As a side note, Fine Homebuilding and its associated property Green Building Advisor (https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com) are exceptional sources of information on quality residential construction. HGTV and similarly oriented renovation programming dominate this media, but there is a large community of people trying to do things correctly and making use of the appropriate technology to do so.
It's interesting to me that hacker news likes building-related content so much, which happens to be my education other than... well, computers.
Air tightness is a critical step forward. I'm glad we are talking about it. Thinking more holistically, I would not go with the double-stud wall. You get lots of thermal bridging, and when it gets cold, your outer studs freeze. I know it's considered a straightforward system, but venturing out of one's comfort zone to do an exterior insulated system has enormous durability and performance benefits. Let's build our homes for centuries, not decades, folks!
The way they did it with those gussets, it seems so. But I don't think double studded walls always imply more thermal bridging than single stud walls where typically every 16 inches there's a complete thermal bridge. I think the double studded wall has proven its effectiveness.
> your outer studs freeze
Well if they don't freeze, you're heating them. So I would think the outer studs should freeze.
> venturing out of one's comfort zone to do an exterior insulated system has enormous durability and performance benefits
Note that the "barn" is NOT to be built airtight, in order to prevent rot in the insulation. (Why most constructions do not follow this pattern I'm not sure, maybe someone could shed light on this for me?)
I agree with your main point but it's worth it to point out that air tightness is only a consideration in climates with really cold seasons. I live in a roughly mediterranean region (Lisbon) and it drives me up the wall to see people spend fortunes on passive-haus-like builds.
Meanwhile my own home is about 200 years old, built out of stone and lime, has no air tightness whatsoever -in fact it had a 5m2 hole in an exterior wall for most of 2020 and 2021- and I'm perfectly confortable with no environmental heating or cooling. Windows are opened every day of the year.
Good design and a good location beat excellent construction any day of the week.
>Let's build our homes for centuries, not decades, folks!
I agree with you, but unfortunately the incentives in the system penalize constructing high quality buildings. The higher quality the building, the more taxes you pay.
Home ownership is a luxury everyone wants. I can't imagine people don't salivate at the idea of a sturdy, comfortable, private nest. The only class of people who can afford it are people with incomes on par with tech workers.
We had a good one like that in our previous apartment. They consist of a large cylindrical metal "heat sink" where cold air coming in goes through the bottom half, warm air going out leaves through the top half, and the entire thing rotates at ~ 5 RPM. Not any more noisy than regular kitchen ventilation. But they need to be big, ours was the size of a small dishwasher and that was adequate for a 75 square meter apartment.
Edit: if you are buying such a thing you should get someting oversized, e.g. for a 180 square meter home you should find a unit that is specified for "200 to 350 square meters", not "75 to 200".
Nowadays it seems that simpler Heat Recovery Ventilators are the go-to solution. They're more straightforward crossflow heat exchangers, with no moving parts (except the fans, of course). Energy Recovery Ventilators are also available, built with a permeable interface to retain humidity as well as heat.
No, buy the right size. Those things are better than an open window, but they are still pretty bad from an energy standpoint. Larger ones either run less often, or run leak more energy out of the house.
The state of Montana runs a data center with three 16' 'heat wheels' for the primary cooling. They are pretty cool, if I ever have a large enough hole into my attic space I might get one more appropriately sized like yours.
Yes, but they may not be effective enough; there was a big stink in the area I live where they had houses with a system like that, but the system either didn't have enough capacity, or it had to be cranked up to a point where the noise would be intolerable to the people living there.
I have a one-way system, an air pump that sucks air in through vents and out through the ceiling in a few points; I have it set to the lowest at all times because it produces a constant noise otherwise. We usually have our bedroom windows open and the back door open a crack, it should be fine even if it's not the most energy efficient.
Call me selfish, but I'd like my country to crank up electricity production, reduce its usage by datacenter and industry, and use it to heat or cool houses instead.
