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| The 8-Bit Guys house in Texas |
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| ajb:
--- Quote from: Ian.M on February 26, 2021, 11:37:09 am ---OTOH if the insects are swarming and covering the path to your front gate, and you've seen a few inside your house, wouldn't you be more careful? --- End quote --- There's a difference between knowing that it's cold and knowing that several kinds of household pipes can burst if they freeze. Just like there's a difference between knowing that venomous critters exist in an area and knowing that some of them like to hide in dark places like shoes and in bedding. There's also a difference between "knowing" something and being cognizant of it during a generally stressful situation. |
| Siwastaja:
--- Quote from: james_s on February 24, 2021, 05:16:47 pm ---I'd much rather deal with -15C temperatures than 40C temperatures. It's a lot easier to warm up than it is to cool down. --- End quote --- -15C is quite OK. You can heat with COP=2 to 3 with an ordinary heat pump, air-to-air or air-to-water. Moderately sized small family house can be practically insulated for some 3-5kW average heat consumption. You can still go outside and do normal outside stuff (which you can't do at +40degC) with enough clothes on no problem. I don't enjoy it; many do. At -30C, things start to get tricky. You are left with ground source heat pumps which are expensive to set up; or direct heating with electricity at COP=1; or burning fossil fuels. And you need 5-10kW of heat even for a very well insulated house. Additionally breathing the air hurts (or at least doesn't feel right) which you can't fight against with any amount and quality of clothing (this is highly personal though, some are fine; I'm not), so can't enjoy being outside. So it's similar to that of +40degC: you are locked inside, on the mercy of modern day life support systems, heating or cooling. I have an old house with some old plumbing. I have developed a habit that whenever I leave for a few days, I close the supply valve so that an old pipe won't burst, or if the pipes somehow freeze which is unlikely, the amount of damage is very limited (a few litres of water somewhere, vs. almost unlimited supply if allowed to flood for days). Note there are really unpredictable things you can't practically protect against; like a hurricane hitting your home with a flying car. You can build a 1" thick steel wall around your home and make it a bunker, but it's not practical. But weather is statistical. With statistics, you can also extrapolate, add error margins, so on... What's happening in Texas is not unpredictable; it's the opposite, it has been completely predictable, statistically speaking. No one can say when it happens, but it's highly probable it does happen at least once within the lifetime of the buildings. Also, protecting pipework from freezing is not rocket science, it's not very expensive; it's completely practical. It's all about risk management. Save a bit here and there ignoring the "quite unlikely" events. Then you pay the price for doing that choice. Insulation pays off in reduced cooling bills in hot climates. It also helps when it's suddenly cold. Finally, insulation slows down the cooling significantly during power outage. Having most pipes run inside the insulated envelope of the house, and properly and carefully insulating any pipe lengths that go outside of the house is the key, and this isn't expensive. Underground, they are protected by the insulating soil layer; some half a meter is enough in an environment where the cool season is short. In an well insulated house, a day or two long power outage is not a disaster, and pipes won't burst. Crawl spaces are problematic for plumbing. If ventilated through openings and/or uninsulated, they become nearly as cold as the outside air. All pipework must be properly insulated. |
| rsjsouza:
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on February 27, 2021, 10:28:10 am ----15C is quite OK. You can heat with COP=2 to 3 with an ordinary heat pump, air-to-air or air-to-water. Moderately sized small family house can be practically insulated for some 3-5kW average heat consumption. You can still go outside and do normal outside stuff (which you can't do at +40degC) with enough clothes on no problem. I don't enjoy it; many do. --- End quote --- Generalizations are always a problem. Everything is very relative to what you are used to and have equipment for. At -15°C you can't do anything outside unless you have proper shoes or gloves - otherwise, the cold will bite your fingers off. At 40°C you can have cold water, work almost naked and cool of every few minutes under a shade, but you can also have a terrible time with insulation. --- Quote from: Siwastaja on February 27, 2021, 10:28:10 am ---Insulation pays off in reduced cooling bills in hot climates. It also helps when it's suddenly cold. Finally, insulation slows down the cooling significantly during power outage. Having most pipes run inside the insulated envelope of the house, and properly and carefully insulating any pipe lengths that go outside of the house is the key, and this isn't expensive. Underground, they are protected by the insulating soil layer; some half a meter is enough in an environment where the cool season is short. In an well insulated house, a day or two long power outage is not a disaster, and pipes won't burst. --- End quote --- The major problem is to retrofit houses built decades ago where insulation and efficiency concerns were never taken into consideration - this accounts for the vast majority of reaidences in the metroplex I live. Sure, I personally have the resources to pay up a decent contractor/engineer to analyze my house and propose a few methods to fight this, but I would imagine that not many will be able to do so - especially in a year where many lost their income. |
