First day in our "new home"

Status:
For the first time in years we slept without opening the door (from our bedroom) to the small veranda outside. We used to open the door to get the desired supply of fresh air through the night, but hoped that the ventilation system would take care of this now that we live in a "JAHUS"...and the jury says:

Nice. We had enough fresh air, and because the door had been closed there was:

• no noice from people passing the house on their way home from a party/nachspiel. The new door not only keeps the energy inside the house, but it is very effective in shielding us from noice from outside the house
• higher room temperature (but not too high) compared to the "open door scenario"

Now that the ventilation system was running, we were ready for the inauguration of the refurbished bathroom - including the new shower (picture attached below).

This morning I got up early for a nice 1hour bicycle ride under clear blue skies (with the nice colours you see when the sun is rising). When I came back I used the shower upstairs for the first time - and it was as nice as I had hoped for. As I came out of the shower, my daughters called and said the breakfast was ready - what a nice day to start a Saturday :-)
















The point of sharing this with you? There was no noice from the ventilation system, but the "fog" in the bathroom did not clear as fast as I had hoped for. We'll have to ask the specialists for advise on how to increase the effect on the ventilation from this room (from this room the system only pulls air out - the air is "refilled" from nearby rooms, under the door etc.)

One pleasant surprise this morning was that the heatpump had adjusted it self down to a very low noice-level. The excessive noice we experienced yesterday was probably the result of some start-up sequence.

I have now adjusted the different valves of the ventilation system to maximise the circulation of the heated air from the heatpump - and it seems to work fine. All rooms in the house is on approximately 21C and without the help of other heating than the heatpump.

I purchased a bunch of cheap thermometers and placed them in different locations throughout the house to monitor the effects of different settings in the ventilation system. Yes, the specialists will do this for us on Monday - but the readers who know me, know that I like to find out how these things work without reading the manual or getting help from specialists......

When I have had the "beginners crash-course" in our JAHUS solution, I will provide you with a more detailed description of the solution and how we achieve cooler temperature in the bedrooms etc. (using the valves and settings on the heatpump, the ventilation aggregate and the new fan).

For the readers who know us and have been to our house before, I have also included a picture from the new restroom (WC):

Events:
In a local newspaper today (Dagens Naeringsliv), a key article on page 2 was written by a senior journalist who is very sceptical to the actual environment value of migrating from fossil fuels to biodiesel/bioethanol. As mentioned in earlier blog-posts, there is a very heated debate in Norway these days about removing the taxes benefits for cars running on biodiesel. The journalist refers to recently published scientific report that questions the CO2 benefit:



Newly agreed EU legislation on biofuels and fuel quality are highly unlikely to reduce CO2 emissions from transport fuel used in Europe. T&E and other environmental organisations are proposing substantial changes, in particular to address the environmental impact of indirect land use change (ILUC) caused by increased biofuel production. Download the report Biofuels: Handle with care and summary in English, French and German

He says that not only are the benefits of biodiesel projects questionable and at best very ineffective, but keeping the lower taxlevel on these cars only encourages a migration from thirsty diesel SUVs to thirsty biodiesel SUVs.

Comments: As if I should have said it myself :-) Compare 180 USD per ton of CO2 estimated for biodiesel efforts versus the reduction 5 tons of CO2 per USD invested in JAHUS projects..... (http://thejahusblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/for-nerds-or-you-and-me.html)

• Look to the Netherlands where they are changing from taxing the cars to taxing the use of cars. They will be paying for kilometers driven per year regardless of the type of fuel used (except, I guess, for elcars - and I hope with higher taxlevels for SUVs than small cars).
• In Norway we're also talking about a special rush-hour tax during rush-hour in the big cities (to get people over on public transportation)