Can We PLEASE Stop Calling Them “Ductless”

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by tedkidd on September 1, 2011 at 7:24am

Well, words have power.  Words set the tone for what follows.    And words are attached to pictures in our minds.

Nicely put.  I think this applies to the whole home performance field, where so often the pictures in peoples minds are completely distorted.  We need to be very careful in our attempts to simplify that we don't unwittingly create harmful inaccuracies. 

 

And nice article.  

 

Why don't you abandon gas?  At that low level of consumption, when you factor the meter charge alone, gas is very expensive.   (imaging paying a $1 service charge at the gas station.  Filling your suburban it wouldn't be noticed, but your model airplane?)  

 

Abandoning dangerous appliances makes this argument even more compelling. 

Permalink Reply by Robert Riversong on September 13, 2012 at 8:40am

Speaking of words leaving incorrect images in people's minds...

There is nothing inherently dangerous about gas appliances. The number of residential fires initiated by gas or liquid fuels is about the same as the number initiated by electrical wires. Once user error is eliminated (most fires are caused by cooking and most fire deaths by smoking), electricity is a greater contributor to fire spread than gas.

In my 30-odd years as a volunteer fire fighter, I've responded to one major gas-caused fire and many dozens of fires ruled as electrical in origin.

Permalink Reply by tedkidd on September 13, 2012 at 10:09am

Robert, nobody said anything about fires.  

If you've never measured the CO put off by a gas oven warming up, or heating cold water over a flame, maybe you would find that interesting.  

We are tightening existing homes like never before.  Homes with unvented appliances. Homes with Natural Draft appliances.  There is a tremendous amount of risk in tight homes and combustion appliances.  Much is known, and undoubtedly hindsight will uncover much that is currently unknown. 

You apparently build new, tight, highly insulated homes.  You install unvented or natural draft appliance in your new builds?  Why do I doubt it?  

I'm here to lean and share.  To fine tune my perspective and that of others.  People like Sean (below) appreciate my perspective as I appreciate his.   Why are you here if you feel you have nothing to learn?   If you have a complete inability to step outside yourself and look from another perspective before coming to conclusions, you may have little to offer. 

I get this sense of incredible resistance from most of your posts.   Are you so frightened that you'll discover something you've done in the past is wrong that you must rigidly define your perspective?  If you built to the best of your ability and knowledge at the time, what more could have been done?  Building science evolves, and we either evolve with the new information or we get stuck in a place that technology or new information makes obsolete. 

 

A lot of my long term contracting friend simply accept this is a fact.  They did the best they could then, and are doing the best they can now, and in 20 years some of what is best practice today will turn out to be wrong.  They do not have absurd expectations of perfection from themselves or others.  

Or are you afraid you'll learn something that forces you to alter current practices, and that frightens you?  There is an ethical pit there.  

From this and other posts I see an inability to comprehend retrofit issues as very different from new build issues.  This combined with your incredibly rigid and accusatory approach means those who could help you learn a thing or two will quickly become disinterested.  This attempt to share with you took a lot of effort.  I want more dialog, less argument.  If there is no reward in the information transfer, I'll stop investing.     

Permalink Reply by Robert Riversong on September 13, 2012 at 10:25am

No, you didn't specify fire danger, but you didn't specifiy anything else, either - you simply made the blanket statement that gas appliances are dangerous.

So now, rather than take responsibility for the vagueness (and inaccuracy) of your comment, you launch into a major accusatory tirade replete with all kinds of (incorrect) assumptions about my psychology, which contributes nothing to these discussions and is a completely unnecessary and unprofessional diversion and distraction.

And, by the way, I always install gas cookstoves in my super-efficient and tight homes because no self-respecting cook would use anything else and that's always been what my clients want. The homeowners understand that the range hood is there to be used during cooking and there has never been an indoor air quality problem in my homes.

I've also done as many renovations and retrofits as new construction. And all my new homes contain a "natural draft appliance" called a woodstove.

Permalink Reply by Sean Feurtado on September 11, 2012 at 10:17am

I agree with tedkidd - Nice write up!

Permalink Reply by Dave Robinson on September 13, 2012 at 10:01am

Update on Ducted Systems.

This time in a different climate zone.   I've moved to Virginia = "Mixed Humid"  We were following grand babies.   And I just couldn't help myself ... when this foreclosure showed up in my little town, I just had to buy it.   Once you're infected with this Home Performance virus it's very hard to shake.    So what to do with this 92 year old balloon framed farm house with 8,000 cfm of leakage.    I was going to go totally ductless single point delivery Mini Splits, one upstairs and one down.  But plenty of research is happening on that.  So I decided to duplicate the Hot Dry project mentioned above in the Mixed Humid Zone.    

First we had to get that leakage down.   We went from 8,000 to 450.   Not Passiv, but pretty good for what we started with. Then the house sat for a while as decisions were being made.  The sitting and the final install of the HVAC and ventilation put the leakage back up to 700..... Still some work to do there.      The 2 ton unit was hung on the wall and half the freon runs thru the middle floor joists to a single indoor unit on the wall in the family room.  The other half goes to a small air handler mounted on the ceiling in a stair well.   A small duct system serves the three upstairs bedrooms.

We always use ventilation on purpose, this time the Panasonic ERV with 40 cfms continuous.

This project is being monitored by DOE and NREL.  It has just been commissioned so full data is not yet available.   The project manager however, said the HVAC kilowatt usage is "surprisingly low"   I will have more data  to present at the ACI regional conference in Pittsburg next month. Hope to see you there.   Here is a photo of the air handler and the start of the duct system ... mounted on the ceiling ... inside the building envelope.   I like the look of exposed ductwork.   After the testing, we'll see what the market thinks.   If necessary, I can cover it with a dropped ceiling.

Permalink Reply by Robert Riversong on September 13, 2012 at 10:14am

"I like the look of exposed ductwork.   After the testing, we'll see what the market thinks."

Beautiful to an engineer, perhaps, but most people would consider that downright ugly.

Permalink Reply by tedkidd on September 13, 2012 at 10:41am

8000 to 450, that's awesome!  How?  Do you have a blog or something we can follow?  

Permalink Reply by Tom Conlon on September 13, 2012 at 1:45pm

Great update Dave! So you traded humidity for grand-kids? I'm afraid that might happen to me someday too (both our girls are in colleges Back East).

Were your ears burning? Danny Parker and I were talking up your "hybrid" mini-split idea at his Zero Net Energy Class at PG&E last month. He said his 9 kBTU/h Fujitsu unit uses about the same amount of power as did just his old gas furnace blower motor. It's working so well that he's running his whole house -- plus a Chevy Volt -- on just a 5 kW PV system (in Florida no less)... and is still ZNE. Here's some very inspiring monitored data.

I have a friend in Santa Rosa CA who just put in a 3-headed multi-split and he's pleased (but this is way overkill for his small single-story, and not worth the efficiency penalty, IMO).