Seeing Linus use his tech skills to permanently upgrade something practical is always more satisfying than watching him build a PC you know will be disassembled the moment the camera stops rolling.
The problem Linus doesn't foresee is that his system being 25 years old, is a 100% on or off system. It doesn't ramp down just cause 1 room calls for cooling. The evaporator fan is going to burn out trying to push all its air to 1 spot and the compressor might also burn out from short cycling cause its not exchanging enough heat to operate continuously. Linus needs to replace his outdoor condensing unit and AC to a VRF (variable refrigerant flow) system which, even then, can only ramp down to 50% of its rated capacity.
I don't know how common 2 stage AC is in Canada where they are, but at least where I live, its pretty uncommon. He said it's 25 years old though. He's already past the typical failure time and is likely just gonna let it run til it dies. Probably a good idea when that inevitably happens.
Another setting you may want in "Home Assistant" is simply air circulation, especially if your new house is well sealed as far as outside air getting in.
Looks like a solid setup, I've got a few notes: 1) Tasmota exists for the ESP32, there's an ethernet version of the ESP32. You should wire the thing that is controlling your entire house's AC and not rely on WiFi. 2) Your ecobee's have various "smart ai" features on them, one of them being that it will notice if zone has been set to cool for a while and isn't getting colder. It will come up with a message about checking whether your AC is malfunctioning. This may cause a problem for you later. 3) As others mentioned, you will need to have a minimum number of dampers open at any given time, closing all but one will put a lot of strain on your blower and will likely burn it out pretty quickly. In home assistant you could just alternate other rooms to open/close while keeping the room you really want to cool open the whole time.
For 3, is there anyway to tell how many you should have open at one given time. As in given the model of my AC, can I measure how many I should have open?
@@TurtIedd not really... Unless you can get the fan curve of the blower fan in your ac unit. Almost all residential ac units are built for a specific cfm at a specific static pressure, changing one of those variables ( cfm or static pressure) means you need to change the speed of the fan which most residential ac units aren't made to do, not to mention that the compressors aren't staged as well. You can get away with closing off a couple dampers, but for each damper you close without reducing fan speed accordingly you add more strain on your system.
Also, he doesnt know how his ducts are run i doubt they were designed and run with multiple zones in mind...he might run into zones that he thinks he can close off that affects more than one room.
And as inefficient as it might be, maybe something akin to a pressure release valve where if they DO close all but one, the rest gets vented outside so that you don't put strain on your blower.
You have to be careful adding the zone dampers for the A/C if the duct system was not designed for zoning. Since you have a single stage condensing unit, the equipment operates at full capacity when there is a call for cooling from the thermostat. Having multiple closed dampers will increase the static pressure of the duct system which will cause more wear on the blower motor in your air handler and cause it to deliver less airflow. Having insufficient airflow will lead to a frozen evaporator coil which can lead to a damaged compressor if not caught in time. A multi stage condensing unit with a variable speed blower in your air handler and ductwork renovation would operate properly and much more efficiently. Or you could install ductless mini splits like you did in your previous home. Good luck with the project!
I've seen only a handful of comments saying this, mine own comment as well. Here's to hoping Linus or whoever combs the comments sees our plea for them to see this issue and rectify it.
He needs a barometric dump zone. we do this on very large houses in Florida. They still suck and sweat/rust faster then a single zone. Always hated working on 10+ zone systems.
It won't take him long to swap that single speed blower motor with something inspired by an electric bicycle motor, the single speed compressor with something salvaged from a Tesla crash and to add pressure transducers and a make-up air path to address ductwork pressure and "the suck." A prior homeowner triggered significant rust and rot here by first blocking the makeup air then running the house at 35 below ambient for a decade of humid summers. It drew outside air through across chilled wood everywhere. The interior wall paint comes off in sheets. The floor isn't supported where it let air in. The dryer's heater core rusted apart and the light switch plates are surrounded by mold.
He could have his server room with a large duct stay open when only a single room or two are asking for cooling, not that it would necessary be enough, but might give the compressor a chance to run a full cycle without totally freezing out the room he is trying to cool, and less of a chance of freezing up the coil.
Yeah I think using his house reno. As a source of videos is smart on so many levels. It makes writing videos pretty easy, especially with the amount of things here that could be made into a video. Plus it helps him get work but also renovation labor for these videos lol.
Btw, you should set a "minimum airflow" for each zones and not simply turn it off, because if you stop supplying air in that particular zone, you're basicly killing your efficiency. The room will get extremely hot and once peoplestart going in it, i'll take a bit to cool it down to an acceptable temperature.
ALSO this will kill his equipment, the indoor coil requires a certain amount of CFM for it to operate. He will freeze his coil by doing this and slug his compressor. He can't just install shut off dampers with out installing a static pressure dumping zone for the needed air flow to go.
That does very much depend on the amount of time in between, the houses insulation and the outside temperature as well as in some cases infrared intensity through windows. There are houses where the temperature doesn’t climbmore than one °C an hour even if it is scorching hot outside. So though your point is surely true for some cases and depending on region even many cases, it is not universal. My tip would be to either inform yourself for your typical climate and insulation and if that is hard/impossible to reliably find out. Do some tests yourself (recording temperature curves, power usage and your own comfort (if you disregard that you can simply use the old fashioned/european method of opening windows over night and closing the blinds during the day and turn the whole thing around in winter. The power efficiency can’t be beaten). Sometimes/for some people having a room not as cold/ just a bit below/ at outside temperature and then possibly cooling it down gradually is to be preferred because it prevents temperature shocks. A wall of cold air can very much be detrimental to health (increased stress levels which heightens the risk for multiple issues)
True, they should set it up in a way similar to how the human body works: having both the effectors for “too high” and “too low” to maximise efficiency and get a constant, specific temperature in the room.
i do commercial ac automation and i love watching linus learn about actuators! but are you going to have a bypass so when most of the actuators are closed you dont have too much pressure going through duct that cant handle the extra pressure? unless the furnace has a vfd(Variable frequency drive) to control the blower speed via duct static pressure
use the server room as a ‘DMZ’ for the AC. You dont’ want to cut too many rooms off and still pull for one small room, but the server room is never going to refuse cooling so use that as a relief valve
Its a good idea, but it still has to be balanced. Normally a stack bypass is installed if the rooms require being completely shut off. In a reasonable situation, each damper should only be able to close up to 90%, never completely closed.
Being an HVAC technician I really wish I could just spend a week with Linus and lend him my opinion and guidance while he finds ways to solve his "older home" problems.
More so since he seems to despise the cloud and stuff calling home, so it would be a great way to learn how to avoid the big As, big G, and their friends...
Those dampers have adjustable settings for range stop (fully closed at 0,... 1 is 16% bleed, 2 is 30% bleed and 3 is 50% bleed) . You could keep the zones slightly open when the zone is off to allow some air through the "closed" damper to alleviate some pressure issues you will have. But without some sort of bypass integrated in the system, you will have some problems in the future.
Yeah, you don't want 3 tons of cooling going through one 8" damper. And it's likely just a piston system, not a TXV. You could program it to wait until there's 2 or 3 zones calling to enable, that would probably be enough airflow. And if one zone is calling, it's likely another one will be, or will be soon with 10 zones in the house. His next step would be to get an AC system with a 2 stage compressor and multi speed fan, with a system board capable of 2 cooling inputs. Stage 1 (Y1) would activate when 2 zones call, and Stage 2 (Y2) would be for 4+ zones calling. That way you have a bit of a deadband between Off, low, and hi calls. Or like you said, have a bypass or dump box if you want to activate on only 1 call, or force the next warmest zone to be open.
@@andrewt9204 my other thought is one zone called open and shut non called but NOT under temp rooms and OR non occupied rooms as an air dump + have no damper on the server room as that is a NON occupied room it can get "cool" without harm being done
Dampers are great for taking maybe one room out of the mix, but forced air AC systems are sized for the whole space they're cooling. I'd be careful managing more than maybe 10-20% of the house different than the whole home system. Another idea is to have the AC for the whole home as normal, but if you have a room or two that get too hot, install a mini split in there (eg for the server room or a gaming room where it will get hot often).
And if not doing this, add logic ensuring that multiple rooms *actually need cooling* before turning it on. This is 100% going to burn out his crusty-ass, old air conditioner in under a year. *edit: just remembered that Linus lives outside of Vancouver. This might actually work for him because the AC unit likely doesn't see a lot of use every year... this would absolutely fry the unit if it were done down by me (Chicago area)
I agree with this, I've seen houses have too many dampers closed and the coils will freeze over which could break your coils/temporarily cause you to not have a/c while they melt. I spent a day melting coils when it was over 100f outside and it was not enjoyable.
@@Ikkleman0 His only saving grace here: Vancouver doesn't really get a lot of hot days. This air conditioner very likely does not really see a lot of use - the hottest months are only around 72 degrees on average.
@@absentmindedjwc If it stays the way it has been, then that's changing, reached 97 at my place, and I'm closer to the coast than he is, saw over 100 more inland.
Agreed. Part of me wonders if one could build a thermal chill battery to let the condenser operate at reasonable duty cycle for small cooling loads in the house...then cool the house from that battery in the as-needed basis.
As an HVAC installer who does what you do in this video on a weekly basis, there were quite a few ways this could have been easier but the one constant I've learned in HVAC is if you expect it to be an easy job (no matter how prepared) it is never easy.
Today on tax fraud 101, 1. Start a youtube channel 2. Make it a company 3. Make video's about personal projects 4. Write the personal project costs of as business expences 5. Profit
Its not just a payoff, this video probably gets at least about 2-3 million views so thats about 12k before tax, A days work for 3 employees is probably a k, the dempers and relays are pretty cheap the ecobee is 170, at least 4 of those Basically this video is a very nice profit his upgrade pays for itself
You might already know this but if you are only using a single A/C you will need to have the majority of zones open for it to cool properly. A/C's require 400cfm per ton to properly cool and you won't be able to get that airflow through a single damper. The A/C will freeze up if it doesn't get enough airflow and it would be quite noisy trying to push that much air through one zone. You might want to program it so that it waits for multiple zones to call before kicking on.
I'd love for these home updates to be in their own playlist. I'm so busy with life now that I barely get to watch RUclips, and feel like I've missed something :(
Worth mentioning, I've spent some time doing the "Occupancy detection" thing with various solutions. Motion sensors can be problematic when you just have someone lying in a bed for example - if they aren't positioned well or aren't sensitive enough, they might mark that room as "empty" when it isn't. Additionally, too sensitive can generate false positives. An option is that if the motion sensors are very directional and placed near or in front of doorways, they can be used to determine "someone has entered" and "someone has left", and then using that data in homeassistant to make a sensor per room with an occupancy count. Then rely on that occupancy count to determine whether to heat, cool, keep lights on, and so on.
Would be cool to add motion sensor outside and inside each door so there is always a monitor that can detect if someone open the door but didn't enter! And make a monitor map that show a where someone is moving.... something like among us game map!
But if 2 people enter right next to each other and it only counts 1 person entering, then when 1 of them leaves the lights will go out on the other person.
@@BimalB Cats. The answer to that is cats. They'll be setting off the motion detection 'on', but never the 'off'. It'll detect them entering but rarely leaving.
*YES.* I love that you actually settled for a significant DYI-approach. these videos about your home improvements quickly became my favorites on your channel.
It’s all nice until he destroys his HVAC system. If all he is doing is what he said in the video, he will destroy his system in a few years. You CANNOT add dampers blindly to a HVAC system and call it a day.
LMAO, Using a thermostat to make your own thermostat because thermostat. I love it and also laugh at it all when systems like Crestron exist for literally everything Linus is trying to do in this house. But really, the information sharing and opportunities to educate people on how some everyday things really work is a great education tool. Kudos!
Crestron is closed source and expensive. It's a bit of a hack job modifying an existing forced air system yes, but at least he's trying more creative and more open solutions here.
@@2dfx oh 100% and that's why I find it so entertaining. The consumers who regularly run into this in that size of a house are paying people to give them automation. Linus is going at it his own unique way (while still profiteering from our views).
Yeah. My first place was like that. The home inspector said that the rough-in electrician was probably an apprentice trying to impress his boss or the city inspector. Not a single wire overlapped coming out of the breaker panel, everything was flat, secured, and not twisted. And every box (outlet, switch etc) had a little sticker identifying which breaker was feeding it. Seemed like overkill, but it made it soooo easy when we were upgrading switches and fixtures. I have owned a few more houses since then, and helped many friends, and have yet to see anything even remotely as clean.
Air conditioning systems are designed for a certain volume of airflow. More modern variable speed systems can adjust for how many dampers are open, but the older style system you have needs a minimum amount of airflow to work properly. Insufficient airflow will cause the evaporator (indoor) coil to freeze over which will completely stop your airflow.
In the magical case where it can freeze over without completely blocking the passage of air the ice still insulates the air from the coil: the vents blow warm, leaving the system in a stay-on-forever state.
