2010-05-10 21:44:38
Striving to reduce heating costs need not entail the resignation of the attractive architecture.
The idea of energy-efficient homes is to reconcile the three most important elements of modern building: economics, ecology and comfort. With little investment growth can reduce heating costs by 50%, significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase the comfort of the building. It is assumed that the heat demand for heating in the case of typical residential buildings is about 120 kWh / (m² · year). For energy-efficient buildings adopted in the meantime, facilities which heat for heating does not exceed 70 kWh / (m² · year). Achieving such a low rate of energy consumption requires a comprehensive building solutions.
Renovation Improvements
Energy efficient homes in projects apply comprehensive design solutions and modern solutions uses a ventilation system, central heating and hot water. Heat loss can be reduced by:
* Ventilation - in homes constructed in accordance with the applicable standards by gravitational ventilation can run 30-40% of its total loss. The introduction of mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, pumping air through the ground heat exchanger and seal the building to reduce heat loss by nearly 80%;
* Windows and external doors - usually escapes by 20-25% of the total heat loss. Their limit is not economically viable due to the high price of energy-efficient windows, so changes were made to a small extent;
* External walls - usually escapes by 15-20% of total losses. With increasing thickness of the insulating layer managed to reduce heat loss by nearly 40%;
* Roof - he runs 10-15% of the total losses. With increasing thickness of the insulating layer of heat loss was reduced by nearly 35%;
* On the ground floor - it runs 5-10% of total losses. Increasing the thickness of the insulating layer made it possible to reduce heat loss by nearly 35%;
* Thermal bridges - they flee to 5% of the total heat loss. By using the design solution free of thermal bridges, heat losses were reduced by over 50%.
The changes resulted in a decrease in seasonal demand for heating of buildings by 50%. Improvements for the construction of the building, also had an impact on reducing demand for so-called computational power and the heat meant that the energy balance a more important role played by the heat demand for heating hot water.