in the warmer climates that doesn't really matter

WARMER CLIMATES MY ASS!!! We hit 4 degrees just over a week ago. A good number of folks in my office had burst pipes. I'm glad I was able to shut off water to areas that I was afraid would be a problem and for the first time since we moved in I was happy that the insulation between the house and the crawl space isn't that great! It's something I plan to rectify in the future, but when I do something I'll have to figure out a good way to insulate the pipes down there too.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

but you still need to heat some room whether people are there or not to keep the pipes from freezing...but those of you in the warmer climates that doesn't really matter

I wouldn't think it would shut the heat off completely, just reduce it similar to programmable thermostats. It's just a thought.

^I think instead of moving back to window units and the like, we'll move toward much smarter HVAC systems that will have motion detectors in each room and a central hub that allows you to turn on and off the air/heat to certain zones of your house.

Yeah...how well does that work with lights?

WAVE YOUR HANDS FOR THE HEAT!!! SAY YAY-UH!!!

We're talking the future here folks, you gotta think outside the box!!

 

[engineergurl]

I wonder if there will be a trend away from central heat and AC. When you think about it, it is an immense waste to heat and cool rooms you aren't in.

Now that's not going to happen, the hippies already don't have central heat/AC and the ones that have it are in no way going to give something up

Yeah, I agree that it probably won't happen, but, you have to admit, the energy savings would probably be pretty good sized. Esepcially since the newer room/windo AC units are much more efficient than the ones of my youth. I don't know how they compare to central units in terms of efficiency, but heating/cooling 20% vs 100% of the house could easily make up for it.

Actually, in the house we are in now and every room has it's own control for heat and we have no central air. This winter we have each of the front rooms (they get sunlight but are exposed to the wind from the farm) as well as our bedroom set at level 4, no heat in the laundry room, sitting room or fitness room, the bathroom is set on high and the office (which shares a wall with the bathroom pipes) is set to about 5. Is the house cold? yes. Do we care? no. We just turn on the fake fireplace space heaters in the rooms we are using and avoid the rooms without a supplemental heat source.

We ran 4 window units off and on over the summer, two of them are programmable so we could set it and forget it, for example the one in the bedroom would kick on at 8 pm and cool the room to 68 and then go into sleep mode for the rest of the night as long as it was under 76 in the room. The other two I would turn on only during really hot days.

EDIT- no I am not a hippy, I miss my good heat and ac, but this was the only place that let us have all of our animals that was in our price range.

 

[wilheldp_PE]

I wonder if there will be a trend away from central heat and AC. When you think about it, it is an immense waste to heat and cool rooms you aren't in.

If you did that, you would have to insulate the interior walls of your house.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

I wonder if there will be a trend away from central heat and AC. When you think about it, it is an immense waste to heat and cool rooms you aren't in.

If you did that, you would have to insulate the interior walls of your house.

I see your point, but interior walls wouldn't be subject to solar load or the extreme of outside temps.

 

[wilheldp_PE]

I wonder if there will be a trend away from central heat and AC. When you think about it, it is an immense waste to heat and cool rooms you aren't in.

If you did that, you would have to insulate the interior walls of your house.

I see your point, but interior walls wouldn't be subject to solar load or the extreme of outside temps.

True, but they would suck conditioned air from the rooms being conditioned, causing the HVAC to work harder than intended.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

I wonder if there will be a trend away from central heat and AC. When you think about it, it is an immense waste to heat and cool rooms you aren't in.

If you did that, you would have to insulate the interior walls of your house.

I see your point, but interior walls wouldn't be subject to solar load or the extreme of outside temps.

True, but they would suck conditioned air from the rooms being conditioned, causing the HVAC to work harder than intended.

Meh, close the door...no problem.

Yeah, it is not optimal.

 

[Master slacker]

Optimal is a dream