Hello!  Long time lurker here.  Sorry in advance for the super-long post.  After another winter of cold feet and an essentially unusable basement, I am looking into my whole-home heating options.  Some background info: 

• My home is a 1953 bungalow, with 1000 sq. ft. on the ground floor and the same size basement, so 2000 sq ft. total conditioned area. 
• The basement slab is uninsulated, and is ~6" thick, with 8" foundation walls.
• Main floor is oak hardwood over fir subfloor, ~1.5" total thickness.
  
• I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and after some Googling I have determined that we have ~8100 degree days.
• I've done a rough calculation of the heat loss of the house - UA = 789, design loss is 79689 and year loss is 153 million BTU.
• Temperature in the house is 19C/67F during the heating months.
• There is no AC in the house, and none is planned for.  Summer cooling consists of opening some windows and drinking a couple of gin and tonics.
• We will likely be installing a high-efficiency gas fireplace on the main floor.
  

I've contacted a couple of on-line vendors to quote me on a  system that would heat both levels of the house.  The spec is for two zones [main floor and basement], fuel is natural gas, no solar, no geothermal.  Materials were in the $5,000 USD range without a heat source or installation.  "Ballpark" quotes from local vendors are in the neighborhood of $30,000+ USD installed [closed loop staple-up + tubing in over-poured slab or plywood subfloor].  Our other option is to install a new high-efficiency furnace and seal up all the antiquated ducting properly - this will cost about $6000 USD, but won't really help keep the basement warm.  I'm not too bad at DIY stuff, but I would leave the 2" slab pour and final plumbing to professionals.  I should be able to install the PEX myself and can definitely handle any wiring or framing needs.

I've been seeing a few posts saying that open systems are bad, but the online vendors still seem to recommend them, even powering them with my existing 36,000 BTU/40 gal. water heater.  Given all that info, what do y'all recommend?  What would you do if it was your house?

People who want to sell you things, tell you what you want to hear. Check with your local code officials before buying products. The tubing is the easy part. People call me when they get stuck at the manifold and often spend more than they budget for. Ask your local contractors about "open" heating systems, health hazards, maintenance etc. Check out the Combi1 by Bradford White and consider Euro-panels for the main level. Nobody wants scorched air if they don't also need AC.

Thanks for the reply!  The local vendors typically do commercial installs and/or large residential projects in new builds, so maybe they are having trouble scaling down their typical installs to my little house.  ????  There's a guy at my wife's office who wants to do radiant in his basement - it's similar square footage, and his estimate was $23k.  I'm interested to know which local vendors he has been talking to.  When it comes to contractors, I have developed a "trust no one" policy until such time as I can see their work, get 2nd, 3rd, 4th opinions...

I was thinking about the Europanels, but more for the basement than the main level.  On the main floor I have little wall space, as the layout is fairly open.  I would prefer not to do a ceiling mount.  The basement walls are much easier to work with in terms of installing a surface mount heating application.  I don't know how much heat I'd need to warm the space, but it would definitely save some $$ on the floor pour.

The Combi1 looks promising as a dual-duty heat source.  I'm having a hard time finding a price.  Our hot water heater died in November, so we had a Bradford White Defender installed - $1200 for a 36k BTU 40 gal unit.  Anyone care to ballpark a Combi1 price for me?  USD or CAD, doesn't matter.  Also, assuming I went with a closed system, given the size of the heating load, would it be just as easy to go with a second hot water heater as opposed to a condensing boiler?

Open systems are a bad idea on a couple of fronts- water stagnation & microbial growth potential is one, but constant replenishment of the heating water with fresh is also corrosive to pumps & valves, requires filtering, (sometimes) descaling the heat exchanger on the burner, etc.- it just adds to the maintenance with little measurablel benefit. They're legal here in Massachusetts, but only when there is a guaranteed minimum duty cycle to the circulation pumps for stagnation abatement. (I wouldn't do it, myself.)

You don't say whether/how-well the basement is insulated, but that definitely needs some careful thinking & attending-to before going with wall-mounted Euro-panels. I'm sure building codes have changed dramatically since the '50s- make sure it's fully up to snuff first! With a staple-up for the first floor and well insulated basement walls with minimal window area the heat loss out out of the slab will likely be your biggest heat loss, but still pretty low if it's below the frost line. If the basement walls are insulated with R13 fiberglass batts (or less) it's worth upgrading no matter what you do for heating the space. Check local code for proper use of vapor barriers when working below grade- it's not always as simple as we'd like.