Had a friend lose there house to a fire caused by that recently. The ac never turned off cause it's so hot here in Louisiana and it was old. Eventually it failed and caught fire burned half their house down
So couple of considerations: You will need either an air dump or a frequency drive on your blower. If you have to many rooms zone off airflow you will start freezing up your coil. If you are doing this yourself you might consider putting in a fresh air economizer, basically a duct that pulls outside air when outside air is below 55 and you are still calling for cooling. This saves a lot of money over running your old ac system. On the hydronic system, you might consider removing any high temp loops (side arm for water heater or fan boxes etc). If you are running high efficiency boilers you will get much better heating if you can keep your water around 80°, this will also prevent over heating and then having to cool the house back down as the sun comes out. Running a second system for those high temp things will save you a lot of headache and make the entire place more efficient. Just some food for thought. Hope you read this and it helps.
This series should be called "Home Improvement" and there needs to be a scene where Linus gets advice from Anthony who's face is half covered by the fence.
This is really fun to watch, the only thing I would say it this is probably not going to work out like you think. Having all of these cooling calls on your AC system is going to really shorten it's life. Also, short repeated cooling calls put humidity BACK IN the house due to condensation on the coils not being fully drained off. Also, AC systems are sized to run with all ducts. Zoning typically puts tons of pressure into loosely taped joints and the AC ends up going into unconditioned spaces like crawlspaces or attics. Worse, this can also push condensation into those areas that don't have proper ventilation and can cause mold and other issues. Also, a lot of the 'comfort' associated with a typical temperature is changed when the radiant heat from walls and floors is different. This will typically make you have to overcool a room that had been unoccupied. There is a reason zone systems are typically per floor. Even per floor has issues, and some people find efficiency increase is hardly noticeable.
Briannnn the HVAC techniciannnnn he's chilling and helpful such a helpful man **edit** holy cow 1.2k likes! Also, I know he's not actually in the video, but he still came to mind, haha
I've been building houses for the past decade and all the things seen in the video was already a standard when I was in college. At least here in the north Europe. Yeah, Raspberry Pi powered home automation is cool and cheap, but nothing revolutionary.
Would love for a dedicated Home Assistent Series to show off the potential and possibilities of Home Assistent. Kinda struggling to get started with it 🥴
Join thier Discord,there's a vibrant community. One word of advice, make sure you've read the docs on something before you start asking questions (most docs have faq answers on the first page)
Midwest HVAC tech here. I deal with zoned systems exactly like you are attempting. May be a little late, but without proper return air/supply air at your air handler your static pressure will be ridiculous. Those supply runs that are zoned will be howling like crazy. Your better off leaving a few rooms without dampers as sudo-bypass areas (dump zones) to help get rid of the excess pressure youre creating. Or adjust the 'close' positions on the dampers via the red switch. Improper zoning can cause many irritating and headpounding problems. Also if youre finishing the area where youre installing the dampers, put an access panel by it for servicing. You'll thank me later. Last thing, if you are using a relay panel or pi-zone board that is supplied by 24vac you will probably need to isolate the dampers with independent transformers due to the high load of having to close potentially 9 dampers (may not seem like much) can overload the board and make it malfunction. Had a honeywell panel have x8 6" dampers trying to close simultaneously causing failure due to a single 25VA transformer. Had to isolate that zone with a 75VA and other zones to 40VA.
You’re going to short cycle the compressor of the ac with all those sensors causing failure. And cause the evaporator fan motor to fail sooner by having dampers close randomly making the motor to work harder. You’re going to need a variable speed compressor and install a bypass damper so the air releases to a open space and not cause back pressure leading to a fan motor failure.
Or just go with a variable speed compressor hooked up to a ductless AC system with vavling inside the refrigerant pioes and a evaporators for each zone. Most efficient system there is with no minimum flow requirements. But expensive to install
Among other issues his coil will freeze as well because he is stopping proper air flow. He will kill his AC. Wanna bet this stupid idea came from Brian. As many have said before he NEEDS a real pro to design a actual system not.some homeowner shit show.
@@zack9912000 If you watch this channel you well know that getting a pro is not really what they do. Multiple times in this video they made it clear that this was a proof of concept demo. In reality there is likely to be little to no issue with this system because you are ignoring hundreds of other factors. Every house is different and they live in Canada not Texas the AC will see little use as is. Its a shitty one thermostat system as is and it is crap as is. A system that reads from 1 location and then blast on full if its a few degrees under is garbage. The house was using Mercury thermostats. Everyone wants to play armchair professional.
@@zack9912000 he really doesn’t need a professional. Either he gets a throttlable compressor and modifies the valves in the ducts so there’s always a minimum amount of airflow or he goes ductless with individual evaporators per zone and a trhrotlable compressor. The second one is way more efficient but harder to install.
Actually no. It'd only work for the duration of use during the videos and given that that's a very small amount of time, it wouldn't be worth it. Instead the costs are recouped through the videos. He talks about it a little in his "The Wall" video.
An enduring benefit/capital asset is being made for Linus personally and not for LMG? I don't think it could be capitalised nor deductible - at least in South African tax law
HVAC/R Tech here. One crucial piece of advice. Your system is 25 years old, its running a PSC Motor. They're on or off, and don't switch between the speed taps unless going to a different mode. It needs 400cfm per tonne of cooling in order for that coil to not freeze. Having other dampers open up a certain amount isn't going to cut it, because you're still restricting airflow, increasing static pressure, and reducing CFM. Easiest way around it? Install a dump bypass. Honeywell makes a damper that will open and close based on the pressure against it. It can be set so that if all the dampers are open, it remains closed, and then opens to allow for the proper amount of airflow based on the pressure against it. Not as Easy? A dedicated dump Zone. Same Damper, but instead of feeding the extra air right back into the Return, you're dumping it into a specific space. If you put it into the attic, you'd have to put in make up air from outside, because you're dumping air outside(effectively). Just food for thought. Your ductwork is not designed for zoning. It has 1 supply trunk, maybe 2 depending on where it is in relation to the building. Installing this bypass will ensure your already beat to crap 25 year old Bryant air conditioner doesn't freeze. And the HVAC tech you call in when it does? He's gonna have a field day with that set up. If he loves his job he'll love to play with it. If its just a job he will hate you.
Underfloor heating system dates back to 5000 BC in ancient Korea, namely "Ondol", or "warm stone" in direct translation. It's one of the oldest and the most iconic heritages in Korean culture. Even now, most houses in Korea are heated using Ondol technology.
there is not a single reason to not use infloor heating. 1 water heater can heat a whole house with infloor heat better and more efficiently than a furnace could.
@@dragonmaster391 it is the prefered metod of today. it is low temprature. with make it ideal for heatpumps. it also give worm flors. with is werry nice. still do if bad isolated windows i would not recomend switching. as it would couse cold draft from windows. you get the same problem when switching to a heat pump air to air. it is ealy fix by replaceing the windows do. if your just installing a heat pump air to air it is somewhat expsnsive do. if installing flor heating it is not that big of an investment. was wondring some do about the heat system. is it oil or electric. depedning on location it would be exspensive. so maybe VRV system might be better in long run
Just need to consider than when dampers are closed it raises the airflow, and therefore velocity, and therefore static pressure of the system... Long story short if a lot of them are closed, just watch for ice.
You just need a control fan speed based on how many dampers are closed, or run it to an economizer for fresh air intake, since new houses are too well insulated that they don’t bring in enough fresh air
@@itech301 which is fine if you use an eev, something that can control on variable load so you don’t get floodback, ice build up etc. If it’s cap tube then yeah. This is Linus tech tips and he’s all into tech so if you are already using a control system for zone control etc, just add more tech. It’s obviously not easy, most zone systems I work on use a chilled water loop, so I don’t know exactly what to do but using grocery store logic eev’s give you a lot of control
This type of control for hvac and hydronic in floor heat has been around for decades! Pneumatic and electronic! Nice to see you implementing this into your house 👍
Be careful with using motion detectors as "presence awareness." Anyone who has stayed in a hotel in a hot area that has the air-con on a motion detector can tell you how much that sucks. It can still work just fine, just be careful is all.
100% this. I went to a hotel once with motion detection AC and it kept shutting off during the night while I was sleeping because it didn't detect any motion. Waking up to 78 degrees is not fun.
@@guy000001 bed sensor mats, does this actually exist? lol, you could just program it to be active regardless of the sensor during night time. Not perfect, but do you really need yet more sensors, yet more complexity for a few nights away per year?
Same concern. I wonder if any of his kids will get crafty and do something like put an oscillating fan right in front of the sensor lol. I live above a garage, and I just get tons of heat coming up through the floor all night and day. Some nights I just can't seem to cram enough air through the open windows to keep the room from boiling and need ac all night. Sucks, because it's a lot of energy and I loved having fresh air while I slept, but it is what it is. Edit: put the vaguely funny thing before my whole life story instead of after cuz I felt like it.
Simple solution, have door sensors aswell then use that with some logic statements to determasn the last presence, so eg. If someone goes into a room and the door is closes then keep room active and if door opens and no mostion is detected afterwards then the room should be marked for no presence and based on those two states you can set your automations
@@MrMustangMan67 You could insulate the ceiling of the garage below you. I'd also recommend installing a fresh-air intake and exhaust fan down there to keep the garage closer to outdoor ambient.
I would definitely add a bypass damper from the supply to return on the ductwork this way you don't have issues with not enough airflow and possibly freezing your ac coil, honeywell makes nice ones like the dampers your using.
To add up to the efficiency, you could add some sensor on windows to detect if they are opened or closed. Then if the window is open, you can turn off the AC and heater in the room.
Without any variable compressor/fan speed this system is setup for failure. Running the whole system in full power to cool down a single zone will bring so many issues. Modern systems that work with dampers come equipped with inverter compressors and pressure controlled fan's but will probably require you to swap out your AC completely.
@@johnmidwest5650 yeah hence having to swap the entire system. And variable compressors only filtered down to residential use in the last 10 years or so. Same for pressure controlled fans
If you have central air for AC with 1 AC unit then I question if it'll be really any cheaper than cooling the whole house unless you have a variable speed blower or variable compressor. Having dampers closed will pull the blower out of it's max efficiency curve due to higher pressures in the ducts. And the lower airflow over your evaporator will make it run colder which will make your condenser outside run less efficient since it'll have a smaller difference in refrigerant vs outside air temp. All of this in theory of course but it'd be nice to see some before and after data on this kind of setup. All of this assuming the ducting in the house was made with correct sizing of components in mind of course. I'm not an HVACologist but my brain having absorbed a thermodynamics class in college made the above thought.
Yeah, HVAC engineers have commented similar concerns. He needs to ensure minimum system airflow (not running the system with too few zones active) to avoid evaporator freeze-over. He also needs to ensure that the cycle time on the compressor is at adequate intervals. It's all entirely possible using logic in HomeAssistant, but it requires adding deliberate constraints to the system's operation which he didn't explain in the video.
A few more tips from a journeyman level HVAC installer from Northern California: How many zones will you have for your A/C? I understand what it is your going for in terms of the efficiency. But your pairing a new concept with old equipment and it's not a great combination. For starters you at least need to upgrade to an ECM blower motor that will ramp up or down to maintain consistent airflow across the coil. Otherwise, on a 25 year old unit, closing off 3 rooms that are not occupied can actually cost you more money than if you left them open. To elaborate; A/C charge is almost entirely based upon airflow across both your coils. By shutting off multiple zones you are creating excess static pressure, directly tanking your airflow across your evaporative coil, subsequently tanking your SEER rating with it. A number of other problems can present themselves like the evaporative coil freezing over, the system short cycling, and surprisingly sometimes increased daily run time. Your trying to mimic the new fancy inverter/modulating systems with a system that is most likely a single stage system, and again this is a far from ideal set-up. It's a good idea to configure the dampers to power close, so if something fails, the zone is not stuck shut until the failed component is replaced or damper removed. And those particular dampers should be spring returns (Assuming they are Honeywell ARD models). If you look on where you wire it up on the damper motor, you have M1, M4 and M6 I believe. M6 is just 24v common, M1 is powered open, and M4 is powered close. Therefore they should not be getting 24 volts whether they are opened or closed, just one or the other. I get the logic, but I guess you have to choose the lesser of the two evils, do you want to risk burning the ARD motor or the relay up first?
This “Linus watercools his ENTIRE HOUSE!” meme is as far fetched as the “Fast and Furious IN SPACE” memes. So hang in there team it could actually happen given the last film.
One issue you might run into is that central AC is sized to cool the entire house, not just one room. Since you have all those fancy thermostats, maybe set them up so when a zone calls for cooling, check what the average air temp in the house is, and redistribute some of the cooler air to the one hot room, and only turn on the AC when the temperature rises a degree or so in the majority of the house to avoid under loading the compressor and causing the evaporator to freeze up. You might also want to see about a variable-speed blower. Or if you felt like doing something completely different, get a unit that cools water and set it to keep a tank at a specific temperature, then put a fan and water-to-air coils in each zone. The water’s thermal mass should avoid short-cycling the chiller, and as a big plus you can make the video title “Watercooling my ENTIRE HOUSE!”
