Hi everyone:

I'm in the design stages of our home and we are looking at heating sources...Radiant Floors were on our "want" list but now I'm not sure what the best set-up would be.

A little about the project:

- It's a 2500 sq foot Cape Cod style home with full basement.
- Located near Ottawa, ON (can get QUITE cold) in the middle of the forest.
- Other sources of heat include airtight high efficient fireplace on the first floor and well insulated walls (R30) and windows (double pane low-e w/argon)
- Gas is NOT available on the property
- Electricity rates are rising .. and so is propane.
- We would like to plan for future upgrades if prices of electricity and propane keep going up. Example: Outside Wood Furnace or Solar (a section of the lot is cleared for the septic and could be used for panels in the future).

We have read tons of books and forums and are torn on what we should install.

We were thinking:

- Radiant Floor in the basement and slab in garage (2 zones) - basement approx 1300 sq feet
- Boiler rather than a heater since we have a lot of sq footage to heat (right?)
- No clue for source of heat for 1st and 2nd floor

Now my confusion lies in how we can then incorporate green practices in our water heating.
I keep reading that on demand water circulation with a tankless water heater and a reserve hot water tank are the way to go but how does that fit in with a radiant system?

Does anybody have suggestions as far as setup? What about our other source of heat?

Happy Holidays :)

Stephanie

Have a read through the Geothermal forum posts. You might find that Geo-exchange will work for you, heating your in-floor radiant and blowing hot air for the other floors.  Adding in a desuperheater will help with domestic hot-water.  It's a pretty "green" way to go if your electricity grid isn't coal-fired (like in Alberta where I'm from).

I would LOVE to go geothermal and we actually crunched numbers after receiving a quick quote. I was sad to discover iit would take around 15-20 years to recuperate the cost. I'm pretty sure that in 10 years or so the technology will have evolved so I was thinking it would be smart to ensure an eventual move to solar or geothermal is possible but to not actually do it in the new construction.

There are also more retrofit grants than incentives for new homes in my area. Some people are buying used propane equipment when they build and then the year after they move to geothermal to take advantage of the grants. It's a pretty dumb system if you ask me...new homes should be encouraged to be "green" too.

Posted By Steph42 on 12/19/2009 10:50 PM
I would LOVE to go geothermal and we actually crunched numbers after receiving a quick quote. I was sad to discover iit would take around 15-20 years to recuperate the cost. I'm pretty sure that in 10 years or so the technology will have evolved so I was thinking it would be smart to ensure an eventual move to solar or geothermal is possible but to not actually do it in the new construction.

I figure going with geothermal right off the bat on a new home is the best way to start getting towards that ROI point. If ROI was my overriding concern and not green tech and eventual energy independence, then I'd do what most Albertans do -> natural gas. My non-expert view is that Solar PV has the most room for "breakthrough" efficiency and cost improvements while geo-exchange and solar thermal are more established technologies. That's why I'm just roughing in for Solar PV, probably not adding it for at least 5-10 years, but planning to install geo and solar DHW right-away.

There are also more retrofit grants than incentives for new homes in my area. Some people are buying used propane equipment when they build and then the year after they move to geothermal to take advantage of the grants. It's a pretty dumb system if you ask me...new homes should be encouraged to be "green" too.

Totally! I'm quite angry that the Canadian federal EcoEnergy grant is retrofit only, excluding new houses. I believe that the US grants are at-least double the amount of the Canadian ones and apply to new or existing homes. Given our current politicians, it's more likely that they'll shelve the program than expand it. So waiting 6 months after move-in with disconnected geo-exchange and solar DHW systems until we qualify as a "retrofit", then connecting the pipes and mounting panels is a bit of a gamble. Yet, somehow our politicians think throwing $2 billion at a silly-idea like carbon capture is a good use of tax dollars. The mind boggles...

Yeah, Natural gas would be the obvious choice for me as well but...it's not availabale and I was told it wouldn't be for a while where I am.

Has anybody heard of NTI's Matrix system? I figure it could be a possibility withour radiant floors...? http://www.ntimatrix.com/

Hello. Here's my opinion on how to spend your money.

Have a room by room heat loss calculation done to determine how many btus/hour each
room needs(based on how the house will be built). Assuming you can deliver the required heat with low temperature radiant, that's what I would do throughout the house. This will give you the most options for heat sources.
Also, make sure you do your research on radiant heating. There's a lot of ways to do it wrong and a few ways to do it right. Yes, the latter will cost more but IMO don't do it if your not going to do it right.

If your thinking about wood heat at all consider an indoor wood gassification boiler with a large thermal storage tank(water). The idea is to fire your boiler at maximum output with no idling. Storage makes this possible as well as giving a lot of heat to draw off of with no fire going in the boiler. Sized right you could have a set up where you only fire once a day at your convenience and take care of your domestic hot water(DHW) as well. Summertime DHW is easy as well with maybe one fire every 4-10 days depending on usage and size of storage. Low temp radiant heating would allow you to take full advantage of a system like this. If you can give up some basement space for this, you could have a great setup that doesn't require you to go out in the cold/wind/snow/rain.

Now, obviously this means dealing with firewood which as I see it is a great way to stay active and be in control your energy costs. Even buying cut/split firewood is still cheaper than the alternatives.


Here's a great site for more info on wood gasifiers and thermal storage:

http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewforum/21/

Food for thought anyway.

Good luck,
Noah