The basement was refinished in the early 90's, so it has insulation, carpet, lighting from that era. I was planning to gut the entire space and insulate the heck out of it. I would want a minimum R20 on the walls, and 1" of EPS under the PEX and new slab. The slab is 5 - 5.5' below grade and at least 1.5' below the frost line [according to the structural engineer who evaluated the foundation last year]. Vapor barrier is required pretty much everywhere, but standard 6 mil is up to code. The water table here is relatively low - there's no obvious evidence of moisture intrusion, even with some heavy rain in the last couple of years. Of course, I won't know what's really going on until I pull off the drywall. Windows are minimal, and act more as escape points than anything else.

So, I'm thinking of a closed system with a heat source matched to the heat load [80k is too high, I think - needs to be properly calculated], lots of wall insulation in the basement regardless of hydronic or europanel. Is staple-up okay given the 1.5" floor thickness? Say, 1/2" lines spaced 8" apart [joists are 16" OC]. 1" EPS, 1/2" pipe spaced 12" apart under a 2" pour. Reasonable?

Whether the 1.5" of wood has too high an R-value to deliver the design-day heat load in every room is something you'll have to determine from a careful heat-load analysis. It almost works in my house with 140F water, half-inch PEX on 8" centers and 2.25" of wood (1.5" of plywood + 3/4" of birch) in a somewhat milder (6800 degree-day) climate than yours, in a fairly lossy room with far more glazed area than I'd prefer. I'd bump up the water temp to MAKE it work if there wasn't sufficient supplemental heat from a doored archway to another room served by a different zone. It never drops below ~17C at shoulder-height in there when it's -20C outside, even with the archway doors closed. (I could always get rid of the antique Persian rug that covers 40% of the floor area too, I s'pose. :-) ) My design-day temp is actually -15C, and the 24 averaged temp is very rarely below -12C. But your construction is probably not as lossy as my worst-case room, even if you experience bigger design-day loads. But you have to calculate the loss for every room to know where it works, and where it might need a bit of help.

If the floor can't deliver the full design-day heat, a 2-stage thermostat to kick in a ceiling radiant or euro panels (or even baseboard) can work. But do the analysis. It may turn out that you can run 80C water in there to deliver the design-day load when needed and still operate with far lower water temps much of the season (using outdoor-reset controls). If the system can't deliver return water to the boiler under ~50C most of the season the benefits of a condensing boiler is minimal, but temperature/burner modulation to match the load still counts. The rule of thumb is ~3% fuel savings for every 5C you can lower the water temp, but below ~50C the savings ramp up dramatically in boilers with condensing heat exchangers. Design the heating system to run at lowest temperature possible (always- or almost always.) If it's still not low enough to rationalize a condensing boiler you'll need to design in protection for the boiler to KEEP it from condensing, if it's not a condensing-tolerant type (like cast iron), which is why water heaters & combi systems are getting designed in more frequently in radiant designs (they're inherently condensing-temp tolerant by design, even if not designed as space heating boilers.) There are caveats when going that route, but it can be done reasonably if the designer & operator know what they're doing.

Thanks Dana1, that gives me even more to think about. :-)