I think this is conflating possible fuckups by the developer - like i stalling undersizer or poor quality system- with inherent disadvantages of the technology
Opening a window in winter in Wisconsin is very much not free...
It's a classic OPEX vs. CAPEX tradeoff, plus the climate impact (of course building the ventilation system has a climate impact too, so there is a tradeoff there as well).
In a weird full-circle sort of way, that was (sometimes) the point: it was to allow fresh air to circulate even on very cold days—-and during a pandemic, even.
Yes, these are energy recovery ventilator (ERV) units. They exchange air while keeping both heat and humidity in. They are absolutely critical to health in tight house construction.
I got one too, and a PM2.5 laser sensor. It's a huge challenge during wildfire season to keep the PM2.5 and CO2 both good. Needs filtered HVAC to actually do it. I prefer high CO₂ over high PM2.5 of course.
I need to get into CO2 monitor sales and then some cloud connected device that changes the CO2 levels somehow (maybe just a fan). After that, sell a subscription to adjust the CO2 ppm through a website. People will fiddle with it and pay the subscription for the rest of their lives.
We did something similar recently. This looks like standard, low cost modern construction to me.
If you’re in a warmish climate (like the SF bay area), you probably don’t want to insulate the concrete slab. You get lots of passive heating of the slab in winter already, and having the ground suck that heat out is a win almost year round. South facing windows can be designed with an eave, etc to lower passive heating in the summer and increase it in the winter. There are reference maps for this, and an architect can work out the passive heating projections for you.
We opted for different insulation (there are new eco friendly spray foams, and rockwool is nice for moisture resistance, etc). We didn’t do the split stud double frame thing, but we’re not in Wisconsin, and the R value for the house is already overkill (with an insulation budget that was a tiny fraction of the cost of the house).
> This looks like standard, low cost modern construction to me.
That's the idea, use as much standard stuff, but in a slightly different way to get a way better result, but similar enough you can use normal contractors to execute.
For example, any framer can make a 2x4 wall. But if you want to use SIPs, AAC, even insulated concrete forms... good luck finding someone in most of the country.
Insulating the slab doesn't matter as much as it may appear, as the ground "below" the house eventually reaches equilibrium. Insulating the side foundation walls can be much more useful.
Yes. Here in the UK there's a program called Grand Designs about people building beautiful or innovative bespoke homes. One such was an engineer building a home with insulated foundation walls as you describe, based on academic research done by his father in the 1970s & 80s.
IIRC it took c. 18 months for the floor to reach equilibrium, but once there, virtually no other heating was required, winter or summer (in the UK).
How many of those homes tested installed a proper mechanical ventilation system?
Anyone that is serious about air tightness will tell you that you need to manage the air transfer with an HRV or an ERV so it's filtered, controlled, and avoids these problems.
Results from the occupant interviews suggest inadequate
knowledge of the ventilation system, with all Code 4 homes
stating ‘not sure’ when asked about various features of the
MVHR system, including the current settings, changing of
filters, boost mode function and location of controls.
Knowledge of the MVHR system was considerably
lacking in Code 4 homes. All households stated that they
did not know where the controls for the system were
located, or how to change the settings.
They asked people who moved into "airtight" social housing if they understood how the systems worked to keep the air moving and people said no.
It's a risk when building homes for the general public, things like ventilation need to be idiot-proof. Maybe a big red warning if the system isn't working properly? Mandatory inspections?
The problem is not that people are idiots, the problem is nobody knows or cares anout what is happening in a rented apartment.
This apartment is owned by a company registered in a tax heaven, he can never be reached and never replies.
The management company does not know anything about the house, how the heating work, how the ventilation works - you only find out on the builsing whats app group from the one guy in the whole building who is a homeowner.
Half the people in this building had a broken ventillation system (the circuitboard died every year, 'luxury' apartments, yey!) and they did not know. This apartment had a broken ventillation system when i moved in.
The previous apartment had a ventillation system too, also was broken, landlord lives in country but has no clue what it is and took 6 months to fix it.
