Is this sarcasm ? because sounds like sarcasm.
If Grok generating naked images of children is your ideea of free speech no wonder nobody takes a stand against Trump and Co., you somehow managed turn your common sense to dust...
If you think house prices are a joke now, just wait 2-3 years.
I'm actually a structural engineer with a passion for passive houses and went into programming 8 years ago. I designed and built a lot of houses and I know what you're talking about.. the house builders chase profits disregarding any laws.
IMHO the best thing is to buy a lot and build yourself the house, this way you are sure that you get what you want.
House prices per sqm in Romania based on average net earnings per month is lower than ever, lower than 2014 when price per sqm were at the lowest after the 2008 financial crisis.
Why don't you consider buying the house with a bank loan? it's the best decision to do so even if you have all the money... if you talk with a financial consultant you'll see why.
Housing prices are not out of control, we are lagging years behind other European countries in regard with house prices.
If you look on the numbers you will see that this is actually a good time to buy a house in Romania.
Just yesterday my father's Philips CPAP was replaced after more than a year of complaints to Philips Romania.
Thanks to HN I read an article that said Philips put a lot of money aside for Respironics issues and this made me investigate further.
If it wasn't for HN I wouldn't have found out and most probably Philips Romania would have ignored the issue, so thank you HN!
After the NYT article [0] I purchased (rented) my own domain, created a cloudflare account and started using their email routing to forward all the email to my gmail address. I also configured gmail to allow me to send emails from the new email address.
As I have a small child and use a lot the telemedicine services I do have a fear that I will be blocked soon.
A drawback to this is that cloudflare does not allow you to forward to multiple email addresses.
You need a separate hot water tank and a 3-way valve, when hot water is requested the hot water from heat-pump will get diverted into the hot water tank (puffer).
You're welcome!
I live in Europe (Romania) and to be honest I would not know what to expect in terms of costs.
You lose at least 25% of your energy trough the roof, this can even go up to 30-35% if the ceiling is cracked or air is able to circulate freely trough it.
1. I would start by lowering the ceiling and insulating it. For ceiling if you insulate it using mineral wool, or glass wool... the vapor barrier [0] is critical and must be placed continuously on the warm part. Also this membrane (preferably containing aluminum so that you get back some of the heat) must be glued to the walls using special glue [1]
2. I would change the windows, with at least triple pane. The windows must be mounted correctly (see RAL montage) and also must be placed aligned with the outside face of the wall.
3. I would take out the floor, and do hydronic underfloor heating with EPS150 or XPS as insulation substrate.
I want to also to highlight the importance of the building airtightness (Air Changes per Hour) on the energy consumption needed for heating.
I saw an example at some point in one of PassivHaus presentation and it was like this:
0.3 ACH -> 1.74 kWh/m2year (for a 100 sqm house means, 174 kwh per year for heating)
0.6 ACH -> 3.49 kWh/m2year (PassivHaus limit)
1.0 ACH -> 5.81 kWh/m2year
1.5 ACH -> 8.72 kWh/m2year (Low energy house limit)
4.5 ACH -> 26.5 kWh/m2*year (typical house)
This is for the same house with the same insulation. Of course you cannot achieve this kind of airtightness without careful planning and using a lot of self-adhesive tape (SIGA, ROTHOBLASS and other manufactures that can guarantee its effectiveness up to 50 years)
Exactly what coryrc said in his comment, for a PassivHaus you recover very slowly the cost of the heatpump and if it brakes once in 10-15 years while it takes to recover the investition... you will never recover it.
I agree, you do not need concrete and brick but you also need to take into account the local traditions. For ex. building a wood house (framing or CLT) would have cost much more than concrete and bricks and was also much more prone to errors because of the builders lack of experience, at least in my area and country.
Recently in Romania it really took of building houses using CLT (cross-laminated-timber) but it costs so much more than a regular brick and mortar house that few people afford it.
When -15 outside and 20 degrees inside, my house requires 2000W to keep the balance. This kind of simulations are done using PHPP package from PassivHaus Institut.
L.E.
What I wanted to point out, thermal mass can have a huge impact on the house energy footprint.. to give you an example, today and tomorrow will be sunny days and this will drive my interior temp to about 23-24 degrees, this heat will heat-up the masonry and slabs and then give me back the heat in the next days when there will be no sun.
Small in comparison with a typical single family homes that goes >150 sqm in my area. I completely agree with you, 99 sqm is more than enough for a 4 people family.
Really interesting. I've read about also "foundation insulation skirt" that allows you to create a warmer earth mass under the house.
To be honest this was the biggest "complaint" that others had in regards of how a built the house, the general knowledge says that the earth is warm and you don't need to insulate against it... but the earth is maybe 5-10 degree, of course warmer than outside -5..-10 but still a lot colder than what we want inside the house, 20,21 degree C.
Instead of a heat recovery ventilation you can use energy recovery ventilation which gets back some of the humidity, otherwise just buy a cheap electric boiling humidifier and it you get the job done.
What is important that in the coldest part of the winter you can turn down the ventilation to a minimal, something like 0.3 hourly exchanges per hour.
First of all, if you build a PassivHaus in normal climate (not cold) you will be amazed to see that you do not need a heat pump, you can just use normal electric boiler for hot water and use electric underfloor heating mats for heating, or infrared panels mounted on the roof.
On the other side, air-to-air heat pumps have gotten cheaper by the year, you can buy a decent heat pump (NIBE) with about 4500-5000 euros.
You must also be careful on how you mount the windows. Have a look at the german standard called "RAL montage" to see that you need an inner and outer membrane and then have a look on where to mount the window inside the wall.. the best solution is to mount it outside the wall in the insulation, the second best solution is to align it at the face of the wall.
I've also built a simple and small (99sqm) PassivHaus in Romania, 5 years ago. Everybody, and I mean everybody from family to friends called me nuts, but I've got my payback this winter when the energy prices went trough the roof and I'm just slightly affected.
The house is elevated from the ground on 12 concrete columns so that I can insulate under the foundation beams using glass foam, insulation on walls is 30 cm of EPS graphite, underfloor 45 cm EPS and on the roof, 50 cm and the orientation is full on south. For heating it consumes about 1500-2000 kWh per year (December, January, February and a maybe a small part of March)
What is the big difference between houses built in North America and Europe is that the European houses are built using concrete and masonry which give them a lot of thermal mass which is crucial to this kind of builds.
Have a look here [0], this is the first PassivHaus in my area and is nicely documented.
The cost of building a PassivHaus in my country typically goes about 20-25% more than a traditional one.