Hi Pinkrobe. I have the exact same house you have in Edmonton and did what you want to in 2005, (except for the fireplace). Because I wanted to move out of this house and use it as a rental (I also put a kitchen in the basement), as a future goal and build my (SIP) dream home, I chose not to put a fireplace in. I did everything myself and the system cost me under $5000 with boiler and later indirect fired hot water tank. I have a neighbour who has an account at Wolsley and was able to get me the parts at his cost so that helped quite a bit. I took out the 1952 original furnace that gave very uneven heat (got hot then cold) and gave me high gas bills. (it was a huge sucker). I also replaced all house windows and doors and added a patio door where a window once was. I used half inch heatpex stapled about 2 to 3" down from the underside of the subfloor up and down each joist both sides so each bay had two strips of pex. (If I were to do it again I would add an extra loop all around the perimeter of the house. Not a big deal but would help where you have a big heat loss, the windows. I have friend who did his house too and added that extra loop.) I then stapled up double bubble foil 2" underneath the pipes and finished that off with R20 insulation and then drywall. Down the center of the basement I have a beam that I had to drop the ceiling for so I took advantage of this area and made it a hallway and dropped the ceiling for the length of the whole hallway and used removable tiles (sonoflex) there for the ceiling. I am lucky in that I had an 8' basement ceiling in this old house. Many houses of this vintage do not have ceilings this tall. That is where I built a long manifold out of 3/4" pipe and tees off of it for supply that made a loop. I also built one beside it in the same way for the return, but it was a mirror image of the supply. This had something to do with making sure that the system was not short circuited. You do not want the water to take the path of least resistance. I put expensive valves on the in and out of each loop just in case areas were warmer or colder I could temper the valves. Almost 4 winters now and never needed to touch any of the valves I put in the system. Each loop is about 200 feet. I avoided areas above that had cabinets or closets or the refrigerator above them, and around the toilet wax ring. (I did put it under the tub though, in my new house, the plumbers did not put any tubing under the tub areas. Not sure why though, anybody know?). The whole house is hardwood and the kitchen and bathroom are ceramic. I later carpeted the two upper bedrooms mostly as a noise reducer to the basement with no perceivable loss in heat comfort. (surprisingly). I ran the whole upstairs off a pump running off of a primary loop controlled by a Tekmar. Since I gutted the basement and rebuilt it, I put the 2x4 walls off of the concrete wall by 3-1/2" and then stacked insulation behind it laterally in a brick pattern. That gave me a thermal break between the back of the studs and the concrete. (Oh yeah I also blew in attic cellulose to R60 myself for $300) Home Depot lets you use their machine for free if you buy from them. Then I insulated between the studs 16" OC that gives me about 7" of insulation and an R 24 I believe. I also insulated the rim joist very well. The original basement had very little insulation up there and was a great heat loss area. I added 2" of Styrofoam over the stucco and sided over it with vinyl siding. I ran the basement off of a zone valve connected to a thermostat. I used Honeywell digital thermostats that let you set the temp by 1/2 a degree increments and show the actual temperature. Even on the coldest of days the house is upstairs and down completely even heat to within a degree of set temperature. (I am building a house right now and my wife and I so love radiant heat now we are doing our new 2 story walkout with radiant heat including the garage and basement floor.) For the basement I ran 1/2" pex from in and out manifolds from the zone valve that have apex line that goes to each 2 foot radiator and then back. I put 2 radiators in each of 2 bedrooms. I put 3 in the rec room, one at the end of a hallway, one in the bathroom and one in the laundry room. So there are 10 - 2 foot long radiators all on exterior walls. Because my walls were so far from my concrete I had room to build the radiators into the wall. I built boxes for them and framed them into the studs. I ran the pipes from above and down to each radiator and back. To finish them off nicely I covered them with return air vent covers (30" x 8" i believe). I needed big ones and the only supplier who had them that tall was Sinclair Supply. But it gives it a real finished look and no ugly radiators to stare at. Furniture can go right up against a wall in front of the radiator too. My kids had their beds right against one of them in each of their rooms. I overkilled on this job with copper and expensive valves and fittings. If i was to do it over I'm sure I could have cut off $1000 dollars. For the boiler I used the JVS-100 that cost me around $1000 with GST and for the hot water I used an Amtrol Boilermate WHS-60 that was about $700. I only added the hot water tank about 2 years ago. My fuel bills have dropped in half while allowing us to now keep the house at a comfortable level from turning down the thermostat to save money like we did before. I investigated using a hotwater tank to heat the water instead of a boiler, but the price was not that much different, but the efficiency of a boiler blew away the hotwater tank. One of my main goals beside comfort was lower gas bills. I was able to do this set up for the boiler in an area of about 2 feet by 2-1/2 feet so I saved a lot of space over my old furnace room. My new "boiler" room with electrical and manifolds for pex going throughout the house is about 5 feet by 3 feet. Because the indirect fired hot water tank does not need to be next to the flue, I put it under the stairs which was really wasted space for us anyway and in a 1000 ftsq house you try to save as much space as you can. One thing I did notice is that many sites on the internet say with radiant you can turn the heat down a couple of degrees and you will feel just as warm. We did not find that. We set it at 21C and that is where we liked it. Sorry I seem like I am all over the place, but I am writing as things come to mind. Oh and I did add ducting and a HRV (the ducting as I was renovating and the HRV went in last summer) as I wanted to make sure that there was fresh air in the house. It always runs on low unless someone hits the timer in one of the bathrooms then it kicks into high. I believe it is code to have an HRV is you are going with radiant alone. I hope some of this information helps you out. If you need pictures I may be able to post some here(?). If you would like anymore information let me know. You will really enjoy radiant heat.

Gary, THANK YOU for your post!  That is exactly the type of info I was looking for.  For anyone reading, Edmonton [where Gary is from] is 300km straight north of where I am, and has significantly colder weather in the winter.  It sounds like your basement layout is exactly the same as mine.  Putting a manifold down the length of the hall is a great idea.

