Ok I am very new to this , only one other post, so be gentle...

I hope to have a  closed loop geothermal  heat pump  etc, installed by the end of the summer. I am having a little difficuty getting contractors  to look at the job (  closed loop in 200 x 200 garden in small city in Ontario Canada.)  and quote , but have started to contact heat pump manufacturers to push from there end , plus having an energy loss audit done on the house ( 2800sq ft)
3 floors inc basement. GFA heating, 50 year old duct work that is not able to supply hot air to  all of the house. The house was built in 1930's

There is  head room in the basement for hydronic in floor heating , but there are original nice wood floors on the other two floors.

I want to have whole house heated by the geothermal / hydronic system , with the only back up of   2  wood stoves  in the lounge and kitchen.

The house faces south , southwest and we intend to have a small solar assisted hot water system, as well as PV .

We dont want to go off grid, just getting ready for the pooh when the oil runs out.

What are the options on the other two floors? I have noticed talk of ceiling radiant heat and in/on wall panels, how efffective are these? I really dont want to loose the nice floors if I can help it.

Will open through vents  from floor to floor be any help?

The house has recently had new windows and extra insulation on the outside walls.

Thanks , hope this is posted in the correct forum.

* -11 c today

Open vents between the floors doesn't provide much heat even in a super-insulated house (which this probably ain't)


Is the reason the 50y.o. ducts won't deliver heat to the whole house because they don't GO everywhere, or is it that with the current heating system it isn't keeping up with the heat loss with the present heating plant or...??? (Most older ductwork is extremely leaky, but often repairable/sealable. It's unlikely that the existing ducts are the most-appropriate for a geothermal air handler & heat distribution though.)

If you have sufficient wall space, euro-panel radiators designed for low-temp heating may be OK, but at geothermal output temps that may turn out to be quite a bit of panel, depending on your true design-day heat loads are. The more likely alternative would be to go with radiant ceilings (assuming you don't have all of this really great plaster work to preserve, like your floors.) Which aren't quite a cushy as having warm floors, but has the same surface area and can deliver the requisite amount of heat at similar water temps- if geothermal radiant floor works in the first floor, geothermal radiant will almost surely work in the 2nd floor. Whether it works for the very top floor depends on the actual heat loss, which is typically higher (the roof adds significant exterior surface area.) In addition to an energy audit, you need to do a heat-loss analysis (manual-J or similar) to determine the heat load on a room by room and whole-house basis.

I't's typically more cost effective to boost the insulation and air-seal the place before sizing & buying the heating plant. Most 1930s vintage houses are pretty leaky and the heat load can often be reduced by half or more for far less money than the upsized heating system & 10 year operating cost of what it might need without the insulation/air-sealing improvements. If the basement doesn't have good insulation levels &/or the sill & band joists aren't insulated & sealed, odds are 20-30% of your current heat load is out the bottom. ( That would show up in any high-quality detailed energy audit.)

Most of the time the high installation costs of geothermal can't be rationalized where you already have a gas main. Being able to run higher water temps efficiently gives you more options too. Predicting when the oil runs out is a farcical business, but in all analyses there will still be significant natural gas supplies for centuries. Replacing a wheezing ineffective GFA system with something hydronic (even higher-temp hydronic) typically results in a 15%+ reduction in fuel use (it could be as much as 50% if the ducts are inducing large ouside-air infiltration due to pressure differences between rooms.) Going with low-temp systems like radiant and condensing boilers can get you a bit more. If air-sealing and better insulating the house can buy you another 25% (possible, maybe even likely) you may be ahead of the game from a carbon-footprint point of view, as compared to a geothermal system sized for your current heat load.

But every retrofit has it's own particulars & economics. See what the energy audit folks tell you.

You may want to run your own whole house energy analysis (courtesy of the US taxpayers.) If you go to http://hes.lbl.gov/ , and find a US city with a similar climate & latitude as yours (often then nearest township over the border will do, if you live within an hour drive of the border), plug in that zip code & answer the 201 questions about your house & utility rates, etc, and it'll generate a cost-benefit analysis for you (editable, so you can use real quote price or better estimates for the cost of various upgrades near you.) You may have to tweak some of your parameters to get the tool-projected fuel/electricity use to align with historical reality, but once you've got it within 25% the cost benefit analysis should be pretty reasonable. Most people find a few surprises. Note: They assign it a session number and store your data- you don't have to re-enter all the answers every time you want to come back to it.

hornysettler ( like the screen name lol ) i dont know where you are in ontario but buchanon and hall are good geo therm guys from startford ontario ( near waterloo ) ont good luck

Your dead right this aint a super insulated house.

