audiable at night time even on the lowest setting
I think that is down to economising on the brand but could also be installation "config". Definitely can't hear ours, but the installers did say they did X and Y to make sure that would be the case - getting the sizing right to prevent wind whistling exiting from ceiling vents, or hurrying round pipe corners and so on. We also have a silencer on our MVHR unit - seemed excessive to me when I was approving the quote!! but I reckon it is to stop any noise from the unit transmitting to pipes, and in turn the rooms. But it is definitely noisy outside near the vents ... we fitted ours "most convenient place", which is downstairs at the front, and walking past the vents the noise is very noticeable. If I was doing it again I'll put it in the loft / have the vents up high.
the kitchen extractor just vented into the kitchen with the hope that the MHRV extractor would then pick-up the cooking smoke
Ours too (a cooker hood venting to outside is basically just another opening for draughts / cold to ingress). Our kitchen ceiling is vaulted, so a hood would probably look stupid too. We have a recirculating hood - drags the air off the hob, and returns it via the kicking-strip. The principle is that it creates an air current over the hob to ensure it gets all of the cooking smoke and smells. Then we have an MVHR vent high up in the ceiling. I was well sceptical that this would work, but in all honesty I can stay that we've never had fish or curry cooking smells anywhere else in the house. Don't think I've even opened a window when I have burnt the toast!
Downside is that our recirculating thing was Ahem! rather an expensive item. But it doesn't have disposable filters, just dismantle the thing and put all the jigsaw of stainless steel bits it in the dishwasher once a month or so.
it didn't have a summer-vent setting, so in the summer it was a sweatbox
Presumably because of high levels of insulation on our we find that temperature climb in a heatwave takes a week or so before temperatures have climbed to be "uncomfortable" - i.e. 0.5C-ish gain per day. We had the highest temperatures in the country during a fortnight heatwave a couple of years ago., the highest the South facing rooms in the house got was 25C (which I consider too hot to be sitting around in). Had we have installed AirCon that would have prevented that of course ... and negating a 0.5C rise per day is watts rather than kW
Our MVHR has "bypass", so if interior is higher than, say, 23C and outside less than, say, 20C then incoming air passes straight through, bypassing the heat exchanger, which does have some cooling effect. AirCon unit would be better still though.
Passive Haus would, usually, have roof overhangs on South side to keep the high Summer sun off the South facing glass (but let the low Winter sun in). For us the West side is worst, because the Summer sun is low by then so can't keep it off the windows. The East is a problem too, but we have deciduous Pleach that side, and bedrooms on the East would not get hot until mid morning - only teenagers impacted by that! whereas bedrooms on West would get that increasing heat during the evening. Corridor / bathrooms / smaller windows / shutters on the West if poss.
It was a 300 hundred house estate and after the first 80 or so houses they'd given up installing it and reverted back to vents in the double-glazing.
Sceptical-me assumes they had done the box-ticking-exercise by the end of the first 80 ...
As I understand it an air-pressure-test is only needed on one house on an estate, as "proof of concept". Our air pressure test found that a seal in one window had been missed. The foreman was outraged that that could have happened on his watch! I was just pleased it had been found as otherwise we would just have thought that that room "was rather cold" and lived with it ...
Solar PV is a very good idea, but unfortunately it only generates to an acceptable level in the spring/summer (personal experience) so it's a good idea to buy into a share of a community co-operative wind farm
Just arguing black-is-white maybe none of us should have roof top solar - the "stuff" for individual installs might be better if mega-size installations were done instead, adopting all possible economies-of-scale, and then we all just rely on the grid for "greenest possible power" (and a mix of Solar / Wind / Storage etc.).
I have also discussed with others the use of batteries for load shift (go and intelligent) but there is always the problem that these power incentives are not guaranteed into the future?
I'm not as pessimistic. Supply will chase demand, so I think the most likely scenario is that the cheapest time-of-use power will be daytime, when sun-shining and wind-blowing, rather than over-night dump-pricing of excess North Sea wind, to avoid the cost of curtailment fees.
I think the game changer will be EVs that will allow powering the house, or the grid. Everyone with an EV will then be in a position to not buy electricity at highest-peak price, no need to also own a static storage household battery, charge the car whenever prices are at their lowest and power house-from-car whenever prices are high. Something like that anyway, in my utopian world!
