Fooferfish

I bet all you guys are in the NI ??

Harden up !!

Seriuosly though we live in Dunedin and get the all important all day sun till 5 pm on winters nights and the back of our house bakes, but with single 4 mm glazing doesn't hang around long, i have underfloor insulated which made a huge difference, because when you think about those lovely polished floors, between you and -10deg on a winters night, theres not a lot apart from 22mm of hardwood, we installed Pink Batts Cosy floor and for a 120m2 house it worked out about $1100, well worth it.

Reset all the windows and put the rubber tubular draught proofing around all of them and put better window catches to pull the window tight, no more curtains moving in the wind.

Heating we use a Yunca in the lounge with a heat transfer kit which drops heat outside the 3 bedrooms and into the back lounge, i measured the heat that was on the low ceiling and it was upto 65/70deg wasted, so heat transfer works very well.

But the one thing that really chuffs me off some mornings is the condensation, because the house gets heated very well both from wood fire and heat pump,, the humidity builds up and hits the single glazing and the windows can run in water, so i installed what i think is far better than a dehumidifier that disrupts the dew point, is a Weiss HVS system, it costs as little as a few cents each day and continuously pumps dry air into the house, it was $1150 and i have also put a small heater unit in line as well because we have a tiled roof, it has a computer on the hall wall and once set thats it, results are even after one week is no crying windows and the house is easier to heat, and we have even had the whole place over 21deg, using just the wood fire.We had the HRV, and DVS guys around and at $2600, i thought na i installed a NZ made one for $1400 and its awesome.

shirl

Like you I am in the south island and we are thinking about HRV simply because in the summer our house like yours faces North to get all day sun. Even now in winter when the sun is out there is no need to have any heat on as it is boiling. Our bedroom is a different matter though. That faces south and is freezing when the temps get really low. The past 2 nights it has been ok as it only got down to 12 at night. We experienced HRV in a rental and thought it was great for cooling. When the room heats up you just set it to cool and it drags in cool air and dumps hot air outside. Maybe I will talke to OH have the system you put in. Do you think it will be the same as HRV in the summer?

Fooferfish

Not sure, but the kit is at Mitre 10 Mega and called a Weiss system, because we have a tiled roof it gets cold in winter and TBH all we wanted it for was to get rid of the condensation and its done that and more, makes the house easier to heat, if you have an iron roof then how can a system in a bloody hot loft in summer bring cool air down from a red hot space, the HRV rep could not explain this as he was on his hard sale bit.And with the Weiss system all you need is a plug socket in the loft to plug the main fan unit in.

I would install a small heat pump to put on cool, have never had the need for a cooling system down south, only used it once when we had a NW wind blowing.

Also the main purpose of this installation is because we intend to rent this place out and i have seen many rentals in winter time with windows running in water as tenants do not air the houses and this rots the inside.

shirl

Yes I see where you are coming from, we have a concrete tiled roof at the moment but the place we had HRV in was a steel roof. It brings air in from the outside of the cool side i.e south and cools the rooms then it dumps the hot air back out. We found it extremely useful in the hot weather. You could actually feel the cool air in the rooms on a hot day. I think it only heats from the roof when the temps get really hot. We used to get to over 30c in the roof and the inside would be like high 20s and so if you put it on cool it actually does work as you can see the temp coming down. We have a heat pump so probably like you say would be able to put that on cool. However, the roof systems use very little energy to do this and that was my main thought for summer. Also if you have any bad kitchen smells from cooking etc, you set it to burnt toast mode and it drags all the smells away and dumps outside. There is no lingering smells in bedrooms, closets, bathrooms etc. We will probably see how we go with the heat pump on cool this coming year and see how efficient it is. Not had one before. We are not using it much either as we face north and even now this morning the sun in blasting in and no need for any heat on. Plus our internal walls are also all insulated with pink batts so we are very economical as regards heat loss. Will be interested to go look at the weiss system next time we are in Mitre 10 Mega.