Why boilers have been standard for some time, and everyone knows how to use them, the ventillation systems are all different and most peolle have never seen one before.
The solution is sensored operations. The air system needs to measure the amount of CO2 and PM2.5 in each room and adjust automatically to maintain fresh air everywhere.
"Turned off" should be considered a dangerous state you can't leave the system in - in fact, if due to some failure the system ends up turned off, it should continuously alarm or trip the electrical supply.
Just like it's really hard to turn off the drivers airbag in a car.
This sounds like teflon, approved because it is organically safe until it reaches a certain temp, even for a second, then it releases toxic gas, and becomss permanatly harmful to cook on.
The approval logic was, people will:
- always be very careful cooking, and never ever let the heat get too high
- people will learn about teflon, and keep watch
- people care
Meanwhile, stories abound of people's birds dying from toxic gas (they are more susceptible, and die first).
Note that if a bird dies, and you don't, that doesn't mean you were not injured. Or your family.
If you're giving anything to a consumer, assume they know nothing, that they cannot follow directions, won't care even if they understand, etc, etc.
Because that's how it is.
This is validated, proven, over and over and over again.
I love the idea of airtight, but think it is like lead in pipes. If we build like this, kids ... with their developing brains and bodies, will pay the price.
And 40 years later, we'll be astonished at the absurdity of it all, the lost potential, wasted lives. Just like lead pipes, paint, etc.
My understanding is that teflon itself is inert, but the combustion/precursor products aren't[1]. Given that, "burnt teflon flakes" should only be an issue if you burnt the pan while cooking but still ate the food.
You burn your pan. Teflon off gasses. The gas is released in air.
The same offgassed chemical is now under the teflon, between pan and teflon, as well as in any cracks, or porous areas of the teflon, more likely now, as teflon has changed its chemical struture.
It's where the gas came from, yes?
So, now you have a pan more likely to crack and chip, with deadly chemicals waiting.
The logic you are employing, is similar to the logic which got a deadly substance, teflon, approved.
OK under some circumstances, but not thinking of the entire picture.
The price? Your health.
The health of all in your house, breathing toxic gas, and eating toxins, for which the young are more susceptible to.
This is classic "what's wrong with the world" stuff. For an extremely mild convenience, use a deadly solution at a whim. Teflon.
People would rather have their food covered in toxic stuff, than use a little oil. Or buy an iron pan, and season it correctly.
Typically with passive houses/"pretty good" houses that have low inherent ACH they then have HRV/ERVs installed for mechanical ventilation, to provide good air quality. It's possible for such a building to have better air quality than normal construction.
At the same time, the theory isn't always embodied correctly. The ventilation design may be poor or make wrong assumptions (like requiring bedroom doors to be open) or the homeowner may unwittingly turn it off or not change the filter periodically.
I have a ~40 year old house that has some energy-efficient features, but ultimately isn't very tight and doesn't need ventilation. I still hope to install an ERV in the next few years, though, just because I think the benefits of good ventilation will be so strong.
Yes, I'm in exactly the same boat (although my house is even older - almost 70 years old).
I hope to gradually replace the leaky windows and external doors (would love to put in double-insulated windows), maybe staple air barrier membrane under the floorboards after insulating under them to reduce leakyness there (I already have good insulation in the ceiling). But first I want an ERV just to increase general air quality.
I've built my new home few years ago, so airtight according to local norms (France) and with proper ventilation, as computed in the project: IME the article have a small point in the sense that:
- there is much more dust in wood-frame + glass wool homes than in classic masonry ones, so while formally anything is done as it should there are still a bit too much particles of I-do-not-know-what. So far (5y) I experience no health issue though, no specific sign of even little suffering, just noticing that I've clean around the double dust than the ancient home, perhaps people who already have respiratory issue might suffer;
- even if formally calculated as it should I feel the need of a little bit more ventilation than the computed one. Air quality remain constant, so for instance in the bedroom I do not experience "morning poor air" that's a normal thing in classic houses, similarly if I hold a party perceived air quality stay essentially the same BUT when I'm outside I feel a better air, with a different significant enough to think that few m³/h would be far better.
