water heat and floor heat

This is our very fancy, highly efficient, heat pump water heater.  We are an all electric house and this  Airgenerate Airtap Hybrid meets the strict energy requirements required by the organization that will be monitoring our house.  It captures heat from the air to heat the water inside with a backup heating element for high use times.

Neil actually installed our boiler for the radiant floors.  The main heat in the accessory dwelling unit (ADU aka apartment) is from the in-slab radiant heat.

The manifold for the ADU is in the closet.  You can see the tubes sticking up in the above photo.  Actually if you look closely at the above photo you can see the in and the out tube going to the ADU manifold.  We have 2 zones for the lower level of the house.  The ADU and our main entry, office areas, and laundry.

ceiling fans & ventilation

Last night I finally ordered the ceiling fans. I kept hoping to come across some modern good-looking, more inexpensive ones, but should have just ordered these from the get-go. We currently have this model in our home. Not only is it simple and clean looking, it's quiet. They are also Energy Star rated. I ordered 3. 2 with a stem as shown above and one "hugger" like below all from Ylighting.com - a good source for modern lighting.

The ones with stems are going in the upstairs bedrooms and the "hugger" is going in the stairwell. That one in particular will help circulate the air throughout the house. In the winter we reverse the rotation which helps keep the warm air down off the ceiling. In the summer in Seattle we are lucky enough to typically not need air conditioning. We have 4 operable skylights throughout the house to help naturally ventilate and cool in the summer time. We also put in operable transom windows above the first floor doors, so that they could be left open at night and not pose a security risk or a cat escape.