Its so strange sometimes seeing the difference of NA vs EU house equipment, infloor heating(and now wall+ceiling), and split ac are the staples in the EU. While we dont really use central air duct systems for homes.
look at some of the southern states homes like texas, they have no heating whatsoever. when it snowed there last year thousands of families had to evacuate. that was the funniest thing i ever heard. how can someone be so un prepared...
@@bmxscape I mean, if they historically never have winter, why would builders waste money on it? Up here in Alberta, many/most houses don't have AC because except 2 weeks of the year (and this summer) AC isn't needed.
@@k9turrent ac is never needed. heating is a necessity not a luxury. tell the people who went homeless that having a source of heat on standby is a waste of money
Be careful when you use sensors to check for motion. I have been in a bathroom stall for a bit too long and had the lights turn off before. If that happens with your heating or cooling, it could add to discomfort.
I'm literally designing a house while watching you techdesign a house. The vibes are strong right now. Love these renovation vids man! Can't wait to buy a house I can techify!
I've been using the last couple years to slowly upgrade various parts of my place with Smart Home capabilities. I am a bit constrained being in an apartment at the moment, but have learned a lot. One thing I had a lot of issues with was the places doing media consumption. In my case a living room, but this could also be a theater room, computer room, etc. Occupancy sensors were causing a lot of issues since you'd normally be fairly still while consuming media. In those spaces I started using a presence sensor instead which really helped a ton. Most are using mmWave technology instead of a basic PIR sensor. It can detect micro movements and even worked in the bedroom while very still during sleep without any "blips" of it not being able to detect my presence. They're a bit hard to find, there's one by aqara but is only sold in China at the moment. There's some other youtubers who have built their own fairly easily using ESPhome. I can send links if interested! Would be interesting to see one built. Always wanted to do more of that, but small apartments mean little work space :(
That blip in the wood industry is over thankfully. Hopefully it stays that way. Blame Amazon for hiring away all the truckers that have switched to short trip hauling.
I was in a store to buy lumber just last week and prices are definitely not back to normal yet. It may be reduced at higher levels of the wood supply chain, but definitely not the typical consumer. Even construction companies aren't getting good prices yet.
You need to have a variable capacity AC unit\ compressor"inverter", or else this will actually shorten the life span of the unit because of the more frequent turning on and off of the compressor
I mean, you could do that. Or you could set it up to run continuously to cool the LAN/server room and just cut air off to that room and redirect the flow elsewhere as needed. That's a terrible solution of course, but I'm channeling Linus here.
I just left the same comment, lol. He's going to get his first electric bill and wonder if this solution is even working cause the unit is only on or off. Then he's going to be scratching his head in another year when the motor in the evap and the compressor burn out.
Yeah, he would technically be better off with a mini-split heat pump system to replace the current AC system as part of efficiency upgrade. And I know the jurisdiction where Linus actually lives gives massive rebates for people who do make these upgrades as well.
Can’t wait to see the episode, Linus turns his AC into a ice block, due to lack of airflow. Hvac guy here.. also love these videos! Stoked to see more!
My grandpa owns his own hvac business and I used help him when I was about 14. He always called me gopher… “gopher this, gopher that” I was basically just the tool boy running back and forth to get his tools for him from the truck😂
Right there with you! I do Controls on commercial HVAC and watching some of the work arounds he’s trying to do is cringey but I love it. Excited to see how it turns out. Would be light years easier with a real programmable controller from Trane or Johnson or the like.
Yup the coil will be iced up if more than one or two dampers are closed especially if he is using high mrv filters and thats if the R22 system is properly charged still
Also those shitty spring loaded dampers don't last for shit if you keep them closed. So if they try to have them shut normally, and only open its demanding, they will be dead in no time. They just stall the motor and cook the windings.
@@calholli I am aware and really don't care It's interesting, beneficial for the community, it's not free because he hasto earn the money before being able to deduct it and he won't recupe his full cost just make it cheaper with his company that HE own's and HE built so whats the problem.
@@SteveUnperceived There was a bathroom in my engineering building at Uni that had a rather aggressive motion sensor for the light. I used to take a balled up piece of paper I could throw up over the stall to turn it back on. :D
Designing my dream house and for running wires and pipes, every wall will have removable wainscoting (held on with cabinet latches) and a drop ceiling that looks like those old-fashioned tin tiles.
My dad has a floor heating system in his Bathroom and living room, thing is when he had the house build (rather new one ~10yrs old) he didn't ask for such a thing, the assumption was the guy who put it in put it in more houses as a big contract and since all houses are standing in row, only with a firewall inbetween, he didn't notice they hadn't ordered one. The first time he found out this was teh case was when he was laying tiles in the livingroom and the tile cement dried up rather quickly, then in the bathroom teh same thing. Well cranking up the heater solved the mystery! And yes this kind of system isn't exactly that common in Germany. Personal opinion this kind of thing is awesome! And using it for cooling in summer is a good idea as well, though I wonder if one shouldn't put an extra cooling loop into the celing, you know thermodynamics and stuff? I would also recommend a passive air exchanger/pipe and vent system for cooling/exchanging air, perhaps with a heat exchanger? I know it is on my list, just like solar panels and solarthermic pannels, the later of which feed into the heating and shower system, maybe even a geothermal cooling/preheating unit (on a sidenote in Germany you're free to drill down to about 99,9m without a permit, which is about 327'9"). Sure all these things are expensive, just like an extra rainwater cystern burried in the gaarden, maybe even under the deck/pattio/terasse, but these things are as per usual teh long game and many of those things work better/cheaper if you combine them as planned with teh architect. ofcourse I'd also put in opticfibre, LAN cable and a centralised hub for these things when planning, you know, plan smart against work hard/more expensivelater. Do I have the money for that kind of house? NOPE! But this doesn't mean I can't make plans for later and a "dream house" is exactly that a DREAM house, which doesn't mean I can't methodically plan the thing. Heck I know a guy who's even more broke then me and he has the pc he will probably not own for at least 3-5 yrs. planned out and updates it regularily.
The best option for making sure you don't build up too much pressure from closing too many dampers would be to have use a bypass damper. This is a system to redirect air from the plenum back to the supply side via a duct. If you want to go the complicated route, you could link the damper in to Home Assistant to open the damper when a set number of dampers are closed, or, you could even set up a sensor in the plenum measuring static pressure. The simple route - and in my opinion, the most fail-safe route - would be to use a counter weight style bypass damper that opens from the static pressure in the duct work. Once the pressure on the damper's plate is enough to overcome the counter weight, the damper opens just enough to maintain the set pressure, which can be adjusted by moving the counter weight up and down the rod. Obviously, it's really up to you in what you choose. But considering some of the other suggestions, using a bypass duct and damper is the most efficient as the conditioned air just recirculates through the air handler/furnace.
@@markyfrencho I think AC/heating turning off with occupancy is very silly for many reasons, mostly because some rooms will always be hot/cold when you walk into them. Maybe for a garage where you may not be for 12 hours or something can have looser heat controls set, but not off.
Wire the dampers normally open since that is the "safer" fail situation. If your damper controller goes out with the dampers all shut, you'll have to manually open everything before you can use your AC. Plus you don't want to over pressurize the system and 1) burn up your fan or 2) blow out your ductwork (less likely but possible). You'll also want to make sure that there is a call for cooling to at least 80% of your home before turning on your central AC because you will have the same 2 problems mentioned earlier or you can freeze up your evaporator coil because there isn't' enough airflow. If you need a truely variable system, you'll need to have a variable speed fan that controls based on static pressure (this is what commercial systems do) and a variable speed compressor that controls based on evaporator discharge air temperature (again what commercial systems do). Good luck finding a residential unit that will do it.
His biggest saving grace here: it's unlikely to burn out the AC unit since Vancouver's hottest months average around 72 degrees... this AC probably will only get a few weeks of use a year, this'll mostly control heating, which seems to have proper zoning already in place.
The next house I buy I want to use a PLC for automation. I'm starting to familiarize working with them at my work but I still barely know anything about it. It should be a good project though.
@@EJD339 It's something I'm going to school for right now. I just know what it is and if there's a problem how to eliminate it from the cause but that's about it for now. As far as programming or deep troubleshooting I'm not there yet but will be.
@@garcjr Not sure if you’re on Facebook but there is a group called “controls and building automation” and its a great community. You can ask any questions and someone will usually have the answer. There are about 11 thousands members.
I love that this whole episode was Linus explaining simple home automation and the preference with an easy system that honestly could have taken 2 minutes to explain 😅 Thanks Linus, I loved the video, just love how elaborate you get with explanations, and half the reason I love this channel!
Love the upgrades Linus! However, as someone who’s into amateur radio, I can easily see your home turning into an RFI/EMI nightmare. Keep an eye out for that!
Wifi, zigbee and other are cool and easy solutions, but i would not want them in my house. i'lll stick to the old wires which are also much more realiable.
As someone with floor heating and a big space. Usually the time period before you start noticeably heating the air in the room is 1-3 hours (with wooden floor that limit the temp of the water). If you don't use the cooling for just cool air draft, I doubt the room targeted cooling on a occupancy bases will be useful, because of the ventilation requirements and the time required to cool a room I expect it will mostly cool to late or get cooled down with the rest of the house. If your house is properly insulated and has large windows on the south, "just" make sure the sun doesn't enter in summer but does in the winter (make the sun hit something *outside* the house), takes care of most the heating (when the sun shines) and drastically reduces cooling needs. Srsly it can get warmer in the winter after a few hours of sun.
Best line ever. "Hey you wanna see some sparks?" - Jake Still, I would have done touchscreen displays with wifi for home assistant (which are 12v powered) so you could do more stuff in each room. (see cameras/check locks/play music/etc.)
I agree with what you said, but I wouldn't be surprised if Linus had planned on putting stuff for that in each room or the rooms he deemed it useful in by using other methods. Considering the current plan is a bit finicky and might be changed looking at some of the comments above suggesting he might want to change his approach.
He could use old phones in constant on mode ect.. perhaps the ecobee is just the concept. Because HA already has a thermostat, and may soon have its own 'smart' pid
Where I live we have a lot of geothermal activity, and natural hot water springs, there are a lot of houses plumbed with floor heat like yours, but, instead of a boiler room, there’s a well that pumps geothermal heated water up and through the house, and it comes out around 210°f. If you have the natural resources you can almost have a 100% efficient system in your house
Run Home assistant in a VM instead of a Docker container. The Docker version don't have the supervisor module. Sooner or later that is gonna bite you in the ass. Save yourself some time and just use a VM to start with.
Second this. VM also makes it easier to pass through usb devices should that be needed in the future. E.g. zwave or ZigBee dongles. HAS has a nice premade vm these days too
Unfortunetly hes going to have alot of problems with the cooling in the future. As an HVAC business owner he is hacking his way into a damaged compressor which isnt a cheap fix by any means.
@@mauichaui641 he will need one hell of a bypass damper if only 1 zone is calling for cool, let alone the compressor cycling on/off so many times. Not a great idea IMO. I would only use this setup for the heat he has installed.
That is a very high tech way to to DIY an antiquated, obsolete, and inefficient pressure dependant multi-zone system. The fan supplying your system is only going to run at one speed. Meaning that no matter what the air volume needed to cool the space, you're always going to have the same volume. So if some areas call for cooling and others don't you're going to dump extra air into the room, potentially causing the system to short cycle. If you're going to go through what you already are, you might as well install a variable frequency drive on the main supply fan, to slow that fan down when it's not needed. But keep in mind you'll also need a pressure transducer to tell the frequency drive (VFD) what pressure to maintain. (I'm an HVAC specialist, and test HVAC systems for a living)
i like how linus spend multiple days and thousands of pounds installing diy aircon into his house, used it for a combine total of about 45 seconds and then moved house to a house with no aircon lol
@@jaycowper Yeah! And now they have their own rooms, so they'll be good to go for the next decade or so. The next owner of the former Sebastian domicile shall have a good time.
6:28 The thing about waterhammer is, that it's a thing because water can't be compressed. Air can be compressed easily, so airhammer wouldn't really be a thing i guess?
those motors, they dont want to be on all the time, and the way you have it set up they are on almost always. if you make it off when the ac is off globally that would be a lot better
The idea in your video is decent, but I would highly recommend going away from wifi, I had so many issues over time with wifi randomly when I set up my home system. I use Delta between occupied rooms with temp sensors in each room that I just poked through the ceiling of each room. I tried using occupancy sensors but had too many issues with false detection, so I went simpler and just assigned rooms manually and then have schedules that predict which rooms are occupied via time of day. So for example during the day when I am home working based on my work schedule, it predicts I will be in the office during those hours, so it reduces the delta between target temperature set for that room as a priority, but after work hours it shifts to the living room and kitchen and such. Then to add automation for prevention of overheating in my office during off-peak hours like if I am gaming or something, there is a predetermined peak delta allowed, before it overrides and cools the room down.
