Exclusive ventilation heating in the prefabricated house

Is it sensible to heat a single-family house (approx. 140sqm) (insulation with Kfw55 standard, triple-glazed) exclusively with ventilation heating? What are the differences between the prefabricated house manufacturers Weberhaus (Proxon), Proxon sales (Zimmermann ventilation) and Schwörerhaus (heat recovery 134 BPHK)? Which system is better? Why?

Would a geothermal exchanger be useful for both?

Is an additional domestic hot water heat pump needed for both systems?

In which rooms are additional electric heaters needed?

Hello,

it would be helpful if you would complete your profile!

Regarding your questions, they can be answered in a similarly meaningful way as the question of whether you should buy a red or black car. If you want to receive information from the builders here, it is advisable to precede the questions with an explanation of the current status quo, so that the users even know which part of their experiences could be helpful.

Rhenish greetings

In my opinion, a pure ventilation heating system does not make sense, but it is sold as THE innovation by Schwörerhaus/Bien-Zenker etc. (it just makes a prefabricated house cheaper...). By choosing it, you give up (forever) underfloor heating and can never later change the energy source (gas, electricity, etc.). With a "classic" underfloor heating system, you can switch from gas to an air-water heat pump or vice versa. I would not want to give up this flexibility. Another disadvantage is that with ventilation heating, the heat comes from above out of the wall. That means the floor is generally a few degrees cooler.

We have been living in a Schwörer house Kfw 70 with ventilation + ventilation heating for two years. I agree with you that I was also skeptical at the beginning about whether and how it works – especially because of electricity consumption and the bad reputation of "electric heating." Now, after 2 years, I am satisfied with the system; at first, it was difficult to find the right settings for comfortable warmth + low consumption, but that simply requires experience over time.

Overall, you first have to get used to the certain sluggishness of the system (in winter, the heat pump runs 24/7, but the auxiliary heaters in each room very sparingly). Above all, you quickly have to say goodbye to the decades-ingrained habit of "come home, room cold, turn on heater, room gets warm," otherwise it becomes a money pit. The system works differently here than simply turning up normal radiators. The orientation of the house (for us, southwest) as well as large windows in the living room are also important so that we can still benefit from the winter sun.

As an additional "quick solution" if we want more heat quickly, we still have a wood stove in the living room. Since we live in a village, wood is not a problem. Our average temperature in winter is about 21–23 degrees. Since the system is relatively straightforward, there are almost no parts that need maintenance. Only the air filters of the ventilation need to be replaced.

In the future, it is planned to expand the house with a photovoltaic system so that ideally, especially in winter on sunny days, we can use our own electricity directly for heating. If by then energy storage has progressed further, that would also be worth considering. This is where the advantage of electric heating over water-based systems comes into play – I can feed the generated energy directly into the house network without detours and convert it into heat.

All in all, for me, the often-invoked ghost of the ultra-evil electric heating has lost its terror – last year, we consumed about 5500 kWh for hot water, ventilation, and heating.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention above.... The living comfort due to the central ventilation is, to put it mildly, p-h-e-n-o-m-e-n-a-l. Nothing stinks, you don’t wake up in the early morning to the usual night stench, you don’t need to tilt the windows (I do that once every 3 months so the seals don’t stick). After cooking, the cooking smell is gone again after about 30 minutes. No mosquitoes ruining your night, less pollen burden in the house - no yellow residue like before. After showering, there is no condensation running down everywhere.

We have a single-family house with a gable roof in our village, which is completely laid out with translucent elements in the attic area; the air warmed by the sun is utilized there, I will take a photo of it on occasion... Although in my opinion it looks sh...., the owners are very satisfied with it and it works very well and efficiently