Beside that the article probably see restored houses, so houses where changes are constrained by something preexisting and compromises became a must, where much of the work was done "on experience and cheapness basis" not on seriously computed design fueled also by customers who do not understand much the tech. IME the overall quality of new home is still superior to the classic one, far lower humidity, far more constant climate matter.
It probably would make sense to have controlled and well-managed ventilation in airtight houses. It'd still be more energy efficient to heat and cool at a particular ventilation point rather than have what traditional houses have... a lot of leakage everywhere.
> "The unit has produced a public awareness film urging people to ventilate their homes properly by ‘keeping vents or windows open when cooking, showering and cleaning..."
The other two are to exhaust CO2, fumes and particulates, but I presume that the note about showering is for removing moisture from the interior air and preventing mold growth.
Ideally you want external exhausting vent fans in every kitchen and bathroom, although lots of places have nothing at all or only internal vent fans.
The cost of the fan is dwarfed by labor, and you’re not getting a fan you want to live with for $20. Also, at least in California, you have to hook it to a janky humidity sensing switch that costs more than $20.
I'm just talking about a normal bathroom fan you turn on when you want to have a shower or something. I've honestly never seen one at a hardware store that costs more than about $40. An electrician would take about 15 minutes to install one if you've got a power source nearby, or if you get one with a light built in you could install it yourself by just replacing an existing light fixture with it.
Luckily I don't have the misfortune to live anywhere near California, but that humidity sensor business sounds bizarre. Is that some kind of building-code thing?
Anyone have links to working designs for humidity controlled fans or similar - preferably Raspberry Pi?
I want an indoor sensor and an outdoor sensor, and to run the fan only occasionally (maybe 10 minutes a day) and only when outdoor humidity is much lower then indoor humidity. For holiday sleepout, that sometimes gets damp, but outdoors is sometimes high humidity so no point running fan in that case!
I've looked at household ducted fans, but they don't really do what I want.
BME680 sensors for temperature/humidity/pressure should be suitable.
Consider the PI's PWM output and a hobby RC BLDC motor/controller combination for "cheap variable-speed fan", or alternatively, a large diameter PWM computer fan from e.g. Noctua.
Depends on the power class you need/want to go for (PC fan is low power, RC BLDC is high power).
To have your tight house (and your family) breathe properly you’ll want to couple your smart bathroom exhaust fans with filtered air intakes. HRV/ERVs can do this but are overkill in many mild climates. A set of simple fan+filter pairs does the trick for us, can’t believe we lived so many years in poor ventilation.
If you have an exhaust fan on to remove shower steam, the air needs to come from somewhere. You don’t want it getting sucked in through the walls (bad air quality). Better to open a window.
While always neat to read about, I have no idea how you'd ever build one of these homes where I live. If you look at new construction, the poor quality work usually means the the home doesn't even meet the existing weatherization standards. Not to mention you'd have to convince an inspector that everything done is to code.
While I'm always impressed with such structures, they seem mostly out of reach for someone living in suburban america.
I think this dude built it himself. My father in law and my grandpa both built their own homes that they still live in today, neither one had any professional construction experience. Not nearly to this standard, but nobody cared about this sort of thing back the. And they didn’t have YouTube to solve problems.
I keep hearing that, but those who are in the trade listen to engineers who have done real analysis. What looks good often is bad, what looks bad is often good.
This is amusing to me. My roof was leaking a few years back and I went to check it out and it turns out some of the nails were never covered and they rusted through. The roof tar just didn't extend all the way to the edge (flat roof). My electrical outlets kept going out so I went to replace a few and realized they were installed with the wires connected to the wrong leads. I had some LED lights that are supposed to last a very long time go out within a year of moving in and replaced them and discovered the ground wires just weren't connected to anything. My neighbor had their furnace installed upside down. Damn near literally everything we have checked in these townhouses turns out to have been done incorrectly, shoddily, or just not finished and covered up in such a way that an inspector wouldn't notice if they didn't take it apart. From what I hear, the city inspector at the time was 84 and didn't bother going upstairs, so since we have 4-story houses, things like the roofing and furnaces seem to have just not been inspected at all.