I've been in the HVAC/R industry for 24 years and the best advice i can give is hire a professional. The company i work for makes a lot of money off of people who say " i watched a youtube video" so be careful.
Mercury, concentrated nitric acid, and anhydrous ethanol 👁👄👁 nilered reference.
3 года назад
That's similar to what I'm going to do in my next house but there are a few things to consider. First of all, A/C efficiency hugely depends on the ability to transfer heat through radiators. This means that the more airflow you have over the evaporator, the more efficient it gets. If it's not enough, then you will be wasting energy and you even have a risk of freezing the evaporator. This means that you have minimal amount of airflow to make it work. There's a reason there are multi stage air conditioners. Call for cooling from single room? Run single stage. Two rooms? Two stages. More rooms? All three stages. This way you will not run more cooling that you are able to use with just a single duct to a single room. That's why retrofitting single stage units with dampers sometimes makes it perform much worse. You have to figure out if you have enough throughput on a single duct to do this. Otherwise you'll have to make something smarter that will pick two or more zones that need the cooling the most to let it have enough air. Alternatively you can replace the blower to have higher air pressure but this will make it louder and use more electricity again. It's not that easy with single stage AC and the best solution is to increase the size of air ducts if you really don't want to replace it with multi stage unit. If you plan on replacing the unit, you can probably get 2-3 stage unit that would easily be controlled with such smart system and would know how much cooling to use. Think of it. If the unit is enough to handle 5 vents at full power, then where the power goes when you leave only one of them open? You can't move that much heat to the coil so it is too cold, makes it harder for compressor and may freeze condensate on the coil further reducing the airflow. Not good. Second thing are air returns. If you have completely separate zones and you are blowing air to particular room, you either have to keep doors open all the time or have air return in the same room for air circulation. It has to go somewhere. Next thing is presence awareness. As good as it may sound, it might be horrible idea. Imagine that you want to go to bed but there was nobody in the bedroom for the whole day. How much you will have to wait for the room to cool off? Everything stores the heat so it's not just a matter of cooling down bunch of air. You have to wait for all furniture and walls to Algo give off the heat to feel comfortable. For such use it's usually better to run scheduler and maintain the temperature before you want to use the room. Set it to cool down the bedroom two hours before you usually go to bed and then reduce the cooling before you plan to wake up. Why would it run for half an hour after you left the bedroom? You will be back in the evening. With your idea you will get to hit room and when it will start to cool off you will no longer be there. Kind of pointless. Next thing to consider might be electricity zones. It depends if you have fixed electricity rates or not and if you have solar panels or not. If you have some preferences, it's usually better to use cooling when it's cheaper. Your house is huge accumulator and we will be going this direction with increasing amount of solar energy. We already have this problem. Most electricity is used in the morning when people wake up and go to work, then evening when they are back, run cooling, cook stuff etc. The most electricity from sun comes in the middle of the day when it's not that useful. It's just a matter of time when we'll start to encourage people to run cooling during the day when they are not at home so that they don't suddenly have to cool off the whole house in the evening when there's not much solar power anymore. Run cooling when electricity is cheap, use your house as a battery storing the "coolness" from cheap period of the day. Let's add something more. It's commonly called economizers. Imagine that it's quite warm in your house and you are calling for cooling but it's cool outside. Why not just blow the warm, used air out and take fresh air in? That's another great thing. Not only it will reduce your needs for cooling/heating but it will make your air in the house fresh. Typical house A/C is running in closed loop, that's not great. It would be even better to have minimal air replacement configured. Force the house to ventilate at least for some time during the day. Want to make it more efficient? Use recuperator. Heat exchanger that will use used warm/cool air to heat/cool the fresh air that you are blowing into your house. Some additional savings. There's a lot of stuff than can be done and a lot of it is already done in industrial applications. Simple nobody cares about small consumer units so the price of such system is not worth the savings. The thing I want to make at some point is free for all system that would let you configure such complex system easily with not much skill. Just simple instructions which boards to use, how to load and program it, how to connect it to some nice UI and it's done. The whole challenge is to gather all information what to buy, what to look for and how to configure that. What cost to expect and if you need any proprietary software. Obviously any cloud is out of option. This is your house, it should be self sufficient and not rely on AWS or your internet to control things. There's a lot that can be improved and a few things you have to consider. Otherwise you may be surprised by your bills going up. Closing all vents to cool down single room is usually not efficient. Typical AC is scaled for the house, not single room. It can't efficiently cool down only single room. Well, unless you have so bad unit that it can't handle the whole house and you have to pick which room to cool. You will probably get better electricity bills if you force the system to run AC with at least a few vents open. Never run it on just a single vent. Poor man's solution - measure the surface area of your main duct and air vents. Count how much vents you need open to have the main duct being the bottleneck. To do it like a pro, calculate the airflow you should provide for the system including all other variables, clogged filters, bends and other resistance. Then define how much vents you need open or scale them up for your needs. For example if you mostly use two rooms and you want to be able to direct all the air there, replace the duct with bigger one. When all flaps are closed, this one will be cooled down quickly. Ah, one more things. Ever heard about short cycling? Make sure you don't force your AC to start and stop all the time. The unit designed for the whole house is hugely oversized for single room which will lead to short cycling if you don't control that. It would be much better if it would switch between all rooms needing cooling and when all of them are satisfied, then turn off. Now you know that none of them will call for cooling for awhile. Otherwise one will stop cooling and one minute later next one needs it. Again, poor man's solution is to have limited number if startups in an hour or fixed cool down after each stop. Just finished cooling one room and now another wants cooling? Too bad, you will wait 5 minutes until it starts up again. That's why multi stage units are that good. By reducing the power you can keep it running longer without the need to turn off and on. Still, they can ramp up the power of you really need a lot of cooling. Obviously this would be fairly complex of not impossible for simple home automation and that's what I'm going to make at some point. Standalone system that does not take just heat/cool signal from thermostat. It will take outside air temp, each room air temp, settings for each room and it will know how much power/stages to use to avoid turning on and off. Later on it can calculate average energy loss/gain to know how fast each room can be cooled/heated and how much losses it has. Now you know the temp difference, room inertia and typical energy loss so you know how much cooling power does it need to maintain the temperature without short cycling. You have that for each room so you can overlap the data and nicely switch dampers to keep running it consistently. Only when there is nothing to cool down it would stop and even then it can estimate that soon you are going to bedroom so instead of turning it off for a few minutes, it can already keep on cooling the bedroom. It will be more efficient that stopping it just for a few minutes anyways.
sidenote from someone dealing with presence detection for years at home. Motion sensing does not work in "living" rooms eg. office/bedroom/gaming room. you might be sitting at the pc for some hours or just laying in bed, and no motion sensor can detect that reliably. Only solution i found is having a ble chip or phone with bluetooth enabled by you at any time and running "room-assistant". this of course works for lights as well and makes light switches obsolete. for non "living" rooms like hallways, toilets etc motion sensing is definitely a good option.
I suggest a temperature sensor in your air handler…(fan, with the coil) after the coil so that if the supply temperature gets below say 45-50 then it kills the compressor…. This is because if it gets too cold it can freeze the coil solid, also normally the lowest we go in industry is 53…. It’s an old timers thing but if the temperature gets too cold in the duct the outside of it will sweat which can cause mold…. The other thing you want to be able to set is the outside air temperature that allows cooling…. If it’s too cold outside the super heat gets messed up and the refrigerant doesn’t turn to a vapor and you attempt to compress an incomprehensible fluid, which scroll compressors take ok, but over time it’s a bad deal….. you can also set up unoccupied set points so that if nobody is in the room and it gets really cold nothing freezes/it doesn’t take 2 hours to get back up to temp……oh you can also set up a status for both the boiler and the fan and the compressor if you tell it to run and the status is off it could send you a text message, same for room temps if it gets past a set point then an alarm can be sent out…… you should also be able to trend things that can help with diagnostics….. you can also open and close your blinds based on temperature, something simple that I want to do at my house because my hvac system is just a boiler (same as mechanics driving crappy cars)but program a light to turn on if it is warm in the room and the outside air enthalpy is lower than the inside air……sorry to ramble just some ideas
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Seeing Linus use his tech skills to permanently upgrade something practical is always more satisfying than watching him build a PC you know will be disassembled the moment the camera stops rolling.
Yeah, totally agree with you on that.
Sadly it's all hardware and 0 software
Not much tech or skill
@@YounesLayachi that's not giving it enough credit
@@YounesLayachi I still could build my own pc
very true
The problem Linus doesn't foresee is that his system being 25 years old, is a 100% on or off system. It doesn't ramp down just cause 1 room calls for cooling. The evaporator fan is going to burn out trying to push all its air to 1 spot and the compressor might also burn out from short cycling cause its not exchanging enough heat to operate continuously. Linus needs to replace his outdoor condensing unit and AC to a VRF (variable refrigerant flow) system which, even then, can only ramp down to 50% of its rated capacity.
Almost needs a bypass or some kind of minimum requirement for # of dampers open
Yea that can be a huge problem once he has it wired
Liked to help visibility
I don't know how common 2 stage AC is in Canada where they are, but at least where I live, its pretty uncommon. He said it's 25 years old though. He's already past the typical failure time and is likely just gonna let it run til it dies. Probably a good idea when that inevitably happens.
Needs a chiller with VFD, and coils at each damper with this setup
Another setting you may want in "Home Assistant" is simply air circulation, especially if your new house is well sealed as far as outside air getting in.
Looks like a solid setup, I've got a few notes:
1) Tasmota exists for the ESP32, there's an ethernet version of the ESP32. You should wire the thing that is controlling your entire house's AC and not rely on WiFi.
2) Your ecobee's have various "smart ai" features on them, one of them being that it will notice if zone has been set to cool for a while and isn't getting colder. It will come up with a message about checking whether your AC is malfunctioning. This may cause a problem for you later.
3) As others mentioned, you will need to have a minimum number of dampers open at any given time, closing all but one will put a lot of strain on your blower and will likely burn it out pretty quickly. In home assistant you could just alternate other rooms to open/close while keeping the room you really want to cool open the whole time.
You could also only allow closing the dampers 75% of the way to help with the back pressure.
For 3, is there anyway to tell how many you should have open at one given time. As in given the model of my AC, can I measure how many I should have open?
@@TurtIedd not really... Unless you can get the fan curve of the blower fan in your ac unit. Almost all residential ac units are built for a specific cfm at a specific static pressure, changing one of those variables ( cfm or static pressure) means you need to change the speed of the fan which most residential ac units aren't made to do, not to mention that the compressors aren't staged as well. You can get away with closing off a couple dampers, but for each damper you close without reducing fan speed accordingly you add more strain on your system.
Also, he doesnt know how his ducts are run i doubt they were designed and run with multiple zones in mind...he might run into zones that he thinks he can close off that affects more than one room.
And as inefficient as it might be, maybe something akin to a pressure release valve where if they DO close all but one, the rest gets vented outside so that you don't put strain on your blower.
You have to be careful adding the zone dampers for the A/C if the duct system was not designed for zoning. Since you have a single stage condensing unit, the equipment operates at full capacity when there is a call for cooling from the thermostat. Having multiple closed dampers will increase the static pressure of the duct system which will cause more wear on the blower motor in your air handler and cause it to deliver less airflow. Having insufficient airflow will lead to a frozen evaporator coil which can lead to a damaged compressor if not caught in time. A multi stage condensing unit with a variable speed blower in your air handler and ductwork renovation would operate properly and much more efficiently. Or you could install ductless mini splits like you did in your previous home. Good luck with the project!
I've seen only a handful of comments saying this, mine own comment as well. Here's to hoping Linus or whoever combs the comments sees our plea for them to see this issue and rectify it.
He needs a barometric dump zone. we do this on very large houses in Florida. They still suck and sweat/rust faster then a single zone. Always hated working on 10+ zone systems.
It won't take him long to swap that single speed blower motor with something inspired by an electric bicycle motor, the single speed compressor with something salvaged from a Tesla crash and to add pressure transducers and a make-up air path to address ductwork pressure and "the suck." A prior homeowner triggered significant rust and rot here by first blocking the makeup air then running the house at 35 below ambient for a decade of humid summers. It drew outside air through across chilled wood everywhere. The interior wall paint comes off in sheets. The floor isn't supported where it let air in. The dryer's heater core rusted apart and the light switch plates are surrounded by mold.
Use a bypass type VAV/dampers inorder to ease the pressure buildup in the ducts when the ducts are closed
He could have his server room with a large duct stay open when only a single room or two are asking for cooling, not that it would necessary be enough, but might give the compressor a chance to run a full cycle without totally freezing out the room he is trying to cool, and less of a chance of freezing up the coil.
Wow, Linus transformed his home renovations into a business expense!
Smart move my him, monetize your home improvements
@@calholli But it's not even fraud, because he did actually make a video for his business out of it :D
Not even mad - some of this stuff needs a full team to be full time to figure out some good solutions. Liked
Linus be smart-af
Yeah I think using his house reno. As a source of videos is smart on so many levels. It makes writing videos pretty easy, especially with the amount of things here that could be made into a video. Plus it helps him get work but also renovation labor for these videos lol.
