I've spent a lot time reading here, but not really posting. I got a lot of valuable information about green building, and used that info to make decisions on the house I'm building. I'm getting pretty close to finishing my net-zero home, hopefully in the next 6 weeks. I building a 1600 square foot ranch home, over a basement with at additional 1600 sq/ft. The basement is ICF, with 4 inches of foam beneath the floor. The first floor I used SIP panels for walls and roof. I have 3 inches of concrete on the first floor over the basement for thermal mass, and oriented for passive solar gain. I'm putting 10 KW of solar on the roof and I will be grid-tied. I had planned on doing radiant floors, but I ran into a lot of trouble finding anyone to do it where I live, a very rural part of Kansas. I finally opted for a regular ducted heat pump, although it wasn't my first choice. I'll be polishing the concrete floors in the next few days, and hopefully the cabinets and doors are soon to follow. Anyway I just thought that I'd share my process with anyone that is interested, and perhaps give back some from my experiences since I received a lot of help from people on these forums. Thanks!

If you have some pictures, please post or link them!

They could install a heat pump but couldn't figure out the two pipes to the radiant floors?

Thanks for sharing.

Sounds like you're almost done, and I bet it's been quite an experience to get to this point. I second Lbear's request for pics!

OK I will get some pictures soon! And yes, I got a bid for $70,000 to do the radiant floor heat, and $17,500 for the heat pump. I had waited for 2 months for the bid, and it was holding me back. There are very few options out here, as there are only 4,500 people in my whole county. Wichita is 200 miles away, which is the nearest city. I maybe could have found someone, but I was tired of waiting, and homeless... so I took the ducted heat-pump.

Posted By jholloway17 on 25 Feb 2015 12:34 PM
OK I will get some pictures soon! And yes, I got a bid for $70,000 to do the radiant floor heat, and $17,500 for the heat pump.

$70,000 for in-floor radiant heat! That's insane. What is the payback/ROI for that? Maybe 100 years?