It's not like this is some slum. They're 600k townhouses a few blocks from city hall in downtown Dallas. I kind of regret deciding to live in the middle of the city at this point. The builder had to fix our water main for free when it was discovered it had a joint running through where the driveway meets out foundations, causing it to split when the blocks sheered in cold weather. The guy that came out to fix it (the builder's son no less) told me townhouse construction was a joke. It's impossible to find a legit tradesman who will do it. Apparently they all prefer the suburbs. I guess putting up pre-fab houses is faster and more profitable or whatever. So we get the lowest common denominator fraudsters living downtown. I'm kind of amazed some of these guys are still alive. I've been watching a construction project next door for a while. They broke ground three years ago and finally put walls up last month. Instead of a real cherry picker, dude's were using some kind of four-story forklift and had a wood crate on top of it with one wall ripped off and they were using that for work. No safety harnesses. A guy the other day was doing window work on a 60 foot ladder, very top, with one person holding it, and he was reaching a good 4 feet to his left to mess with I think a dryer vent. Again, no safety harness.
I'm reasonably sure "poor quality work" is an accurate description of what is happening here.
I'm in Austin, but I see this on new builds and existing construction as well. Incredibly low quality work, usually not even meeting the code requirements of the time.
My assumption: that the guy is even nailing ZIP sheathing is doing so because some engineer determined it was an improvement over previous construction techniques.
What does better mean? OSB might test stronger, but the zip is strong enough for anything a house will actually face. Both will fail in a large tornado, both will survive surprisingly high winds (zip is certified for high wind and seismic loads). There is a place in the middle will OSB will do better, but that is a very small place.
ZIP will let water vapor out, so your walls won't rot out. So if you want your house to last OSB is actually worse (though OSB houses have lasted a long time with no problems so this is again on the margins).
Matt Risinger is a builder based out of Austin, TX that has a lot of videos detailing how to build high performance, airtight homes. https://youtube.com/c/MattRisinger
A single person in an air-tight average sized room could survive on the available oxygen for about a week. So I suppose if you're in a perfectly air-tight room and no one comes and goes at all or opens a window, you could die eventually.
Even if you're relatively reclusive, assuming you go outside once a day to get the mail... you'll be fine.
Good ventilation is required through a counter-flow heat-exchange. This typically gives you the problem of too low humidity, as you remove humid air and get condensation in the heat exchange.
There is risk of condensation in the walls. The internal warm layer is airtight, but the walls need to be ably to breath to the outside. Your wood can rot if you make mistakes here, especially on small leaks in the airtight layer. So air-tightness actually is needed to prevent too much condensation in the construction.
This all supposes that warm is inside and cold outside, as is typical where I live. In reverse conditions, with hot humid weather and cooling inside, condensation is likely in the walls, as the airtight layer is on the cold side of the wall now.
So condensation in the construction is unavoidable. I used an online calculator to decide my material use [1] to estimate how often it does happen, and how long it typically takes to dry. Inside my home, I need a humidifier, this winter it was often below 30%.
If you don't analyze it properly there's always the risk of condensation in the walls, but that risk is far higher from uninsulated walls. With uninsulated cavity walls you have room temperature + room humidity on the interior, and a sharp gradient to outside temperature within the wall, where all the moisture condenses in the winter. Worst possible situation.
There's tons of published guidelines about moisture in insulated walls. The easiest thing to build without making some fatal mistake is to put the insulation on the exterior, with a ventilated screen between it and the wall cladding. The best solution also depends on your local climate. See e.g. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56709.pdf
The main reason to make a building airtight is for energy efficiency.
