Ok I was out at the house today. It is a Tekmar 363 running the show. The boiler supply is at 119, the outdoor temp is 28, mix target is 109, and mix supply is 115.

Thanks for providing those numbers Gary!  All in Fahrenheit, I presume...

If not....my tenants would be living in hell.

Did my boiler pictures not show up?

One month later! Gary, your boiler pictures didn't show up.

I finally got a guy to come take a look at the house and give me an idea of what could be done. Note that all of these options require a full gut of the basement. This does not include any framing or finish work to the basement. Prices are in Canadian dollars, so knock off 20% to convert to US $.

Option #1: Replace the existing furnace and ductwork with a high-efficiency furnace and properly-designed ducting.
Pros - cheapest.
Cons - The basement would not be as warm as the rest of the house.
$12,000

Option #2: Hydronic radiant in 1.5" gypcrete in the basement, forced air upstairs using a 100k BTU boiler to heat DHW and the forced air [indirect + some sort of heat exchanger]. No need for an ERV.
Pros - He says it would be the most effective way to heat the basement and the upstairs, because our floors are too thick at 2" [oak hardwood over fir T+G] to use staple-up.
Cons - Most expensive.
$30,000. [$10k for the forced air and ducting + $20k for the in-floor radiant, not including the gypcrete pour and finish]

Design of the system ~$2500 [ 30-40 hours of work, includes full specs on all parts, including placement of loops - I have to provide him with precise drawings of the house, preferably in AutoCAD]. I assume this is in addition to the cost of the installed system.

Any thoughts on this? He was in the house for 30-45 minutes, could see the underpinnings of the main floor and is familiar with the age and construction of the house.

Wow that is a lot of money to put in an old house.  I though my >$10,000 was lots.  The "some sort of heat exchanger"  is called a fancoil.  How do you get 2" of floor?  If you have 3/4"sub and 3/4" hardwood that is 1.5".  Do you not have original hardwood?  If it is like mine it is 3/8" hardwood and I have about 5/8" subfloor.  Total 1" of flooring.  My new house has staple up will have a total of 1.5" of flooring with subfloor and hardwood.  I don't think that even 2" of wood will be a problem.  Wood is a very poor insulator.  I have 2 bedrooms in my old house with  underlay and carpet and they are toasty (over the old hardwood). 

They charge separately for design?  The co. that did my new house did not have a design charge and the co. that sold me the parts for my old house did the design for free.  On my new house I have 3 floors of radiant, radiant in 4 car garage, fancoil, A/C and HRV and I don't think any competent person in the field would need to spend more than 3, maybe 4 hours designing the system.  I even had a look at their working drawings.

On option one, if you are gutting the basement, why would the basement not be as warm as the rest of the house if it was properly ducted?  What do you mean by the underpinnings of the main floor?

As an aside I have a friend who is a builder and went and saw one of his houses on Friday.  They are heating 2000 ft sq of the house with an on demand water heater and radiant and with a small auxillary indirect fired HWT of about 10 gallons for their domestic hot water.  I thought this was quite interesting.

I'll try to post those pictures again.  Were you thinking of doing any of it yourself?

G

No one can design.. actually design.. a full house radiant system in 3-4 hours. it takes at least that long just to do the heat load calculation. Anything done in 3-4 hours is not "design", it's ballparking.

Gary, to answer your questions:

2" of floor - I should have put quotes around that statement. He originally guessed at 3-4", but I gave him a look and he revised it to 2" of floor "with an R5 value".

Charge for design - This was not entirely clear, so I would have to verify whether the charge for design would be included in the total or not. 3-4 hours sounds like too short a time span to do the design, but with me doing all the measurements for him [detailed floorplan, exposure, window types and location, insulation values, room use, etc.], 30-40 hours sounds a bit high as well.

Option #1 - He said it would be better, just "not that good". "Underpinnings" means he could see the spacing of the joists on the main floor, cross-bracing as well as the subfloor construction.

DIY - I'd like to do as much of it myself as possible. Any time I do a reno, I learn something. "Don't let my wife do the grout on the wall tile" is something I learned on the kitchen reno.

One other thing he said interested me. He mentioned that there was no point in putting in anything better than R12 in the basement wall insulation, because "almost all" the heat loss would be through the basement floor. I then asked him about insulating the floor before pouring a new one, and he said it wouldn't matter. That seems a bit odd to me - saying that most of the heat goes out through the floor, and then not insulating it when given the chance...

Pull up a heat register and pull the metal back a ways and see what you have for layers. The heating guy should have done that instead of guessing.