Btw, you should set a "minimum airflow" for each zones and not simply turn it off, because if you stop supplying air in that particular zone, you're basicly killing your efficiency. The room will get extremely hot and once peoplestart going in it, i'll take a bit to cool it down to an acceptable temperature.
like an inverter ac
ALSO this will kill his equipment, the indoor coil requires a certain amount of CFM for it to operate. He will freeze his coil by doing this and slug his compressor. He can't just install shut off dampers with out installing a static pressure dumping zone for the needed air flow to go.
That does very much depend on the amount of time in between, the houses insulation and the outside temperature as well as in some cases infrared intensity through windows. There are houses where the temperature doesn’t climbmore than one °C an hour even if it is scorching hot outside. So though your point is surely true for some cases and depending on region even many cases, it is not universal. My tip would be to either inform yourself for your typical climate and insulation and if that is hard/impossible to reliably find out. Do some tests yourself (recording temperature curves, power usage and your own comfort (if you disregard that you can simply use the old fashioned/european method of opening windows over night and closing the blinds during the day and turn the whole thing around in winter. The power efficiency can’t be beaten).
Sometimes/for some people having a room not as cold/ just a bit below/ at outside temperature and then possibly cooling it down gradually is to be preferred because it prevents temperature shocks. A wall of cold air can very much be detrimental to health (increased stress levels which heightens the risk for multiple issues)
True, they should set it up in a way similar to how the human body works: having both the effectors for “too high” and “too low” to maximise efficiency and get a constant, specific temperature in the room.
@@ramennoodles2391 Makes sense. Cooling a room that has reached 30c to 21c is going to take more energy than a room that never gets over 25c.
I'm actually more invested in Linus' home tech makeover than most of his other videos... getting old can be fun!
As someone who is looking into buying their first home, same.
He really should move more often! Can't wait for the new server room and networking hehe
Home assistant is the way to go. It takes some tinkering but it really can do almost anything
I agree. I can’t wait to see the progression in his house and how it turns out in the end
100%
i do commercial ac automation and i love watching linus learn about actuators! but are you going to have a bypass so when most of the actuators are closed you dont have too much pressure going through duct that cant handle the extra pressure? unless the furnace has a vfd(Variable frequency drive) to control the blower speed via duct static pressure
use the server room as a ‘DMZ’ for the AC. You dont’ want to cut too many rooms off and still pull for one small room, but the server room is never going to refuse cooling so use that as a relief valve
genius
Its a good idea, but it still has to be balanced. Normally a stack bypass is installed if the rooms require being completely shut off. In a reasonable situation, each damper should only be able to close up to 90%, never completely closed.
Every Linus home tips episode I just hope for a “Brian the electrician” jingle
Brian will definitely be there for the next part of this project.
@@chatsnoirblamo Yea another dumpster fire by brian
He's electrifying
Being an HVAC technician I really wish I could just spend a week with Linus and lend him my opinion and guidance while he finds ways to solve his "older home" problems.
@@ConfidentGrips AND HELPFUL!
I'm hoping that at some point there is either a dedicated LMG Smart Home channel or some sort of a Home Assistant collaboration about his set up, lol.
More so since he seems to despise the cloud and stuff calling home, so it would be a great way to learn how to avoid the big As, big G, and their friends...
Check out The Hook Up. He's a good resource for that.
@@AndersHass Employee's Homekit EXTREME tech upgrades?
Those dampers have adjustable settings for range stop (fully closed at 0,... 1 is 16% bleed, 2 is 30% bleed and 3 is 50% bleed) . You could keep the zones slightly open when the zone is off to allow some air through the "closed" damper to alleviate some pressure issues you will have. But without some sort of bypass integrated in the system, you will have some problems in the future.
Yeah, you don't want 3 tons of cooling going through one 8" damper. And it's likely just a piston system, not a TXV. You could program it to wait until there's 2 or 3 zones calling to enable, that would probably be enough airflow. And if one zone is calling, it's likely another one will be, or will be soon with 10 zones in the house.
His next step would be to get an AC system with a 2 stage compressor and multi speed fan, with a system board capable of 2 cooling inputs. Stage 1 (Y1) would activate when 2 zones call, and Stage 2 (Y2) would be for 4+ zones calling. That way you have a bit of a deadband between Off, low, and hi calls. Or like you said, have a bypass or dump box if you want to activate on only 1 call, or force the next warmest zone to be open.
@@andrewt9204 my other thought is one zone called open and shut non called but NOT under temp rooms and OR non occupied rooms as an air dump + have no damper on the server room as that is a NON occupied room it can get "cool" without harm being done
Dampers are great for taking maybe one room out of the mix, but forced air AC systems are sized for the whole space they're cooling. I'd be careful managing more than maybe 10-20% of the house different than the whole home system.
Another idea is to have the AC for the whole home as normal, but if you have a room or two that get too hot, install a mini split in there (eg for the server room or a gaming room where it will get hot often).
And if not doing this, add logic ensuring that multiple rooms *actually need cooling* before turning it on. This is 100% going to burn out his crusty-ass, old air conditioner in under a year.
*edit: just remembered that Linus lives outside of Vancouver. This might actually work for him because the AC unit likely doesn't see a lot of use every year... this would absolutely fry the unit if it were done down by me (Chicago area)
I agree with this, I've seen houses have too many dampers closed and the coils will freeze over which could break your coils/temporarily cause you to not have a/c while they melt. I spent a day melting coils when it was over 100f outside and it was not enjoyable.
@@Ikkleman0 His only saving grace here: Vancouver doesn't really get a lot of hot days. This air conditioner very likely does not really see a lot of use - the hottest months are only around 72 degrees on average.
@@absentmindedjwc If it stays the way it has been, then that's changing, reached 97 at my place, and I'm closer to the coast than he is, saw over 100 more inland.
Agreed. Part of me wonders if one could build a thermal chill battery to let the condenser operate at reasonable duty cycle for small cooling loads in the house...then cool the house from that battery in the as-needed basis.
As an HVAC installer who does what you do in this video on a weekly basis, there were quite a few ways this could have been easier but the one constant I've learned in HVAC is if you expect it to be an easy job (no matter how prepared) it is never easy.
We have an unspoken never say it's going be an easy job rule, because everytime something goes wrong and makes it become a pain.
On this episode of LTT, Linus finds a way to make replacing the HVAC in his house a business write-off
Today on tax fraud 101,
1. Start a youtube channel
2. Make it a company
3. Make video's about personal projects
4. Write the personal project costs of as business expences
5. Profit
And use your employee as your personal janitor!
@@sven6375 that's not how any of that works but ok.
Its not just a payoff, this video probably gets at least about 2-3 million views so thats about 12k before tax,
A days work for 3 employees is probably a k, the dempers and relays are pretty cheap the ecobee is 170, at least 4 of those
Basically this video is a very nice profit
his upgrade pays for itself
@@schmeebsgaming83 just asking, u think im serious lol
You might already know this but if you are only using a single A/C you will need to have the majority of zones open for it to cool properly. A/C's require 400cfm per ton to properly cool and you won't be able to get that airflow through a single damper. The A/C will freeze up if it doesn't get enough airflow and it would be quite noisy trying to push that much air through one zone. You might want to program it so that it waits for multiple zones to call before kicking on.
yes
I'd love for these home updates to be in their own playlist. I'm so busy with life now that I barely get to watch RUclips, and feel like I've missed something :(
I would love that as well
they are now :D
Worth mentioning, I've spent some time doing the "Occupancy detection" thing with various solutions. Motion sensors can be problematic when you just have someone lying in a bed for example - if they aren't positioned well or aren't sensitive enough, they might mark that room as "empty" when it isn't. Additionally, too sensitive can generate false positives.
An option is that if the motion sensors are very directional and placed near or in front of doorways, they can be used to determine "someone has entered" and "someone has left", and then using that data in homeassistant to make a sensor per room with an occupancy count. Then rely on that occupancy count to determine whether to heat, cool, keep lights on, and so on.
And then a horror movie will be made. How come there are 10 people in the house while Linus has a family of 5. 🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
Then somone exits thru the window and the heater stays on indefinitely. The perfect crime
Would be cool to add motion sensor outside and inside each door so there is always a monitor that can detect if someone open the door but didn't enter!
And make a monitor map that show a where someone is moving.... something like among us game map!
But if 2 people enter right next to each other and it only counts 1 person entering, then when 1 of them leaves the lights will go out on the other person.
@@BimalB Cats. The answer to that is cats. They'll be setting off the motion detection 'on', but never the 'off'. It'll detect them entering but rarely leaving.
*YES.* I love that you actually settled for a significant DYI-approach. these videos about your home improvements quickly became my favorites on your channel.
DO YOURSELF IT
@@istvanjuhasz7621 lol
@@istvanjuhasz7621 lmao
@@istvanjuhasz7621 indeed.
It’s all nice until he destroys his HVAC system. If all he is doing is what he said in the video, he will destroy his system in a few years. You CANNOT add dampers blindly to a HVAC system and call it a day.
LMAO, Using a thermostat to make your own thermostat because thermostat.
I love it and also laugh at it all when systems like Crestron exist for literally everything Linus is trying to do in this house.
But really, the information sharing and opportunities to educate people on how some everyday things really work is a great education tool. Kudos!
Crestron is closed source and expensive. It's a bit of a hack job modifying an existing forced air system yes, but at least he's trying more creative and more open solutions here.
@@2dfx oh 100% and that's why I find it so entertaining. The consumers who regularly run into this in that size of a house are paying people to give them automation. Linus is going at it his own unique way (while still profiteering from our views).
"fortunately the builders did a good job of labelling everything" looks like Linus found a one in a million house LOL
As a handyman, I have the "privilege" of figuring builders' layout frequently. They get, uh... creative sometimes.
Must have been built by the new guys lmao
*billion
🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
Yeah. My first place was like that. The home inspector said that the rough-in electrician was probably an apprentice trying to impress his boss or the city inspector. Not a single wire overlapped coming out of the breaker panel, everything was flat, secured, and not twisted. And every box (outlet, switch etc) had a little sticker identifying which breaker was feeding it. Seemed like overkill, but it made it soooo easy when we were upgrading switches and fixtures.
I have owned a few more houses since then, and helped many friends, and have yet to see anything even remotely as clean.
Air conditioning systems are designed for a certain volume of airflow. More modern variable speed systems can adjust for how many dampers are open, but the older style system you have needs a minimum amount of airflow to work properly. Insufficient airflow will cause the evaporator (indoor) coil to freeze over which will completely stop your airflow.
I was thinking the same thing he's gonna burn up that dino ac unit
In the magical case where it can freeze over without completely blocking the passage of air the ice still insulates the air from the coil: the vents blow warm, leaving the system in a stay-on-forever state.
Had a friend lose there house to a fire caused by that recently. The ac never turned off cause it's so hot here in Louisiana and it was old. Eventually it failed and caught fire burned half their house down
So couple of considerations:
You will need either an air dump or a frequency drive on your blower. If you have to many rooms zone off airflow you will start freezing up your coil.
If you are doing this yourself you might consider putting in a fresh air economizer, basically a duct that pulls outside air when outside air is below 55 and you are still calling for cooling. This saves a lot of money over running your old ac system.
On the hydronic system, you might consider removing any high temp loops (side arm for water heater or fan boxes etc). If you are running high efficiency boilers you will get much better heating if you can keep your water around 80°, this will also prevent over heating and then having to cool the house back down as the sun comes out. Running a second system for those high temp things will save you a lot of headache and make the entire place more efficient.
Just some food for thought. Hope you read this and it helps.
This series should be called "Home Improvement" and there needs to be a scene where Linus gets advice from Anthony who's face is half covered by the fence.
And Luke should Always wear flannel Shirts, saying I dont think so Linus in basicly every Video
@@maxlehrmann93 I need this.
this so much
Was also thinking about "This Old House". Which one is Norm?
Heidy-ho, neighbor!
You should call this series : Sebastian's Home Improvement Tips
HAHAHAHAHAH S.H.I.T AHAHHAHA
@@SaarlaneKretiin omg lol Sponsored by Binford tools
*Tim Taylor grunt sound*
Omg and he is gonna get sponserred by Milwaukee tools
Linushomeimprovementtips
This is really fun to watch, the only thing I would say it this is probably not going to work out like you think. Having all of these cooling calls on your AC system is going to really shorten it's life. Also, short repeated cooling calls put humidity BACK IN the house due to condensation on the coils not being fully drained off. Also, AC systems are sized to run with all ducts. Zoning typically puts tons of pressure into loosely taped joints and the AC ends up going into unconditioned spaces like crawlspaces or attics. Worse, this can also push condensation into those areas that don't have proper ventilation and can cause mold and other issues. Also, a lot of the 'comfort' associated with a typical temperature is changed when the radiant heat from walls and floors is different. This will typically make you have to overcool a room that had been unoccupied. There is a reason zone systems are typically per floor. Even per floor has issues, and some people find efficiency increase is hardly noticeable.
