Study of Ecological and Economic Factors from the Perspective of Heating a Single-Family House with Parallel Comparison of Selected Types of Plaster and Heating Devices

During the preparation of the diploma thesis, he encountered a vast amount of information related to heat pump heating, wall heating, heating oil heating and radiator heating. As he demonstrated in the chapter on mechanical installations, the price of heating oil is twice as expensive as the cost of energy consumption of a heat pump. He confirmed the thesis that heating a single-family house with a heat pump is economically and ecologically more appropriate than heating with heating oil using radiant devices – radiators. Heating oil pollutes the environment, whilst radiators have heat losses through openings and pipes.

Solution and Method

During the preparation of the diploma thesis, he encountered a vast amount of information related to heat pump heating, wall heating, heating oil heating and radiator heating. He also collected a great deal of data on plaster materials and their behaviour in relation to temperature changes and humidity in rooms. He established that clay and lime are ecologically impeccable building materials, whilst cement is not environmentally friendly due to additives.

Through his research, he discovered that clay is one hundred per cent biodegradable in nature. It is counted amongst renewable resources, as is lime. Clay absorbs moisture when there is too much of it in a room and releases it when there is insufficient moisture.

This leads to the finding that it creates an exceptionally good living climate and eliminates bacteria and moulds in the room. Economically, lime and clay are more successful than cement due to shorter and smaller processes of extraction and processing. Due to the aforementioned plasters made from loam and lime, additional costs are reduced.

These are reduced due to the already mentioned binding of moisture, as there are no additional repairs due to moisture occurring in rooms, which often occurs with cement plasters. Cement does not bind any moisture. It retains heat extremely poorly due to porosity.

Clay has excellent radiant properties and, due to its consistency, retains and accumulates heat. It performs excellently in combination with wall heating using a heat pump, precisely due to its ability to retain heat and a radiant factor of 4.5, shown in table 11. From the perspective of heating a single-family house, together they are ecologically minimally harmful to the environment due to electricity consumption.

From economic factors such as the subsidy for installing a heat pump and the costs of obtaining clay and lime, heating with a heat pump and natural plaster are more cost-effective than heating with heating oil using radiators.

Results

As he demonstrated in the chapter on mechanical installations, the price of heating oil is twice as expensive as the cost of energy consumption of a heat pump. He confirmed the thesis that heating a single-family house with a heat pump is economically and ecologically more appropriate than heating with heating oil using radiant devices – radiators. Heating oil pollutes the environment, whilst radiators have heat losses through openings and pipes. Radiators also release heat unevenly into the room and thereby reduce heating efficiency.

He learnt that most of the warm air travels beneath the ceiling in rooms and thereby increases the consumption of heating oil in order to heat the room appropriately to a living temperature. The author in the diploma thesis demonstrated the properties of the materials covered, the economic and ecological comparison between them, and the effectiveness of combining plaster with wall heating and a heat pump. He showed a wider circle of readers the positive properties of natural materials and heat pumps with wall heating.

From an ecological and economic perspective, he demonstrated why it is worthwhile to decide on construction with natural materials and heating by utilising heat from natural sources. The objectives are, from his perspective, confirmed. The assertion that wall heating with a heat pump is more efficient from economic and ecological perspectives than heating with heating oil was confirmed with evidence in chapters 3.4 and 3.5. The assertion that clay performs best in the vast majority of comparative aspects, such as radiant capacity and absorption and release of moisture into the room, is confirmed in table 11 and in chapter (2.2).

The final assertion, which states that heating with a heat pump is economically and ecologically better, naturally in the case of good insulation, which in his case is a thermal insulation façade with a thickness of 20 cm, was confirmed in chapter (3.5), where mechanical installations are described and shown, and a calculation of energy consumption and cost presentation for the building in question is made. The presentation of transmission losses by rooms is attached as "Appendix 3" to the diploma thesis. **Summary of key findings: ** **– clay and lime are renewable resources, clay and lime are pH-basic and alkaline, therefore they bind moisture, ** **– clay has excellent radiant properties, ** **– wall heating distributes heat evenly from floor to ceiling, ** **– wall heating has a larger radiant surface than radiators, ** **– a heat pump utilises ground heat for heating the building, ** **– a heat pump does not pollute the environment, ** **– heating with heating oil has by-products that are harmful to the environment, ** **– heating oil is more expensive in terms of costs than a heat pump, ** – heating with radiators has heat losses in pipes and due to smaller radiant surfaces.