| Siwastaja:
--- Quote from: rsjsouza on February 27, 2021, 02:45:22 pm ---Generalizations are always a problem. Everything is very relative to what you are used to and have equipment for. At -15°C you can't do anything outside unless you have proper shoes or gloves - otherwise, the cold will bite your fingers off. --- End quote --- As always, you should just prepare for the rare-yet-predictable events, especially when it is simple and not that expensive. So buy some clothes, gloves, shoes, all that winter gear. It doesn't need to be fancy, doesn't need to be trendy, and what's best, if you are in a normally warm climate, it sees so little use it lasts for half of your lifetime (as long as you give up about the idea of being trendy). I don't want to blame anyone not doing this. It's also the failure of the whole society that we spend our lives discussing about completely irrelevant matters such as Kim Kardashian's arse, yet forget about what's really important for our survival. Media could help people get information about important matters, not just entertainment. --- Quote ---The major problem is to retrofit houses built decades ago where insulation and efficiency concerns were never taken into consideration - this accounts for the vast majority of reaidences in the metroplex I live. Sure, I personally have the resources to pay up a decent contractor/engineer to analyze my house and propose a few methods to fight this, but I would imagine that not many will be able to do so - especially in a year where many lost their income. --- End quote --- Yes, retrofitting more insulation only pays for itself when you do that during other maintenance requiring tearing down the walls anyway. This isn't a practical tip of any sort and probably unhelpful, just an observation: I don't understand why substandard houses were built a few decades ago. We had all the knowledge and understanding back then, as we do now. Somehow it seems human kind periodically loses the understanding of the most basic needs. Or just go outright crazy. For example, here, the authorities basically forced people to bury the wooden structures a few dozen cm under the ground level, inside cold and wet concrete, from approx. 1965 to approx. 1990 in a structure called "fake foundation", creating a completely man-made mold disaster which affects basically half of the buildings in Finland for no reason whatsoever except someone thought buildings look better if they look like they sunk half a meter into the ground. At the same time, said authorities required that roofs must have no angle, obviously a winning idea in a climate where it snows every winter. The practical implementation consisted of a few layers of asphalt shingles, a solution which would work in a warm climate, or with a considerable roof angle, but with completely flat&level roof where water sits in pools, exposed to dozens of water freezing - melting cycles every winter, lasted for maybe one year then leaked into the completely unventilated roofing structures and insulation - where plastic film finally prevented the leak from being detected and spread the water everywhere. So even if you wanted to build properly (and normally! we always knew how to do it!), it was not allowed. Many of these buildings are in acceptable conditions thanks to a better-than-average soil properties (this is, by luck), but most are generating health issues as we speak. Why? No reason. 1970's to 1980's was some strange time; we live in a cold country and the oil crisis was just behind, yet people tore down and refurbished old, well engineered (70-80% efficiency) fire places (that were designed for heating), replacing them with decoration fire places with nearly 0%, in worst cases below 0% heating efficiency, because they were more "trendy" back then. Just like building with timber in wet sand. |
| rsjsouza:
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on February 27, 2021, 03:41:11 pm --- --- Quote from: rsjsouza on February 27, 2021, 02:45:22 pm ---Generalizations are always a problem. Everything is very relative to what you are used to and have equipment for. At -15°C you can't do anything outside unless you have proper shoes or gloves - otherwise, the cold will bite your fingers off. --- End quote --- As always, you should just prepare for the rare-yet-predictable events, especially when it is simple and not that expensive. So buy some clothes, gloves, shoes, all that winter gear. It doesn't need to be fancy, doesn't need to be trendy, and what's best, if you are in a normally warm climate, it sees so little use it lasts for half of your lifetime (as long as you give up about the idea of being trendy). --- End quote --- I agree with you in principle, but the TCO starts to become prohibitive when you have a limited house space used by clothes that only need to be drawn every 4~5 years or so. --- Quote from: Siwastaja on February 27, 2021, 03:41:11 pm ---This isn't a practical tip of any sort and probably unhelpful, just an observation: I don't understand why substandard houses were built a few decades ago. We had all the knowledge and understanding back then, as we do now. --- End quote --- I don't either. Regarding foundation, whwre I live the typical construction here is built on a slab of concrete that "floats" on the soil. It would be somewhat self-leveling if it wasn't for the fact the soil has a pesky tendency of becoming porous when dry. That brings tremendous forces that crack the slab and cost thousands of dollars to fix. That or you keep dripping water all around your house year round, with the cavest that you may have accumulated moist that seeps through the slab. Builders don't give a crap to a problem that will take 15, 20 years to manifest itself. |
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