Briannnn the HVAC techniciannnnn he's chilling and helpful such a helpful man
**edit** holy cow 1.2k likes! Also, I know he's not actually in the video, but he still came to mind, haha
I had to listen to the theme song after seeing this
ruclips.net/video/5z9l-0OT3-w/видео.html
helpful but hes not even good at it, so many things done wrong on the installation video
i was hoping he was in this episode but alas BOOOO!
I've been building houses for the past decade and all the things seen in the video was already a standard when I was in college. At least here in the north Europe.
Yeah, Raspberry Pi powered home automation is cool and cheap, but nothing revolutionary.
he's horrible and causing more issues
Would love for a dedicated Home Assistent Series to show off the potential and possibilities of Home Assistent. Kinda struggling to get started with it 🥴
Same
Would love videos about Home Assistant! I think after about a month now I'm starting to really get the hang of it, I love it.
Join thier Discord,there's a vibrant community. One word of advice, make sure you've read the docs on something before you start asking questions (most docs have faq answers on the first page)
Midwest HVAC tech here. I deal with zoned systems exactly like you are attempting. May be a little late, but without proper return air/supply air at your air handler
your static pressure will be ridiculous. Those supply runs that are zoned will be howling like crazy. Your better off leaving a few rooms without dampers as sudo-bypass areas (dump zones) to help get rid of the excess pressure youre creating. Or adjust the 'close' positions on the dampers via the red switch. Improper zoning can cause many irritating and headpounding problems. Also if youre finishing the area where youre installing the dampers, put an access panel by it for servicing. You'll thank me later.
Last thing, if you are using a relay panel or pi-zone board that is supplied by 24vac you will probably need to isolate the dampers with independent transformers due to the high load of having to close potentially 9 dampers (may not seem like much) can overload the board and make it malfunction. Had a honeywell panel have x8 6" dampers trying to close simultaneously causing failure due to a single 25VA transformer. Had to isolate that zone with a 75VA and other zones to 40VA.
You’re going to short cycle the compressor of the ac with all those sensors causing failure. And cause the evaporator fan motor to fail sooner by having dampers close randomly making the motor to work harder. You’re going to need a variable speed compressor and install a bypass damper so the air releases to a open space and not cause back pressure leading to a fan motor failure.
Or just go with a variable speed compressor hooked up to a ductless AC system with vavling inside the refrigerant pioes and a evaporators for each zone.
Most efficient system there is with no minimum flow requirements.
But expensive to install
Among other issues his coil will freeze as well because he is stopping proper air flow. He will kill his AC. Wanna bet this stupid idea came from Brian. As many have said before he NEEDS a real pro to design a actual system not.some homeowner shit show.
@@zack9912000 I agree. I was looking into this and there is so much technical information I was lacking. You need technical advice.
@@zack9912000 If you watch this channel you well know that getting a pro is not really what they do. Multiple times in this video they made it clear that this was a proof of concept demo. In reality there is likely to be little to no issue with this system because you are ignoring hundreds of other factors. Every house is different and they live in Canada not Texas the AC will see little use as is. Its a shitty one thermostat system as is and it is crap as is. A system that reads from 1 location and then blast on full if its a few degrees under is garbage. The house was using Mercury thermostats. Everyone wants to play armchair professional.
@@zack9912000 he really doesn’t need a professional.
Either he gets a throttlable compressor and modifies the valves in the ducts so there’s always a minimum amount of airflow or he goes ductless with individual evaporators per zone and a trhrotlable compressor.
The second one is way more efficient but harder to install.
Alternate title: How to write off your home renovation as a business expense
Actually no. It'd only work for the duration of use during the videos and given that that's a very small amount of time, it wouldn't be worth it. Instead the costs are recouped through the videos. He talks about it a little in his "The Wall" video.
What you should be doing instead is capitalizing the expenditure, not writing off the expenses as a deduction.
@@AnneALias how about both
An enduring benefit/capital asset is being made for Linus personally and not for LMG? I don't think it could be capitalised nor deductible - at least in South African tax law
@@maxinealexander9709 do you have the timestamp by any chance?
HVAC/R Tech here. One crucial piece of advice. Your system is 25 years old, its running a PSC Motor. They're on or off, and don't switch between the speed taps unless going to a different mode.
It needs 400cfm per tonne of cooling in order for that coil to not freeze. Having other dampers open up a certain amount isn't going to cut it, because you're still restricting airflow, increasing static pressure, and reducing CFM.
Easiest way around it? Install a dump bypass. Honeywell makes a damper that will open and close based on the pressure against it. It can be set so that if all the dampers are open, it remains closed, and then opens to allow for the proper amount of airflow based on the pressure against it. Not as Easy? A dedicated dump Zone. Same Damper, but instead of feeding the extra air right back into the Return, you're dumping it into a specific space. If you put it into the attic, you'd have to put in make up air from outside, because you're dumping air outside(effectively). Just food for thought.
Your ductwork is not designed for zoning. It has 1 supply trunk, maybe 2 depending on where it is in relation to the building. Installing this bypass will ensure your already beat to crap 25 year old Bryant air conditioner doesn't freeze. And the HVAC tech you call in when it does? He's gonna have a field day with that set up. If he loves his job he'll love to play with it. If its just a job he will hate you.
Underfloor heating system dates back to 5000 BC in ancient Korea, namely "Ondol", or "warm stone" in direct translation. It's one of the oldest and the most iconic heritages in Korean culture. Even now, most houses in Korea are heated using Ondol technology.
there is not a single reason to not use infloor heating. 1 water heater can heat a whole house with infloor heat better and more efficiently than a furnace could.
Thats really cool.
Yep. My apartment has this system. Makes it real nice and warm in the winter. I just wish the AC system was better here.
@@dragonmaster391 you can also passiv cool your room^^ if you have the right heat system
@@dragonmaster391 it is the prefered metod of today. it is low temprature. with make it ideal for heatpumps. it also give worm flors. with is werry nice. still do if bad isolated windows i would not recomend switching. as it would couse cold draft from windows. you get the same problem when switching to a heat pump air to air. it is ealy fix by replaceing the windows do. if your just installing a heat pump air to air it is somewhat expsnsive do. if installing flor heating it is not that big of an investment.
was wondring some do about the heat system. is it oil or electric. depedning on location it would be exspensive. so maybe VRV system might be better in long run
Just need to consider than when dampers are closed it raises the airflow, and therefore velocity, and therefore static pressure of the system... Long story short if a lot of them are closed, just watch for ice.
"Linus tried to find leaks in his ac system?"
It would be an interesting controls problem to regulate the speed of the fan to maintain inter-duct pressure within a certain range.
You just need a control fan speed based on how many dampers are closed, or run it to an economizer for fresh air intake, since new houses are too well insulated that they don’t bring in enough fresh air
@@jake93 well if you do that then there won't be enough airflow over the coils
@@itech301 which is fine if you use an eev, something that can control on variable load so you don’t get floodback, ice build up etc. If it’s cap tube then yeah. This is Linus tech tips and he’s all into tech so if you are already using a control system for zone control etc, just add more tech. It’s obviously not easy, most zone systems I work on use a chilled water loop, so I don’t know exactly what to do but using grocery store logic eev’s give you a lot of control
This type of control for hvac and hydronic in floor heat has been around for decades! Pneumatic and electronic! Nice to see you implementing this into your house 👍
Be careful with using motion detectors as "presence awareness." Anyone who has stayed in a hotel in a hot area that has the air-con on a motion detector can tell you how much that sucks. It can still work just fine, just be careful is all.
100% this. I went to a hotel once with motion detection AC and it kept shutting off during the night while I was sleeping because it didn't detect any motion. Waking up to 78 degrees is not fun.
@@guy000001 bed sensor mats, does this actually exist? lol, you could just program it to be active regardless of the sensor during night time. Not perfect, but do you really need yet more sensors, yet more complexity for a few nights away per year?
Same concern. I wonder if any of his kids will get crafty and do something like put an oscillating fan right in front of the sensor lol. I live above a garage, and I just get tons of heat coming up through the floor all night and day. Some nights I just can't seem to cram enough air through the open windows to keep the room from boiling and need ac all night. Sucks, because it's a lot of energy and I loved having fresh air while I slept, but it is what it is.
Edit: put the vaguely funny thing before my whole life story instead of after cuz I felt like it.
Simple solution, have door sensors aswell then use that with some logic statements to determasn the last presence, so eg. If someone goes into a room and the door is closes then keep room active and if door opens and no mostion is detected afterwards then the room should be marked for no presence and based on those two states you can set your automations
@@MrMustangMan67 You could insulate the ceiling of the garage below you. I'd also recommend installing a fresh-air intake and exhaust fan down there to keep the garage closer to outdoor ambient.
I would definitely add a bypass damper from the supply to return on the ductwork this way you don't have issues with not enough airflow and possibly freezing your ac coil, honeywell makes nice ones like the dampers your using.
To add up to the efficiency, you could add some sensor on windows to detect if they are opened or closed.
Then if the window is open, you can turn off the AC and heater in the room.
Without any variable compressor/fan speed this system is setup for failure.
Running the whole system in full power to cool down a single zone will bring so many issues.
Modern systems that work with dampers come equipped with inverter compressors and pressure controlled fan's but will probably require you to swap out your AC completely.
But it's a single compression?
@@johnmidwest5650 yeah hence having to swap the entire system.
And variable compressors only filtered down to residential use in the last 10 years or so. Same for pressure controlled fans
If you have central air for AC with 1 AC unit then I question if it'll be really any cheaper than cooling the whole house unless you have a variable speed blower or variable compressor. Having dampers closed will pull the blower out of it's max efficiency curve due to higher pressures in the ducts. And the lower airflow over your evaporator will make it run colder which will make your condenser outside run less efficient since it'll have a smaller difference in refrigerant vs outside air temp. All of this in theory of course but it'd be nice to see some before and after data on this kind of setup. All of this assuming the ducting in the house was made with correct sizing of components in mind of course. I'm not an HVACologist but my brain having absorbed a thermodynamics class in college made the above thought.
Yeah, HVAC engineers have commented similar concerns. He needs to ensure minimum system airflow (not running the system with too few zones active) to avoid evaporator freeze-over. He also needs to ensure that the cycle time on the compressor is at adequate intervals.
It's all entirely possible using logic in HomeAssistant, but it requires adding deliberate constraints to the system's operation which he didn't explain in the video.
A few more tips from a journeyman level HVAC installer from Northern California:
How many zones will you have for your A/C? I understand what it is your going for in terms of the efficiency. But your pairing a new concept with old equipment and it's not a great combination. For starters you at least need to upgrade to an ECM blower motor that will ramp up or down to maintain consistent airflow across the coil. Otherwise, on a 25 year old unit, closing off 3 rooms that are not occupied can actually cost you more money than if you left them open. To elaborate; A/C charge is almost entirely based upon airflow across both your coils. By shutting off multiple zones you are creating excess static pressure, directly tanking your airflow across your evaporative coil, subsequently tanking your SEER rating with it. A number of other problems can present themselves like the evaporative coil freezing over, the system short cycling, and surprisingly sometimes increased daily run time. Your trying to mimic the new fancy inverter/modulating systems with a system that is most likely a single stage system, and again this is a far from ideal set-up.
It's a good idea to configure the dampers to power close, so if something fails, the zone is not stuck shut until the failed component is replaced or damper removed. And those particular dampers should be spring returns (Assuming they are Honeywell ARD models). If you look on where you wire it up on the damper motor, you have M1, M4 and M6 I believe. M6 is just 24v common, M1 is powered open, and M4 is powered close. Therefore they should not be getting 24 volts whether they are opened or closed, just one or the other. I get the logic, but I guess you have to choose the lesser of the two evils, do you want to risk burning the ARD motor or the relay up first?
"It's almost like it was made for this purpose!" man, sometimes we forget that the silly things they do with their tech actually has a intended use.
This “Linus watercools his ENTIRE HOUSE!” meme is as far fetched as the “Fast and Furious IN SPACE” memes. So hang in there team it could actually happen given the last film.
It's literally the opposite of water _cooling._
HOUSE watercooling GONE WRONG?!? Actually HEATS HOUSE
Its technically watercooling if the heating element is turned off and hooked onto a radiator or AC
@@kindlin the water is being cooled
@@Alex-rg9lz The water _is_ being heated?
One issue you might run into is that central AC is sized to cool the entire house, not just one room. Since you have all those fancy thermostats, maybe set them up so when a zone calls for cooling, check what the average air temp in the house is, and redistribute some of the cooler air to the one hot room, and only turn on the AC when the temperature rises a degree or so in the majority of the house to avoid under loading the compressor and causing the evaporator to freeze up. You might also want to see about a variable-speed blower. Or if you felt like doing something completely different, get a unit that cools water and set it to keep a tank at a specific temperature, then put a fan and water-to-air coils in each zone. The water’s thermal mass should avoid short-cycling the chiller, and as a big plus you can make the video title “Watercooling my ENTIRE HOUSE!”
