What I am trying to do is consider our options given our situation.
We need a warmer/cooler home. We need good options for heating and cooling.
I'm really not sure what my best options are. Our house in country SA in the greater Karoonda area. We live out here for health reasons, as the wife and I are both disabled now.
Our house used to be the local general store. The house was put together in more than one build. The old part has very thick stone walls. That part of the house is storage right now, until we can add some walls as is is one very large room (it was a general store after all).
But the new part (probably early 70s construction) contains the primary residence. As with many of things the store owners had done (or did themselves ... I suspect they much on their own) it was not well thought out....done in a rush. In this case that means the primary living areas have single layer concrete block walls (no insulation of course) so it is very COLD in winter and HOT in summer (discomfort by the seasons). This is where the bedrooms, kitchen, lounge and toilet are.
I already intend to insulate the hell out of the ceiling in that area using EARTHWOOL. We have serious medical reactions to a lot of things now... lovely disease this, so we have to do everything extra 'green' to be able to live here.
Given the thin walls the temptation is to put on external wall insulation too but that would be rather expensive to do (oh but so much better).
Being almost entirely house bound and disabled does bad things to your electric bill. Most people (anyone who does not have very small kids) do not tend to realize that most of their waking hours are spent in places where other people pay for the heating / cooling / electric (work/school). Disabled and elderly people use a lot more power just by being home all the time.
A 10Kw PV system is going to occur due to a small inheritance.
Mono-crystalline is what we *want* (not will get) as it does not suffer from the power output dropoff at high summer temperatures that polycrystalline does. As the temp goes up over 40C, polycrystalline PV starts to go DOWN in its output while the Mono-crystalline keeps putting out more and more power. However there are limits to our cash. It was not a WEALTHY relative.
I wish I could afford the high end monocrystalline SunPower E19 or E20 but they are spendy. We will probably wind up getting something more realistic in price.... and I know, most people just put on more PV and use lower quality cells but you CAN'T go over 10KW without 3 phase (which is not going to happen on OUR house, way out here next to the sheep, in the land of crappy landlines and no cell access & Satellite internet).
Regardless, we ought to never have to pay for any electricity ever again, which in the long term will make life far more affordable and in about 5 1/2 to 6 years the PV will have paid for itself even ;
* IF we got NO money back from the extra power we make.
* and IF power rates never rose again (which they will)
In the winter when PV generation goes down heaps (mostly June and July) it would not make sense to try and heat with reverse cycle. Reverse cycle in the summer is DEFINITE in our future, but we just can;t afford the massive cost of a ducted system so we will probably wind up with a few smaller units around the house (cool off the places you are in). This will be a grand luxury to us as we can stop getting heat stroke every summer ... repeatedly. Note here that I do not even sweat properly & in SA that is dangerous in the summer (I have GOT to get the aircon in the car regassed).
As for heating...THIS is the part up in the air.
Our only heat right now is an old MAXIHEAT combustion stove in the lounge and this is a BIG house. When the lounge is warm the bedrooms are very cold. We need a warmer winter.
All options that are not obscene in price or poisonous to us (I hate these health issues) are up for grabs. *GAS* counts as 'poisonous to us'. Our external instant gas hot water system (Rennai Infinity) was pushing our tolerance. Gas makes us both quite ill.
Aussies (due to a lot of rather deceptive advertising) are mostly unaware that LPG is *NOT* really natural gas (methane is) and in many other nations it is not even allowed to be used for combustion inside of homes (with good reason). Even if you follow current Aussie code with the 'proper' ventilation (which MOST homes lack) the carbon monoxide levels are scary, and the OTHER stuff it puts out is worse (headaches, nausea and asthma are common issues). IN our case it would make our home unlivable.
Incidentally, for those who don;t understand this, LPG is a combination of butane and propane, and a lot of it comes from the fractal distillation of crude oil. It is about as 'natural' as a plastic comb or a liter of petrol. So :
'LPG combustion in my car' = yes
'LPG combustion in my house air'= no
The floors are concrete slab (we had to remove the carpets before we even moved in for health issues).
We can;t afford the cost (BIG HOUSE) or the health issues of having new floating floors put in.
New composite construction materials (I know this because I grew up in timber country and had a lot of mills near my home... and I knew a 'glue maker' rather well) are made with formaldehyde based glues. The finished composite flooring is then covered in plastic finishes. These would be out-gassing a lot of nasty VOC's (including formaldehyde fumes) for most of a decade. My wife would be having constant seizures as it slowly out-gassed. So new 'floating floors' are right out
Beside the inheritance is not THAT big (I said it is a large house).
I am beginning to consider some form of radiator based hydronic heating for the bedrooms & toilet area but am not certain what source I ought to have to heat the water. There are a lot of options.
As for the lounge, I will probably have to give in and just replace the wood stove in for winters and use reverse cycle in the summer (I doubt PV in winters will do well for powering reverse cycle heating).
Burning wood is not ideal for our health, although a far newer stove would be less of an issue once it is no longer BRAND new... and here we have an issue. New combustion heaters are covered in new paint and such. When first fired up they give off a lot of nasty VOCs (which we cannot tolerate at all). So we would have to run the thing ultra hot several times ... with all doors and windows open and just leave for the day.
I even worry about the materials used on the INSIDE of reverse cycle units. Metal is our friend.
** be very careful where you are conceived ***
I expect we will need to open everything, run everything, and then evacuate the house for the day to get rid of the horrible stuff that comes off of any new system.
METAL is our friend. Metal that is not covered in unnecessary layers of NEW PAINT is better. Metal that is *old* where some other person had to deal with the junk that came off of it when it was new is nice (well ... for us it is).
I love the *idea* of geothermal heat pumps, as they are so very efficient, but in Australia despite having an idea climate for them EVERYWHERE ... from what I last read the cost of a fully installed system is about 4x what it is elsewhere (although we ARE on 3/4 of an acre). I have no intention of blowing nearly every cent we have on JUST the heat pump system.
Ideas are appreciated.
I wish that there were more CO2 based system available in Australia. A lot of out reverse cycle units are just sad on their efficiency, and given our power costs that makes no sense at all.
