The JAHUS hand-over meeting

Event 1:
On the second day of the COP15 in Copenhagen, I found 2 news articles that illustrate the challenges we're facing:

Virgin Galactic (http://www.virgingalactic.com/) showed their new spaceship to the press. The goal is to take rich people for a 2.5hour trip to space and back (6 passengers on each trip will experience 5 minutes of weightlessness and a magnificent view for 200.000 USD). As if intercontinental flights didn't generate enough CO2. Yes, part of the emissions will take place outside the earths atmosphere, but some of it will be released exactly were it makes the most damage....

China released salesnumbers for new cars. The chinese people bought more than 1 million cars in November - a 98% increase over November 2008! The total number of cars sold in China will for 2009 outnumber that of USA. India also reports a 61% increase in car sales for November. The total of 133.687 is still far behind China, but these numbers illustrate two economies in which the middleclass now can afford cars and want a more "western" lifestyle. At 0,5 tons of CO2 per year per capita in India they are still way behind USA at over 20 million tons per year - but the number of new cars on the road indicate that the gap is closing.

While 15000 people are gathered in Copenhagen to discuss the urgent need to limit and reduce the CO2 emissions, the "real world" outside the conference buildings pushes on like never before (filling up the available CO2 space).




Progress:

Today we had the "handover meeting". The project leader showed up half an hour earlier than the ventilation subcontractor, so we decided to push the "hot potato" to the end. We took a tour around the house (both outside and inside). I pointed out the things that I had put on my "follow-up" list and we stopped at some locations to listen to the noice level from the ventilationsystem and the heatpump. Some of the "issues" were solved by explaining how it should work/be, and others were put on their "to do list".

The first part of the meeting was done really quickly, and we had just finished that part when the "ventilation guy" showed up. We then started discussing the JAHUS (energy saving) part of the project. At first I only listened to the guy explaining how it should work. Because the clock turned 3 pm - the system switched automatically to normal mode (from low effect during the day) and everybody could observe the change in noice level.

They agreed that the noice level outside and inside the building still isn't acceptable and promised to fix it (as soon as possible).

I then explained that the temperature of the air leaving the house is way to high. As mentioned in a previous blogpost a 10C increase in the exhaust air equals a loss of approximately 1.8KW He agreed that exhaust air at 16.7C was too high, but no matter how they tried to manipulate/adjust the valves and settings on the aggregate - they didn't manage to increase the temperature of the air flow to the livingroom while decreasing the exhaust air.

They (finally) agreed to add the heated air after the aggregate like I suggested some time ago - and with an extra fan on that new pipe, we can very accurately adjust the temperature to the other rooms.

When these two changes have been implemented - I believe the system will work as planned and I am really looking forward to that day. On that day, we will also be given the instructions on how to operate and maintain the system. This will include:

• How we can adjust the weekly program (scheduler) for the aggregate and the heatpump


• What to do if the house looses power (when it comes back on)


• What we need to do when going from winter to spring/summer (and vice versa)

Even though the system is not working as planned on the day of hand-over, I am happy because they agree with all my comments and have promised to fix everything within a week or so.