The plan is to try and  reduce leaks that will show up through having the audit. The basement is completely finished to quite a good standard , so I am not sure what the wall insulation is like. The duct  network dose not reach all of the house and the most distant outlets are just  room decoration. The main duct  ( from the 5 year old Lennox furnace) is massive, impressive, huge, but it runs 3/4s of the way across the basement and stops, from there most of its branches are small round 6-8inch or the odd square  section that in places might even be a bit of tin covering the gap between two joists. It heats the hell out of the rooms directly above the furnace, and  very little anywhere else. There is a York AC that is I am told a couple of years old , at the side of the house, we dont do AC.

Hot water is from a 15 year old gas powered bit of junk on rental ,  we have not changed it as we have only had the house just under a year. I have spoken to the local energy supplier/monopoly and asked about gas on demand  water heaters and hydronic combi boilers, they dont recommend them  "as they are unpopular , dont work very well and we dont support them ... sir"

We lived for short time in Europe , I installed a combination boiler and  panel radiator system in the house we lived in , a local plumber / gas fitter told me what to do and then signed it off after a day of checking. all plastic  push fit  fittings. I do like hot water heating.

I like the idea of a green  geothermal solution  here , even though it may not  be as financially viable as  a gas  system ( gas has doubled in price since 2002 and I think will continue  in that direction,  but its nothing like the cost they pay in Europe).

Having stayed in a couple of houses in Vancouver that had hydronic under floor heating, we enjoyed the lack of blown air and the zone-less feel of the heat. 

I have been looking at the Bekausa site and as we are without  mouldings etc, hope that something like that might heat the house. Could we get enough heat distribution at the lower temp to be efficent? can this be used in the floor as well? They also seem to say that it can be used to cool the house as well!

Are there any other radiant heating options?

Thanks for the link, I will start on that this weekend.

As suggested  I will have the audit and leak test done , maybe this sent off to some of the local contractors will make them realise that we are not trying to waste there time.

Thanks for your response.

The amount of radiation area you need to run at geothermal heat pump water temps may exceed your floor area until you get your heat load way down. Maybe it's possible as a retrofit, but it's likely to be a challenging design. A greenest-possible modulating/condensing gas boiler (with an indirect-fired water heater tank controlled as a zone) will be much more flexible.

To answer your questions about whether the Beka panels can deliver the heat, you really need to do a manual-J heat load calc for each room, and see if you have sufficient surface area to meet the load.

Radiant cooling works well in climates where it's sufficiently dry (Ontario may be dry enough, but maybe not, Maryland isn't). In humid summer climates simply cooling without drying out the air results in condensation on the cool surfaces & high indoor relative humidity (with potential mold growth issues.) In conventional ducted air conditioning the bulk of the condensation happens at the cooling coil in the air handler and the condensate disposed of, providing a dual drying/cooling function.

It sounds as if the duct designer for your place was a hack. There are standards for this: http://www.acca.org/store/product.php?pid=91 . Done correctly, insulated, with mastic-sealed seams & joints and proper return paths delivering the proper balanced amount of heat to each room shouldn't be a problem. The ducts in your house can be rectified without major changes isn't clear- a qualified contractor would have to make that assessment.

Even if radiant floors/ceilings at geothermal temps can't deliver sufficient heat when it's -20C out, it's fairly common to design in a secondary system (baseboards or air handler coils) to make up the difference on the coldest days/hours. That way the radiant runs whenever there's a call for heat providing the cushy comfort, and the secondary system only kicks in when needed to deliver the rest when the radiant isn't cutting it. Whether that can work on using a fully geothermal system in your case is design-specific- you may still need higher-temps. (Hopefully you can find a contractor who can/will explore all of your options.)

ModCon boiler with indirect and I prefer Euro-panels to fintube or nasty fan coils. Radiant heat at lower water temperatures and excellent response time.

Biggest shortcoming of geo fired radiant is operating temps closer to 100*
So you do need greater radiation loop density. Higher temps=less radiation.
J