Building new passive solar house in Snohomish County, Washington. Want to put in radiant floor heating in the unfinished (eventually finished) daylight basement and garage (which will store cars at night, but mostly used as wood working shop) Downstairs has 10' ceilings. Upstairs, 8/9' with the only vaulted part being in the kitchen/dining room. (Crawl space under west side of house) For upstairs, I was initially thinking LP forced air, or continuing radiant floor and combining with mini splits. Looking into solar panels.. Just not sure we can front the initially costs with trying to keep the house within 'budget'... So, I'm curious if propane or electric makes more sense for radiant floor heating? (perhaps more so if we also use mini splits?) We will run LP for occasional fireplace use in living and master bedroom. IF this was your house, what would you do? Upstairs is 2650sq', unfinished downstairs is 1080sq' and garage is just under 800sq'. Greatly appreciate any and all help figuring this out. Image of plans... Password is newhouse HousePlans

That doesn’t look like a passive solar design, but in your location you wouldn’t see much benefit anyhow. Likely LP gas will be your most economical fuel option. You can confirm that after doing a heat loss analysis and running the heat source and fuel options. A combination of hydronic radiant floor heating and mini splits might be good solution for you. We have a large amount of passive solar and hydronic radiant floor heating free DIY design software on our website if you are so inclined.

While we now live in southern Oregon, our son is an Edmonds WA police officer and a Snohomish County SWAT member. We lived in Renton WA when my husband worked at Boeing (35 years):

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Bob's Previous Boeing Career Highlights

Fortunately, he was able to successfully extract himself about five years ago when they drifted to the dark side:

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