As an architect planning to build his own house someday, this is a fun watch
Hey me too!
Its so strange sometimes seeing the difference of NA vs EU house equipment, infloor heating(and now wall+ceiling), and split ac are the staples in the EU. While we dont really use central air duct systems for homes.
look at some of the southern states homes like texas, they have no heating whatsoever. when it snowed there last year thousands of families had to evacuate. that was the funniest thing i ever heard. how can someone be so un prepared...
You’re seeing the consequences of NA climate and energy cost differences.
@@bmxscape I mean, if they historically never have winter, why would builders waste money on it? Up here in Alberta, many/most houses don't have AC because except 2 weeks of the year (and this summer) AC isn't needed.
@@k9turrent ac is never needed. heating is a necessity not a luxury. tell the people who went homeless that having a source of heat on standby is a waste of money
Be careful when you use sensors to check for motion. I have been in a bathroom stall for a bit too long and had the lights turn off before. If that happens with your heating or cooling, it could add to discomfort.
This brings back childhood memories of building my house with my dad and installing radiant floor heating.
I'm literally designing a house while watching you techdesign a house. The vibes are strong right now.
Love these renovation vids man! Can't wait to buy a house I can techify!
That's why he keeps on buying new houses; once the current one is teched-out he flips it, buys a new house and starts over
Linus overcomplicating the simple things such as smart hvac controls
I've been using the last couple years to slowly upgrade various parts of my place with Smart Home capabilities. I am a bit constrained being in an apartment at the moment, but have learned a lot.
One thing I had a lot of issues with was the places doing media consumption. In my case a living room, but this could also be a theater room, computer room, etc. Occupancy sensors were causing a lot of issues since you'd normally be fairly still while consuming media. In those spaces I started using a presence sensor instead which really helped a ton. Most are using mmWave technology instead of a basic PIR sensor. It can detect micro movements and even worked in the bedroom while very still during sleep without any "blips" of it not being able to detect my presence.
They're a bit hard to find, there's one by aqara but is only sold in China at the moment. There's some other youtubers who have built their own fairly easily using ESPhome. I can send links if interested! Would be interesting to see one built. Always wanted to do more of that, but small apartments mean little work space :(
Man just showing off massive piles of wood in 2021 like a billionaire
Everytime I show off my wood I get arrested. So unfair.
That blip in the wood industry is over thankfully. Hopefully it stays that way. Blame Amazon for hiring away all the truckers that have switched to short trip hauling.
I was in a store to buy lumber just last week and prices are definitely not back to normal yet. It may be reduced at higher levels of the wood supply chain, but definitely not the typical consumer. Even construction companies aren't getting good prices yet.
You need to have a variable capacity AC unit\ compressor"inverter", or else this will actually shorten the life span of the unit because of the more frequent turning on and off of the compressor
I mean, you could do that. Or you could set it up to run continuously to cool the LAN/server room and just cut air off to that room and redirect the flow elsewhere as needed. That's a terrible solution of course, but I'm channeling Linus here.
I just left the same comment, lol. He's going to get his first electric bill and wonder if this solution is even working cause the unit is only on or off. Then he's going to be scratching his head in another year when the motor in the evap and the compressor burn out.
@@docferringer That may also cause "over cooling", resulting in short cycling and eventual failure of the compressor.
Yeah, he would technically be better off with a mini-split heat pump system to replace the current AC system as part of efficiency upgrade. And I know the jurisdiction where Linus actually lives gives massive rebates for people who do make these upgrades as well.
To be honest the unit is almost dead anyways and the king valves are probably already leaking refrigerant.
Really like this series already, glad to see some tech upgrades for the home.
Can’t wait to see the episode, Linus turns his AC into a ice block, due to lack of airflow. Hvac guy here.. also love these videos! Stoked to see more!
My grandpa owns his own hvac business and I used help him when I was about 14. He always called me gopher… “gopher this, gopher that” I was basically just the tool boy running back and forth to get his tools for him from the truck😂
Right there with you! I do Controls on commercial HVAC and watching some of the work arounds he’s trying to do is cringey but I love it. Excited to see how it turns out. Would be light years easier with a real programmable controller from Trane or Johnson or the like.
Yup the coil will be iced up if more than one or two dampers are closed especially if he is using high mrv filters and thats if the R22 system is properly charged still
Also those shitty spring loaded dampers don't last for shit if you keep them closed. So if they try to have them shut normally, and only open its demanding, they will be dead in no time. They just stall the motor and cook the windings.
freeze stat on indoor coil?
"It's gonna pay for itself in a few years."
Next year, the new video title:
"Why i bought a new house."
the buyer will pay for the paying if they like it
This is super interesting having more videos for smart home that doesn’t rely on proprietary software is awesome id love to see more !
@@calholli So? It's still interesting
@@calholli I am aware and really don't care It's interesting, beneficial for the community, it's not free because he hasto earn the money before being able to deduct it and he won't recupe his full cost just make it cheaper with his company that HE own's and HE built so whats the problem.
After having occupancy sensors turn off the lights when I'm sitting at my desk, I'm not impressed.
I'm all for saving energy but a lot of efficiency automation just causes more issue a lot of the time especially in an office space.
Same for me after having occupancy sensors on the light switch of a bathroom shut off the lights while I was on the crapper.
@@SteveUnperceived There was a bathroom in my engineering building at Uni that had a rather aggressive motion sensor for the light. I used to take a balled up piece of paper I could throw up over the stall to turn it back on. :D
try waving at a sensor in a toilet every 20 seconds. feels silly when you can't find the paper roll without exasperated waving.
@@MrNathanstenzel DEAD LOL
Designing my dream house and for running wires and pipes, every wall will have removable wainscoting (held on with cabinet latches) and a drop ceiling that looks like those old-fashioned tin tiles.
My dad has a floor heating system in his Bathroom and living room, thing is when he had the house build (rather new one ~10yrs old) he didn't ask for such a thing, the assumption was the guy who put it in put it in more houses as a big contract and since all houses are standing in row, only with a firewall inbetween, he didn't notice they hadn't ordered one. The first time he found out this was teh case was when he was laying tiles in the livingroom and the tile cement dried up rather quickly, then in the bathroom teh same thing. Well cranking up the heater solved the mystery! And yes this kind of system isn't exactly that common in Germany.
Personal opinion this kind of thing is awesome! And using it for cooling in summer is a good idea as well, though I wonder if one shouldn't put an extra cooling loop into the celing, you know thermodynamics and stuff? I would also recommend a passive air exchanger/pipe and vent system for cooling/exchanging air, perhaps with a heat exchanger? I know it is on my list, just like solar panels and solarthermic pannels, the later of which feed into the heating and shower system, maybe even a geothermal cooling/preheating unit (on a sidenote in Germany you're free to drill down to about 99,9m without a permit, which is about 327'9"). Sure all these things are expensive, just like an extra rainwater cystern burried in the gaarden, maybe even under the deck/pattio/terasse, but these things are as per usual teh long game and many of those things work better/cheaper if you combine them as planned with teh architect. ofcourse I'd also put in opticfibre, LAN cable and a centralised hub for these things when planning, you know, plan smart against work hard/more expensivelater.
Do I have the money for that kind of house? NOPE! But this doesn't mean I can't make plans for later and a "dream house" is exactly that a DREAM house, which doesn't mean I can't methodically plan the thing. Heck I know a guy who's even more broke then me and he has the pc he will probably not own for at least 3-5 yrs. planned out and updates it regularily.
This is my favorite content, im not actually that interested in gaming computers, but this stuff is great stuff. Can't wait to see more
"There were some really awful ideas as well"
I started dying when I saw "Ask Jay2Cent for advice"
The best option for making sure you don't build up too much pressure from closing too many dampers would be to have use a bypass damper. This is a system to redirect air from the plenum back to the supply side via a duct. If you want to go the complicated route, you could link the damper in to Home Assistant to open the damper when a set number of dampers are closed, or, you could even set up a sensor in the plenum measuring static pressure. The simple route - and in my opinion, the most fail-safe route - would be to use a counter weight style bypass damper that opens from the static pressure in the duct work. Once the pressure on the damper's plate is enough to overcome the counter weight, the damper opens just enough to maintain the set pressure, which can be adjusted by moving the counter weight up and down the rod. Obviously, it's really up to you in what you choose. But considering some of the other suggestions, using a bypass duct and damper is the most efficient as the conditioned air just recirculates through the air handler/furnace.
"These labels... they mean nothing to me" *sad plumber noises*
Just remember bedrooms will show no occupancy when people are asleep.
I guess one could use time for that. Or pressure sensors under the bed if you want to get really fancy.
@@rGunti or timers. Or phone location.
@@markyfrencho I think AC/heating turning off with occupancy is very silly for many reasons, mostly because some rooms will always be hot/cold when you walk into them. Maybe for a garage where you may not be for 12 hours or something can have looser heat controls set, but not off.
@@gajbooks I very much agree. Some rooms take too long to cool down especially once you pass +/- 20°f off your comfort zone.
Wire the dampers normally open since that is the "safer" fail situation. If your damper controller goes out with the dampers all shut, you'll have to manually open everything before you can use your AC. Plus you don't want to over pressurize the system and 1) burn up your fan or 2) blow out your ductwork (less likely but possible). You'll also want to make sure that there is a call for cooling to at least 80% of your home before turning on your central AC because you will have the same 2 problems mentioned earlier or you can freeze up your evaporator coil because there isn't' enough airflow. If you need a truely variable system, you'll need to have a variable speed fan that controls based on static pressure (this is what commercial systems do) and a variable speed compressor that controls based on evaporator discharge air temperature (again what commercial systems do). Good luck finding a residential unit that will do it.
Jake: "I just showed up, I didn't know I had to do stuff"
Just another way of saying "I thought I just had to stand here and look pretty"
As a HVAC and building automation engineer this was just painful to watch…
Agreed
His biggest saving grace here: it's unlikely to burn out the AC unit since Vancouver's hottest months average around 72 degrees... this AC probably will only get a few weeks of use a year, this'll mostly control heating, which seems to have proper zoning already in place.
I work in HVAC too. There's a reason installers exist, you should not do this yourself.
I love the Home Assistant videos.
Could you make a video about how to setup Home Assistant for a generic house with no cloud integrations at all?
Buy Zigbee or Zwave sensors.
Buy HA Amber
Setup the Amber as a coordinator.
Pair your devices.
Done.
I work in building automation and I'm always fascinated when people use technology to improve efficiency in their house.
The next house I buy I want to use a PLC for automation. I'm starting to familiarize working with them at my work but I still barely know anything about it. It should be a good project though.
@@garcjr that’s awesome man. I’ve been in this field for 3 years and learn something new everyday. You’ll do great!
@@EJD339 It's something I'm going to school for right now. I just know what it is and if there's a problem how to eliminate it from the cause but that's about it for now. As far as programming or deep troubleshooting I'm not there yet but will be.
@@garcjr Not sure if you’re on Facebook but there is a group called “controls and building automation” and its a great community. You can ask any questions and someone will usually have the answer. There are about 11 thousands members.
I'll be waiting for the next installment of "Linus upgrading the house"
I love that this whole episode was Linus explaining simple home automation and the preference with an easy system that honestly could have taken 2 minutes to explain 😅
Thanks Linus, I loved the video, just love how elaborate you get with explanations, and half the reason I love this channel!
Love the upgrades Linus! However, as someone who’s into amateur radio, I can easily see your home turning into an RFI/EMI nightmare. Keep an eye out for that!
Wifi, zigbee and other are cool and easy solutions, but i would not want them in my house. i'lll stick to the old wires which are also much more realiable.
3:15 “And for that, we will be using…”
Me: BRIAN THE ELECTRICIAN
As someone with floor heating and a big space. Usually the time period before you start noticeably heating the air in the room is 1-3 hours (with wooden floor that limit the temp of the water). If you don't use the cooling for just cool air draft, I doubt the room targeted cooling on a occupancy bases will be useful, because of the ventilation requirements and the time required to cool a room I expect it will mostly cool to late or get cooled down with the rest of the house.
If your house is properly insulated and has large windows on the south, "just" make sure the sun doesn't enter in summer but does in the winter (make the sun hit something *outside* the house), takes care of most the heating (when the sun shines) and drastically reduces cooling needs. Srsly it can get warmer in the winter after a few hours of sun.
Best line ever.
"Hey you wanna see some sparks?" - Jake
Still, I would have done touchscreen displays with wifi for home assistant (which are 12v powered) so you could do more stuff in each room. (see cameras/check locks/play music/etc.)
I agree with what you said, but I wouldn't be surprised if Linus had planned on putting stuff for that in each room or the rooms he deemed it useful in by using other methods. Considering the current plan is a bit finicky and might be changed looking at some of the comments above suggesting he might want to change his approach.
He could use old phones in constant on mode ect.. perhaps the ecobee is just the concept. Because HA already has a thermostat, and may soon have its own 'smart' pid
I love how Linus didn't even protest when Jake said "Probably not."
u cld totally see the "dafuq u just say" in his eyes though lol
I gained a lot of respect for Jake today.
