I'm currently building a sip home in central TX where, as you can imagine, HVAC is typically calc'ed for cooling in the summer. This home will involve a geo heat pump, which to my understanding provides fairly sufficient heat for our winters which rarely get below 30F for more than a night at a time. With this arctic blast that has crossed the country, we had a high of 28f with a low tonight of 14F, quite cold for down here. Today, the electricians barely had to run their space heater to make the inside warm enough to work comfortably in. So my question: for sizing and selecting a wood stove, the only heat source other than the geo hp, how much should I down size from the manufacturers square footage heating estimates? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Cmunsin3,
I'm up here in the Rocky Mountains near Rocky Mountain National Park, and the last two nights it has been at least 30 below. I have infloor heat and a Fireplace Xtrordinair. We have been heating the house easily with just the fireplace. The infloor heat kicks on during the night when the fireplace runs low on wood. If it drops to just 0 degrees, the heat doesn't come on. Yes, I have a SIP house. I would suggest to downsize about 25% or so, and just make a fire big enough to be comfortable. Just don't make a too big a fire so you don't have to open some windows. Start small, and add wood as needed. At night, fill it up and damp it down to burn most of the night.

Steve
GrandCountySIPs.com

thanks Steve. That sounds awfully cold!

If you downsize the geo hp you will also be downsizing the same unit you are using for cooling. I'm in Mobile AL so I do understand what you are going through with the cold. I heated the entire house with the fireplace by just turning on the furnace fan. The return air is in the same room as fireplace. Have they changed something in geo hp to use two separate compressors?

No, no change re: the geo unit... I'm only interested in properly sizing the wood stove....