But it's pointless to go to such lengths for airtightness if you have massive thermal bridges in the walls and roof in so many places.
If you want to be really efficient, the insulation should be constant thickness with no nails or screws poking into it, and certainly no bits of wood across it. Since the insulation has no mechanical strength, that really means you're building two houses - an inner house and an outer house, both of which need to stand up without the help of the other.
Building a house within a house would also add a lot of soundproofing. I wonder if anyone has studied whether people like or dislike not being able to hear what is going on outside the house. Seems like there would be some safety issues, like you can't hear someone outside calling for help and can't hear how intense a storm is or if a car/truck drives up, but on the good side you also can't hear the neighbors lawn mower and wood chipper. Some people may like feeling connected audibly to the outside world and feel more isolated if they can't hear nature while others may like that it makes the outside world go away. It may not be possible to hear wind chimes. An emergency siren may be difficult to hear, though emergency sirens are not used much any more in the USA, except near nuclear power plants and such. Maybe that needs to change with climate change. In fact, changing climate may need to be part of the calculation on how houses are built (not just increased wind resistance but also estimates of how warm/cold the area will be year round in the future.) It would be great if houses could be 3D printed so people are not limited by increased costs due to homebuilders not upgrading their skills. House design may need to change radically on the East Coast (Nor'easters's) and in Tornado Alley and on the South coast (hurricanes).
I disagree. Airtightness is far more important than insulation. Insulation is worthless if air currents can simply carry the heat and bypass the insulation.
And unless you're building an ICF house, some minor thermal bridging is unavoidable. But it does not matter because you can just insulate more somewhere else to make up for it. Exterior foamboard insulation around the entirety of the house is already quite common and cost-effective.
This is exactly right - there are calculators that assess the heat/cooling load of your home (https://www.borstengineeringconstruction.com/Heat_Loss_Analy... for a basic one) and with sensible insulation + leaky buildings that were common in the past, the heat loss to air infiltration can approach the total load you'd otherwise need.
Using that calc - with typical R-Values for an old building of 1,000sq ft + ACH50 of 10 (converted to 0.5 for this since ACH50 values are at pressure) with a 0º outdoor temp and a 70º inside temp, the heating load would be 50k BTU. Doubling the insulation on the walls, doubling the R-Value of the windows, and doubling the roof insulation has the same impact as bringing the leakiness to an ACH50 of 3. One of those can be done with a few tubes of caulk, a few rolls of weather stripping, and some cans of spray foam. The other involves removing siding/drywall/roof material.
Everyone in building science will tell you that the "best dollars" on saving heating/cooling costs are spent in making your home tighter.
If you are a builder that executes these details on every project, the cost impact is manageable. When you consider that houses are largely financed and also have operating costs that are dependent on energy efficiency, better built homes make sense on a cash flow basis.
However, the real estate industry does not properly value energy efficient projects, and most builders don't execute these details often, so they end up costing more than they should.
Here (France, and my original country, Italy) costs are complicated to judge: in mere raw materials the cost is far lower for new wood frame houses, but in term of final price is significantly higher, partially because they are a relatively new concept in south/central EU and partially because most enterprise are small ones who do not work much in "modern" terms than in their own workers experience and so they need external enterprises to design and test stuff like windows design for passive heating from the Sun, how much cover windows for avoid Sun when climate is hot, how to design low-inertia heating with heat pumps, Canadian well, dimension a solar p.v./aerovoltaic/* systems etc and while those systems are technologically simple they are sold at higher prices for what they are for similar reasons.
The lack of mean awareness and expectations probably permit high prices. In cost terms what I can say is essentially: more initial capex, far reduced opex IF anything is well done. Seen inflation capex/opex ratio means reduced TCO if you buy to stay for years and years at least, resale value so far is a bit crazy for the already described reasons...
there's another article on that site where she talks about price - it costs her 320k but keep in mind that didn't include the land, her blue prints or all the sweat equity she point in.
Airtight it may be, but its no thing of beauty - at least not to me.
