Is there any insulation or heating specialist on the forum.
I have a 42 square meter room that will soon have 90 aquariums in it. I plan to do central heating using a aircon to heat the room and keep all the aquariums at a certain temp (24-25 Deg). The more tanks and the more water, the better the room will keep its temp, but i want to isolate it to reduce the effect of the outside ambient temp on the room temp. There is a glass sliding door and a double door with 9 small panes of glass in each. The roof is corrugated with a pretty decent wood “ceiling” made out of 19mm planks. The rest of the building has a double brick wall.
I plan to insulate all the glass as well as the wood ceiling with polystyrene. But I cant seem to figure out the thickness required to eliminate cold creeping in from the outside. It seems like the K-Value of the material is between .26 and .36. The R value on the other hand is 1 for 30mm polystyrene.
My overall plan is to use as little as possible energy to heat the 90 tanks. To achieve that I should minimize heat loss as much as possible.
Double brick wall has an U value of 2.1w/m , 19mm wood = 3.07w/m and glass has an U value of 5.6w/m. Calculated from there I would have a total “heat loss” from the inside to lower outside temp of 330.3wh
Not to bad imo, but have to find the U value of the polystyrene now to see with how much I can reduce loss.
Seems like the U value of 30mm polystyrene is .86w/m. Should i insulate the doors and roof section, I could reduce the heat loss to 166.21 wh. That is 3.99kwh per day in the winter should the outside ambient temp be lower than the room temp.
Now. With this room with roughly 9000l of water and pretty well insulated. How big should the aircon be to maintain that temp.
While I cannot give you an answer on the aircon size, perhaps use a thermal camera to do a “before” scan of the whole room, as you may find other non-obvious heat loss areas that are easy to fix up during the project.
Not an expert on insulation, but my first thought is that if you’re going to be keeping the heat in effectively then you’re also going to be keeping fresh air out. If you’re not careful that room is going to be very stuffy and humid.
Can you access the ceiling to get insulation material up there? I found Isotherm to be great.
As far as I know polystyrene is very flamable and if at all legal to use lie you intend to, you will have to cover it up with another layer of dry wall or something.
Alternative to the polystyrene, have you considered sticking a layer of Isotherm to the walls and then overlaying it with dry walling maybe?
Also do not underestimate how much heat will leak through gaps around the doors etc, you will have to seal those up properly using rubber or foam.
Then as said, a way to get fresh air in to the room.
There are polysterene products that are treated in some manner so they don’t participate in the fire. I don’t know how it works, I just know that all manner of cornice products are made from polysterene and are perfectly legal.
Taking the polysterene from your latest Takealot order and stuffing that on the ceiling… yeah probably not.
I just remember from my days in the events industry, using polystyrene on a stage for props etc. was not allowed at all because of how flamable it is.
It still didn’t stop certain engineers from signing it off, but ja.
I plan to use an aircon with a dehumidifying function. Also hope to incorporate it with my Home Assistant through wifi. And then play around with different control philosophy’s. Should the dehumidifier prove to be insufficient, I can add a dedicated dehumidifier to the mix.
Anything to try and avoid running 90 aquarium heaters during the winter.
Also just remember about fresh air, as far as I know normal split unit aircons do not introduce fresh air, they only recirculate. Not sure if you get fancy ones which also introduce fresh air from outside.
Last night @22H30 I was done installing the aircon and switched it on as a test. I set the aircon at 26degreeC and dropped my temperature control on all my existing heaters to 25degC as a backup should my aircon plan not work. To explain this a little bit better. I took my plan to 2 different Refrigeration company’s and asked them what I should use to do central heating in the new fish room and they recommended a minimum of 36000 BTU. I did not agree as the size of the room requires a 18000BTU.
I am currently waiting for the manufacturing of High density insulation panels for the roof area as well as all the glass areas on my sliding doors. In theory insulating a room would result in a smaller aircon requirement. I had a 12000btu available for use and decided to test it before I spend any more money and with the recommendation of the experts in the back of my mind i started doubting myself. Went to bed at 23H30 and woke up just after 4 this morning to find this. Please keep in mind the insulation is not even in place yet. I was pleasantly surprised. I removed the temperature probe from Tank 11 to hang in the air and indicate the room temperature for this test. Now to see how this system will react to the addition of the insulation as well as the 80 or so outstanding tanks. (Something wrong with the Tank 7 tank as it is indicating a lower temp and not fluctuating at all)
Some feedback on using an aircon for central heating. It definitely reduce peak load and total daily consumption. I am still unsure how much the insulation as well as building up the one wall contributed to the overall savings. When I still used heaters for the 11-13 tanks, i was using 22-27kwh per day, Currently I am using roughly 25-26kwh per day to heat 49 tanks. The room stays at 27deg constantly.
One thing I have learned is that aircons will stop heating whenever the ambient temperature exceeds 24degC. This might pose a new challenge in SA as we can easily exceed 24 in the winter months. THis will need another work around and I am currently planning to use some kind of fan to hotter ambient air into the one side of the room and suck it out on the opposite side once ambient reaches 27deg. That way I can save even more power and use natures heat to heat up the fish room.
Another project for when I am back home in two to three weeks time weeks time.
Coming along slowly. Insulation only partly done and already a huge difference.