It's like the very beginning of the video, before the intro.
Where I live we have a lot of geothermal activity, and natural hot water springs, there are a lot of houses plumbed with floor heat like yours, but, instead of a boiler room, there’s a well that pumps geothermal heated water up and through the house, and it comes out around 210°f.
If you have the natural resources you can almost have a 100% efficient system in your house
Run Home assistant in a VM instead of a Docker container. The Docker version don't have the supervisor module. Sooner or later that is gonna bite you in the ass. Save yourself some time and just use a VM to start with.
Yep. That's how I have set up mine as I've used the pre-baked KVM image which works well with ProxMox.
Second this. VM also makes it easier to pass through usb devices should that be needed in the future. E.g. zwave or ZigBee dongles. HAS has a nice premade vm these days too
@@Level1Techs I guess you'd be PM'ing this, more likely to work than RUclips comments.
I feel like this is a solid plan right up until the occupancy sensors in every room.
Unfortunetly hes going to have alot of problems with the cooling in the future. As an HVAC business owner he is hacking his way into a damaged compressor which isnt a cheap fix by any means.
@@mauichaui641 he will need one hell of a bypass damper if only 1 zone is calling for cool, let alone the compressor cycling on/off so many times. Not a great idea IMO. I would only use this setup for the heat he has installed.
That is a very high tech way to to DIY an antiquated, obsolete, and inefficient pressure dependant multi-zone system. The fan supplying your system is only going to run at one speed. Meaning that no matter what the air volume needed to cool the space, you're always going to have the same volume. So if some areas call for cooling and others don't you're going to dump extra air into the room, potentially causing the system to short cycle. If you're going to go through what you already are, you might as well install a variable frequency drive on the main supply fan, to slow that fan down when it's not needed. But keep in mind you'll also need a pressure transducer to tell the frequency drive (VFD) what pressure to maintain. (I'm an HVAC specialist, and test HVAC systems for a living)
Then he'll have to figure out how to deal with icing and flooding back issue, which he'll probably get even without the VFD
i like how linus spend multiple days and thousands of pounds installing diy aircon into his house, used it for a combine total of about 45 seconds and then moved house to a house with no aircon lol
His kids asked nicely for their own bedroom and he said yes. Great father and provider imho.
I don't think he'll even move in the new house this year
@@jaycowper Yeah! And now they have their own rooms, so they'll be good to go for the next decade or so.
The next owner of the former Sebastian domicile shall have a good time.
The house HAS air conditioning, he just wants to turn it into a zoned system.
@@benjaminoechsli1941 kinda, the new owner will need to know the name of a good plumber, electrician, and IT technician to maintain that place...
Just got home from my job installing commercial HVAC automation systems.
"Time to relax and watch some youtube"
...
"Dammit"
Pain
so how soon will Linus be replacing that old AC after the valves kill the blower or w/e?
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, the remodel home tech upgrades. Very cool series. Thank you, Jake, for making everything work.
I really appreciate that you find ways around bull$#!* proprietary ecosystems.
So, when are we seeing videos from *Linus Electrician, Plumbing and Construction Service Pvt. Ltd* ?? 😮😮😄
6:28 The thing about waterhammer is, that it's a thing because water can't be compressed. Air can be compressed easily, so airhammer wouldn't really be a thing i guess?
those motors, they dont want to be on all the time, and the way you have it set up they are on almost always. if you make it off when the ac is off globally that would be a lot better
"the home theatre has different cooling requirements"
Meaning his The Wall
On the WAN Show he said he's decided not to get The Wall.
@@71prim8 The Wall has some insane needs and maintenance is a nightmare atm they do look nice though
Sunlight glints off a golfer's hat; circuit breaker trips.
The idea in your video is decent, but I would highly recommend going away from wifi, I had so many issues over time with wifi randomly when I set up my home system. I use Delta between occupied rooms with temp sensors in each room that I just poked through the ceiling of each room. I tried using occupancy sensors but had too many issues with false detection, so I went simpler and just assigned rooms manually and then have schedules that predict which rooms are occupied via time of day. So for example during the day when I am home working based on my work schedule, it predicts I will be in the office during those hours, so it reduces the delta between target temperature set for that room as a priority, but after work hours it shifts to the living room and kitchen and such. Then to add automation for prevention of overheating in my office during off-peak hours like if I am gaming or something, there is a predetermined peak delta allowed, before it overrides and cools the room down.
I've been in the HVAC/R industry for 24 years and the best advice i can give is hire a professional. The company i work for makes a lot of money off of people who say " i watched a youtube video" so be careful.
Those thermostats are “outdated” as you your said but they are literally the best thermostat you can own. Mercury stats literally last FOREVER
exactly. Old is Gold.
Mercury, concentrated nitric acid, and anhydrous ethanol 👁👄👁 nilered reference.
That's similar to what I'm going to do in my next house but there are a few things to consider.
First of all, A/C efficiency hugely depends on the ability to transfer heat through radiators. This means that the more airflow you have over the evaporator, the more efficient it gets. If it's not enough, then you will be wasting energy and you even have a risk of freezing the evaporator. This means that you have minimal amount of airflow to make it work. There's a reason there are multi stage air conditioners. Call for cooling from single room? Run single stage. Two rooms? Two stages. More rooms? All three stages. This way you will not run more cooling that you are able to use with just a single duct to a single room. That's why retrofitting single stage units with dampers sometimes makes it perform much worse. You have to figure out if you have enough throughput on a single duct to do this. Otherwise you'll have to make something smarter that will pick two or more zones that need the cooling the most to let it have enough air. Alternatively you can replace the blower to have higher air pressure but this will make it louder and use more electricity again. It's not that easy with single stage AC and the best solution is to increase the size of air ducts if you really don't want to replace it with multi stage unit. If you plan on replacing the unit, you can probably get 2-3 stage unit that would easily be controlled with such smart system and would know how much cooling to use. Think of it. If the unit is enough to handle 5 vents at full power, then where the power goes when you leave only one of them open? You can't move that much heat to the coil so it is too cold, makes it harder for compressor and may freeze condensate on the coil further reducing the airflow. Not good.
Second thing are air returns. If you have completely separate zones and you are blowing air to particular room, you either have to keep doors open all the time or have air return in the same room for air circulation. It has to go somewhere.
Next thing is presence awareness. As good as it may sound, it might be horrible idea. Imagine that you want to go to bed but there was nobody in the bedroom for the whole day. How much you will have to wait for the room to cool off? Everything stores the heat so it's not just a matter of cooling down bunch of air. You have to wait for all furniture and walls to Algo give off the heat to feel comfortable. For such use it's usually better to run scheduler and maintain the temperature before you want to use the room. Set it to cool down the bedroom two hours before you usually go to bed and then reduce the cooling before you plan to wake up. Why would it run for half an hour after you left the bedroom? You will be back in the evening. With your idea you will get to hit room and when it will start to cool off you will no longer be there. Kind of pointless.
Next thing to consider might be electricity zones. It depends if you have fixed electricity rates or not and if you have solar panels or not. If you have some preferences, it's usually better to use cooling when it's cheaper. Your house is huge accumulator and we will be going this direction with increasing amount of solar energy. We already have this problem. Most electricity is used in the morning when people wake up and go to work, then evening when they are back, run cooling, cook stuff etc. The most electricity from sun comes in the middle of the day when it's not that useful. It's just a matter of time when we'll start to encourage people to run cooling during the day when they are not at home so that they don't suddenly have to cool off the whole house in the evening when there's not much solar power anymore. Run cooling when electricity is cheap, use your house as a battery storing the "coolness" from cheap period of the day.
Let's add something more. It's commonly called economizers. Imagine that it's quite warm in your house and you are calling for cooling but it's cool outside. Why not just blow the warm, used air out and take fresh air in? That's another great thing. Not only it will reduce your needs for cooling/heating but it will make your air in the house fresh. Typical house A/C is running in closed loop, that's not great. It would be even better to have minimal air replacement configured. Force the house to ventilate at least for some time during the day. Want to make it more efficient? Use recuperator. Heat exchanger that will use used warm/cool air to heat/cool the fresh air that you are blowing into your house. Some additional savings.
There's a lot of stuff than can be done and a lot of it is already done in industrial applications. Simple nobody cares about small consumer units so the price of such system is not worth the savings.
The thing I want to make at some point is free for all system that would let you configure such complex system easily with not much skill. Just simple instructions which boards to use, how to load and program it, how to connect it to some nice UI and it's done. The whole challenge is to gather all information what to buy, what to look for and how to configure that. What cost to expect and if you need any proprietary software. Obviously any cloud is out of option. This is your house, it should be self sufficient and not rely on AWS or your internet to control things.
There's a lot that can be improved and a few things you have to consider. Otherwise you may be surprised by your bills going up. Closing all vents to cool down single room is usually not efficient. Typical AC is scaled for the house, not single room. It can't efficiently cool down only single room. Well, unless you have so bad unit that it can't handle the whole house and you have to pick which room to cool. You will probably get better electricity bills if you force the system to run AC with at least a few vents open. Never run it on just a single vent. Poor man's solution - measure the surface area of your main duct and air vents. Count how much vents you need open to have the main duct being the bottleneck. To do it like a pro, calculate the airflow you should provide for the system including all other variables, clogged filters, bends and other resistance. Then define how much vents you need open or scale them up for your needs. For example if you mostly use two rooms and you want to be able to direct all the air there, replace the duct with bigger one. When all flaps are closed, this one will be cooled down quickly.
Ah, one more things. Ever heard about short cycling? Make sure you don't force your AC to start and stop all the time. The unit designed for the whole house is hugely oversized for single room which will lead to short cycling if you don't control that. It would be much better if it would switch between all rooms needing cooling and when all of them are satisfied, then turn off. Now you know that none of them will call for cooling for awhile. Otherwise one will stop cooling and one minute later next one needs it. Again, poor man's solution is to have limited number if startups in an hour or fixed cool down after each stop. Just finished cooling one room and now another wants cooling? Too bad, you will wait 5 minutes until it starts up again. That's why multi stage units are that good. By reducing the power you can keep it running longer without the need to turn off and on. Still, they can ramp up the power of you really need a lot of cooling. Obviously this would be fairly complex of not impossible for simple home automation and that's what I'm going to make at some point. Standalone system that does not take just heat/cool signal from thermostat. It will take outside air temp, each room air temp, settings for each room and it will know how much power/stages to use to avoid turning on and off. Later on it can calculate average energy loss/gain to know how fast each room can be cooled/heated and how much losses it has. Now you know the temp difference, room inertia and typical energy loss so you know how much cooling power does it need to maintain the temperature without short cycling. You have that for each room so you can overlap the data and nicely switch dampers to keep running it consistently. Only when there is nothing to cool down it would stop and even then it can estimate that soon you are going to bedroom so instead of turning it off for a few minutes, it can already keep on cooling the bedroom. It will be more efficient that stopping it just for a few minutes anyways.
The heating systems are very interesting for me who lives in a tropical country
Linus, Your Heating system and hot water tank are about as efficient as a 1969 mustang
sidenote from someone dealing with presence detection for years at home. Motion sensing does not work in "living" rooms eg. office/bedroom/gaming room. you might be sitting at the pc for some hours or just laying in bed, and no motion sensor can detect that reliably. Only solution i found is having a ble chip or phone with bluetooth enabled by you at any time and running "room-assistant". this of course works for lights as well and makes light switches obsolete.
for non "living" rooms like hallways, toilets etc motion sensing is definitely a good option.
I use to think Linus was rich for having graphics cards. Now I think he's rich for having lumber.
It kind of just hit me that for every video I've watched of Linus in his new house, I'm actually helping him pay for the house
I suggest a temperature sensor in your air handler…(fan, with the coil) after the coil so that if the supply temperature gets below say 45-50 then it kills the compressor…. This is because if it gets too cold it can freeze the coil solid, also normally the lowest we go in industry is 53…. It’s an old timers thing but if the temperature gets too cold in the duct the outside of it will sweat which can cause mold…. The other thing you want to be able to set is the outside air temperature that allows cooling…. If it’s too cold outside the super heat gets messed up and the refrigerant doesn’t turn to a vapor and you attempt to compress an incomprehensible fluid, which scroll compressors take ok, but over time it’s a bad deal….. you can also set up unoccupied set points so that if nobody is in the room and it gets really cold nothing freezes/it doesn’t take 2 hours to get back up to temp……oh you can also set up a status for both the boiler and the fan and the compressor if you tell it to run and the status is off it could send you a text message, same for room temps if it gets past a set point then an alarm can be sent out…… you should also be able to trend things that can help with diagnostics….. you can also open and close your blinds based on temperature, something simple that I want to do at my house because my hvac system is just a boiler (same as mechanics driving crappy cars)but program a light to turn on if it is warm in the room and the outside air enthalpy is lower than the inside air……sorry to ramble just some ideas
This is what happened whan linus try to watercooling his house