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

[uktra]

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.

[madmark]

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

[brent]

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

[drk]

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

[mojoman]

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

[frank shelley]

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.

[du mech eng]

oops

[Edited by du mech eng on 07-14-2005 at 12:41 PM]

[du mech eng]

i vote for geothermal heat pumps with hot gas reheat to control humidity. as brent said, you could run your radiant off them as well as domestic hot water. but definitely get a reputable design build firm or mechanical engineer involved on a project of that size no matter what system you choose. by the way, where in NJ are you located?