I've got a few questions for you:

• What type of radiators did you go with?  [brand, model]
• Why did you staple the pipe to the joists instead of directly to the subfloor?
• What size of boiler did you go with?
• What HRV did you go with? [brand, model]  Did you consider going with an Energy Recovery Ventilator?

If you have any pics of the install [especially the radiators], I would love to see them!

The 2' radiators were Slantfin fineline 30 baseboards. I bought them at Sinclair Supply . http://www.slantfin.com/product-fineline-30.html If memory serves me well I think I paid around $15 a baseboard heater, but I think they may have even doubled now with the cost of metal going up. For the radiator covers that I built into the wall I used 30"x8" return air grills by Imperial manufacturing (RG0104 30" x 8" WHT Baseboard Grille STD 10 WHITE 0 63467122739). http://www.sinclairsupply.ca/ Amre also has them http://www.amresupply.com/catpdfs/f175.pdf . I raised the radiators up so the bottom of the grill was 4" off of the floor so I could run the baseboards underneath the grills.

If you staple directly to the subfloor you get what is called "striping". This gives you hotspots of strips of heat. While researching this I learned that I can damage the hardwood this way. By bringing the tubes down 2" and then using double bubble foil 2" below the tubes and tape all seams to create a dead air space you heat the 4" cavity and then allow the heat to radiate evenly up. In the time we have had the radiant we have had absolutely no damage to the 3/8" oak hardwood. Some info here http://www.aimradiantheating.com/underfloor.html. Also I had a million little nails protruding 1/4" below the subfloor from the hardwood. I thought I was going to need to add humidity to the house and was planning to add a humidifier to the fresh air duct of the HRV. I was going to use the Honeywell steam unit because I can mount the humidifier on any wall and use the up to 25' hose to inject humidity into a duct. I will be using this unit at my new house. http://yourhome.honeywell.com/Consumer/Cultures/en-US/Products/Humidifiers/Humidifiers/Professionally-Installed/Steam/Default.htm . However we found that because the air was no longer being dried out by a forced air furnace we had plenty of humidity. We have a digital humidifier and found that to keep moisture off of the windows in the winter we had to keep the stove top vent running constantly. I don't know what it is like now as we have it rented out and this is the first winter we have had the HRV running, but I imagine that the HRV will keep the humidity down, by bringing in dry air and sending out moist air. HRVs have drains on them. The humidity can collect in them.

The boiler was the Laars/Teledyne JVS-100. http://www.laars.com/products/residential/details.asp?uniqueID=JVST I had it sized so I could also heat my water with it and also for a hot tub if I so later desired. (I lived in the house and reno'd it to rent, but I thought if that did not happen a hot tub was going in). However the house I am building, the plumber put in an IBC VCT 45-255, but this is a very high end unit. I love it but I think if I bought it though my buddy it would run me about $9000 for the boiler alone. That is a big boiler but they have a 15-150 which I think I could get for around $7000 I believe, but these are the Cadillac of boilers. 92% efficient. These boilers are way too big for a 1000 ftsq house. I was working on the condensing drain to route it to the sewer and I had disconnected the the exhaust and had it running. I smelt no exhaust - but all that seemed to come out was vapor. It did irritate my skin though, it must be acidic vapor. And the exhaust was warm, not hot. I found that very surprising. In my house with the JVS100, I am just running the system on water without antifreeze so I did not need a mixing pot. It is tied into the city water water supply with the necessary check valves and pressure reducers. It adds water to the system automatically as needed.

The HRV I used was similar to http://www.lifebreath.com/en/_dat/documents/residential.hrv/ti84rne.pdf . It wasn't the smallest, I believe it was the second smallest unit. They run about $1000, and that is not part of my boiler budget. I added it after, but did the ductwork with the renos. One of the dirtiest parts of the job was ripping out all of the old ductwork. I kept some of it and retrofitted it for the HRV system. This unit is not the exact make I bought but it is the same unit.r, but it was the exact unit. I believe Nu-Tech makes the HRVs and are rebranded as Lifebreath, Tradewinds, Honeywell, Lennox, Fresh-X-Changer, American Aldes, Raydot, Standex, Sears Authorized Indoor Clean Air Services, Nutone and Airflow. So you have a lot of "manufactures" to buy the same unit from. Some info here... http://www.marchmech.com/webapp/GetPage?pid=299. I put an intake in the upper and lower bathrooms (you do not need a fan when you have the intake in a bathroom), an intake on a far wall in the upper and lower living rooms, and fresh air vents in the inner wall of the upper and lower bedrooms and in the upper and lower hallways.

