18,000 S.F. home - where to begin?

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO BUILD A HOUSE THAT SIZE?
dO YOU PLAN ON INVITING OVER THE GIANTS OR THE JETS?

I agree with the chiller,but alot of times we have a problem locating it with the outside living areas,andwho want to look at that.

A house that size about 7 to 10 million, more if the
finish out is top notch.

I still think multiple units, because some parts of the
house will not be used except for guests, some other
parts for big parties. If one unit quits, the others
can manage. If the chiller goes down, you are totally
out of luck.

Quote:

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Originally posted by paulnj1976
begun the design process for a new house
18,000 total heated and cooled square feet
-- main house (first and second story) ~ 11,000 S.F.,
finished basement 3,000 S.F.
and finished attic (third story) 3,000 S.F.

The house is in New Jersey. I desire radiant in-floor heat, and central A/C with all supplies on the ceiling. First question... should I be getting a commercial HVAC contractor in here? I want a top-quality job, nothing that I'm going to have to go back and "revisit" after it's done.

Second question... I'm confused about whether I entertain the idea of one big air-cooled chiller with several air-handlers for the central A/C, rather than have like 10 individual split-systems. Really good humidity control is really important to me.
-Paul

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Large Split Systems + dehumifiers may prove more reliable.

14,000 SQ. Feet NET may only need ~ 26 tons ( 7 or 8 systems) in N.J. .. depending on amount of glass,
house orientiation, infiltration, insulation, ..., ...

NOT All that difficult of a design task..
only Very Time Consuming.

NEED REAL Assistance,
E-mail: racingdan11 at comcast dot net

No way would I want splits. I would go with the chiller. It is not very likely that both stages of the chiller will go down at the same time. The cooling tower can be hidden by trees a fence etc. You will need to find a good water treatment company to service the system.

Or you have an air cooled unit outside.

I have seen large estate homes here with both chillers or multiple DX splits.

If you go with 15 split systems and you end up with each one of them 1/2 a ton too big,you are then 7.5 tons over sized.

Chilled water you can get exactly the righ amount of cooling where you need it.

Need to make sure a proper insulating job is done on the sprawling pipe work.

Multiple DX spilts has an automatic redundancy.

Bottom line, if you can afford to build 18,000 square feet you can afford an engineer who will design the right system for you. Make sure he has worst case humidity issues allowed for.

Please hire a Mechanical Engineering Firm for the mechanical system design of this home. You will only be disappointed in the long run if you dont, pay out the butt for operating costs.

On the front end, it sounds like a great applicaiton for 4 pipe VAV system for total comfor control.

regards

You also need a consultant to build the thermal shell properly. Doing so is the best investment you can make, because when you do, you decrease the size and cost of the HVAC equipment, lower monthly bills, increase comfort, improve IAQ, and increase durability. Once the thermal shell is built, it never needs maintenance.

15 units, one for every 1000 sf?? look, get a competent designer and tell him how you expect to zone the house for cooling. 30 thermostats?? find a design/build contractor that is VERY comfortable working on that type of scale or you WILL be sorry. don't leave it up to the ham & eggers or the lowest bidder. there are a lot of wonderful products that can do what you want if you get the right person to submit the options to you, up to and including systems that will feedback temps and allow adjusments from your home computer.I am all for multiple units for the same reasons mentioned above. don't put all your eggs in one basket and all that... good luck

I would go geothermal without a doubt. There will be no outdoor equipment or outdoor equipment noise. You could use it to make your radiant floor heat and then have heat pumps where you don't need radiant heat. You will get free domestic hot water in the summer time.

I don't think I would be too worried about dehumidification. In a house that size with that many units some units will always be running to dehumidify and cool the air.

For the control system- you can have anything you want. Are you going to have a central intelligent system for sound and security and whatever? We work on a monster estate that recently installed a system with a bunch a touch pads everywhere. We installed aprilaire thermostats that tied into the automation system. You can go to any touch pad and get information on any system that is tied in. pretty slick

brent

brent you better be worried of RH in a home that size

we do houses like that frequently in the Hamptons--long island ny--if you are interested, i can design the job for you--zoning,boilers,radiant,manuel js,cfms,etc.--contact-ldrew007@yahoo.com----you have one chance to do your home comfort systems right--we typically use multi condensers --some of our jobs have 10 units and 2 boilers

I have seen avoidable disasters because the mechanical enginneer and bldg engineers couldnt stay on the same page to the dieing end of the project.
Bringing in a mechanical engineer may be desirable, I suggest if you have 2 or more engineers on the project especially that have never worked together previously to get every detail of responsibility possible in writing before hand. Remedies also if possible in writing if they come to logger heads over something. It sure does happen and the project will suffer.