In the world of super insulation, is this that big of a thing?
Good insulation and windows would take care of lighting, and good amount of heating and cooling. Solar water heating is proven technology and can heat the building quite easily. PV can provide the electricity. I must be missing something here.
I'm thinking it would not be an easy task to heat a building that size with solar thermal to a degree of comfort in this part of the continent in the winter when daylight hours are quite short and cold night time hours are quite long - no matter how well it is insulated.
Done right a good heat exchange system can be great. I put a commercial sized unit in a large photo lab. It helped us exchange the air in the 17,000 sq ft facility 7 times an hour. This was a photo processing plant that didn't smell like one. All the darkrooms had fresh air supplied and the people that worked there loved it. By recouping waste heat from the processors the building heating needs were kept reasonably low.you get the placed all sealed up and then you need a air exchange system with heat recovery. and those things are not all they are cracked up to be.
How many other houses have boilers and furnaces that are way to big and short cycle? A building that was gutted and sealed with closed cell foam, new windows... built for efficiency, it shouldn't need much.
The passive house of which I am speaking is a multimillion-dollar affair. New build.Are these houses in reasonable physical condition?
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