I had a hard drive crash a while back and lost all my pictures. Not a big deal, they are all backed up on dvds .... somewhere. Having moved out of my house and having everything in storage, I am at a loss to locate those pictures right now. Sorry about that. When I locate them I will post. I do renovations for a living so if you have any questions let me know. I hope this info helps.

Oh BTW do you have a masonry chimney chase? or do you have a metal B vent?

What water temps are you running Gary? suspended tube is typically a pretty high temp system which reduces your boiler efficiency and drives additional parasitic losses in many case. However in a very low load situation it works decently well.

Hey Gary - thanks for the details. That JVS-100 boiler is too big for my house. I should be able to run something about half that size [JVS-50], but I'll know better once I have a proper heat loss calculation done. Also, to answer your question, I have a masonry chimney that the exhaust from the furnace and hot water heater go to. Why do you ask? Also, I am interested in the temperature of your water for heating as well...

I just left it on the default that the Tekmar was set for.  The fellow who designed the system for me at the supply place said that I could leave everything in the default status.  I will check on the temp next time I am there.

if you have a reset system like tekmar on it, then also note what the outdoor temperature is when you take the reading.

I think I was borderline and opted for the 100.   My friend who did the same thing in his 1000ftsq 3 story house + basement does not have enough heat when we get the coldest of days.  I think his it a Laars/Teledyne, bigger than mine but cant keep up.  I did not want to have that problem and the price between mine and the one below it was minimal.  And hot tub was also in the back of my mind and I also use it now to heat the water.  My friend used a mixing valve on his and I used a primary injection loop, that may have somthing to do with it(???).  You might also want to use it to heat your water, if not now in the future.  The refresh rate is unbelievable and your gas bill drops.  Those old NG HWTs are so unefficient.  When we dont use hotwater, it is so well insulated that the boiler rarely comes on during the day (in the summer) to heat it.  Last summer I took the boiler apart to give the fins a good cleaning and had the boiler off for a good 6 hours on a saturday.  Then I went to take a bath forgetting that the boiler hadn't been running all day and still had enough hot water to take a bath.  I was amazed. 

About the masonry chimney, I took mine out.  It ran from from the basement through the upper bathroom.  Removing it I was able to take out the 18" vanity and replace it with a 30" vanity.  What a difference!  And with it gone in the basement I was able to gut the old bathroom and make a new bathroom right underneath the upper bathroom and make it the same layout as above except I was able to get a 36" vanity in the lower bath.  I ran a Bvent a bit over from where the old chimney was and it takes up very little room.

I'm posting some pics, I hope I do it right.  One is the living and dining room so you get an idea of what I have to heat.  Note no registers.  I have one of the basement bathroom you can just begin to see the heat register cover on the wall.  Most of it ended up behind the door.  The third one is the basement living room.  This shows a good picture of what the heat registers looks like.  If you look in the ceiling there is a vent, (not to be confused with the potlights) and I believe that is a fresh air duct from the HRV.  (may be intake I cant remeber offhand).

guys it sounds like it's "ballparking o'clock" here with boiler sizing.

boilers last a long time. Oversizing them makes them very inefficient. Please never invest this kind of money in a heating system without someone doing a heat load calculation and actually sizing the boiler.

A 50 is very small, but that's 42,000 BTUs/hr of output. Pretty hard to think any house that is insulated has a 42 BTU/sq ft average heat load: if your friends' house is not keeping up, his heat load is ridiculous or his heat system is not set up properly. Either way, that's a problem that needs to be rectified, not a problem with boiler sizing. I can't imagine a 1000 sq ft house that should use a larger boiler unless you had to for DHW production.

Yes it has an outdoor reset.  Will do.

Enclosed some more pics.  Bedroom with carpet (over the excellent hardwood LOL), upper kitchen with ceramic flooring.  And upper bath with ceramic flooring.

Heating equipment that is grossly over-sized can actually operate well below their rated output by hitting their operating limit and short cycling to the point that no steady state is reached. This is more common in low-mass copper and condensing boilers. At a certain point, the bigger the boiler gets the less you get out of it AND your efficiency will suffer like city miles vs. highway miles on your car.

Every job I do, starts with a Heat Load Analysis as Rob correctly points out.

Its a 1000fts footprint but has 4 floors to heat.  His boiler is a 125 or 160 I think.  You don't think it is his boiler size.  You are right.  I remember talking to him a while back and he took it apart and the fins were all covered with that white powder (from combustion?) and blocking the exchange of heat .  He cleaned it up and his efficiency went back up.