I mean, its ok - but to me it is just channelling the form of a 2 bed flat into a house. I'm feeling claustrophobic just looking at it.. It looks like there are pleasant nature views all around, but all the effort seems to have been towards shielding the occupants from them!
I'm curious about the "vent chute": the asphalt-coated fiberboard above the ceiling insulation, but set below the roof sheathing. It creates a cavity beneath the roof that is vented through the eaves.
Venting the roof is standard in new construction, to protect the roof structure from moisture and excessive heat. They did the fiberboard chute so they could densely pack blown-in cellulose. Otherwise the insulation wouldn't have a good surface to push against (you don't want the insulation to touch the roof sheathing).
On typical homes with blown-in ceiling insulation the insulators will staple cardboard against the lower few feet of roof framing, creating a similar vent space from eave to ridge.
This home's ceiling R-value of 82 is about 2.5 times standard.
Do you know why this isn't done for walls as well? It seems like the cellulose is packed directly against both the interior and exterior surfaces of the walls.
Is it simply that hot air rises, and so it's needed more for the roof?
It is done for some walls, but it's much less common.
Part of the issue is that, yes, hot air rises, so a lot more moisture will find its way to the roof than to the walls.
Part of the issue is that roofs are (traditionally) sealed much more thoroughly than walls (because rain falls on roofs), so the moisture has a harder time getting out. The ventilation channels provide an egress for the moisture below the sealed roof surface.
A big part of the issue, at least in many climates, is snowfall. If it's cold outside and warm inside the house, any snow accumulated on the roof is melted from beneath and not from above. As the slush and water try to run down the roof under the unmelted snow, ice dams can form that prevent effective drainage; water pools and leaks down through the roof. A ventilation channel under the roof surface keeps the surface at or near outdoor temperatures, so the heat of the house doesn't melt the snow from beneath.
It seems like this could use some testing. How do we know that this really works even in one home? There should be some sensors and metrics to show how well variations work so that the design can be robustly optimized.
Good point, it seems from my perspective the industry is focused on blower-door tests and air exchange, where it's then kind of assumed that "you're done". I don't think there's real incentive at this point for residential building intelligence. We might have to wait for the 2nd (3rd?) wave of smart home tech to make it happen.
Fine Homebuilding ran several articles about installing long-term sensors inside walls in various places around a house that could potentially be troublesome. This was a year or so ago. These sensors (humidity, moisture, temperature, etc.) continuously reported their measurements to some sort of service the homeowner and builder could keep an eye on for any irregularities. The sensors were pretty low cost, if I recall; a few hundred dollars altogether. But its definitely not a common practice.
Pest Control companies will not give Termite treatment because they cannot give guarantee with the xps foam giving a direct pathway for termites into wall framework
I understand that the construction materials were chosen to be healthier, but wouldn’t it be even better to have a ‘loose’ house with those same materials?
You want to control your ventilation. Making a loose house just means you get ventilation, but not on your terms. HRV/ervs in a tight house allows you to ventilate your house, how you want, where you want. A loose house might be ventilating your house through insulation filled with dust and rat poop. You will never know.
In theory if you get just the right number of air exchangers such that the same amount of air moves through as it would with a 'loose' house, you get the same airflow with almost none of the convective heat loss/gain.
This is however, very much in theory, since as far as I can tell we're still in the early stages of figuring out how to do airtight houses well. My home was built in ~2006 and has an unhealthy CO2 build-up if I close the windows, since it has no active ventilation whatsoever.
Why would you want airtight home (unless you are WW3 prepper)? Sounds to me like asking for problems with mold and stale air. But I guess I should not be surprised seeing supposedly intelligent people wearing face masks for health reasons.
You need a ventilation system that recoups the heat of your house. That means you have air inflow in dry rooms, and air outflow in wet rooms. The cold outside air going in gets heated up by the warm inside air going out.
Very efficient way of keeping your house warm. That's why it's used a lot in northern European countries.