I have a $35K system going in my new house and there is no way there is $2500 of design in there, which would be much higher based on 4500ftsq. If I prorated it I would have a $6500 of design cost which is like 20% of the heating system cost. That is out of line.

The R value of wood is between 0.7 and 1.4 so you would have an R value of 1.4 to 2.8 MAX and the higher end is for softwoods. IF you had 2" of wood. Where would R5 come from? That would be like saying wood is R 2.5/inch when Styrofoam SM is R5/inch. That figure is crazy. Wood is a poor insulator. It is nowhere near half the R value of styrofoam.

I highly disagree with not insulating the walls better than R12. I did put R24 in my basement walls in my rental house and the 1st winter I had the radiant going I only had the upstairs done and my kids in the basement were comfortable with no heat going to the basement. MY new house will have R24 too or maybe I'll go to R32 walls too in the basement. I think I might put 2" of SM (R10 thermal break) up and then frame the walls and then put Roxul (R22).

I would be suspicious about your heating guy as the heat loss through a basement wall is much greater than the floor. That is why it is code (here in alberta anyway) that the frost wall must be complete before new home occupation but the floor does not need to be insulated. Check out this site. http://www.radiantpanelassociation.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=420 They say that the heat loss through the walls is 3 to 4 times that through the floor.

BTW Underpinning means to install piles under a house that already exists. (foundation repair).

Cheers

Gary, you're making up numbers. If you had a $35k system going in without serious design; hey, best of luck, glad it worked out for you in the end. But your "pro-rating" is quite plainly just making stuff up, and you have no idea what pinkrobe's situation is, so you are not in a position to determine whether his system "should" be $2500 in design or not. You don't know if that includes site visits, instruction, liability, or anything. I personally think it might be high, but I also understand the factors that might make it not so. In retrofits, things always take twice as much work as you expect. And if that includes on-site inspection of DIY work, demonstration, etc, it could be very reasonable in the end. Or, it could be high. But neither you, nor I, know that.

Your $35k system there, on the other hand, is easily a $2500 design job. And doing so would likely have improved your efficiencies and/or reduced the cost of the system to offset, if not outright pay back the design fee over time. But hey, maybe you got lucky. Me, I spend most of my time looking at systems with oversized boilers, oversized AC units, oversized pumps and far too many of them, oversized pipes, unnecessary backup heat and mixing systems, lots of waste. They look quite a bit like what you've got there. I'm sure you're heating ok: I'm sure you're comfortable in all areas of your home, all the time (right?). But what would, say, a few percent in efficiency do to your heating costs? What would dropping all your 1-1/4" pipe to 1" pipe have done to costs? It's all small stuff, but pile it up and maybe you'd have a better idea of what "design" really does.

It's not just connecting components together so they work. It's making them work WELL.

Obviously I do design and have my biases, of course, and not every system benefits from design. But yours, most certainly would have. It is impossible to ballpark a system of your size and complexity to optimal performance. You can do ok, but you can't get optimal without spending real time actually *designing*.

Yeah I admit the prorating stuff was just grabbing figures out of the air. Not sure if you are mixing up houses, as I am posting on two of them that I have. The one that I show the pictures of, is of a house that is the same in size and age as Pinkrobes, so I do know somewhat what pinkrobe's situation is. For the house I have like pinkrobes, I had the system designed by the place that I bought the components at and they did not charge me a fee (although I understand they do charge some type of fee now - I think it is around a few hundred dollars). It was designed for the 1-1/4" primary loop. If you think they are wrong and I might need a 1" pipe, what would I save on a $1200/yearly gas bill? 0.005%? With the design, they gave me the layout of all pex pipes with 200' loops and a drawing for the boiler plumbing. I was going to hire it out and then decided to do it myself. The inspector had no problems with it. It cost me under $10,000 with a 60 gal indirect fired HWT and HRV. And it does work well. My gas bill went down at least 60% from my old furnace. On some winter months I had previously hit almost $400. My biggest bill now has been well under $200. On my other house, how do you know the $35K system does not have a "serious design"? Don't get me wrong, I will pay the money to make sure it is done right on my new house with 4500ftsq of living area, but I would never put the kind of money pinkrobe is thinking about for radiant heat in a 1000ftsq 1950s house. Qualifier: deduct 20% to roughly get US dollars.

If someone is selling all the components on a system, then design can be cheap. Part margins float it. If not, design is not cheap. that is the basic point I'm really trying to convey. On the system you pictured, it sounded like you said any competent guy should be able to do it in 3-4 hours; if that's not what you were saying, I apologize for misunderstanding. What I heard you saying was purely, wildly off the mark. But I hear things wrong sometimes.

In the end, I'm not saying I know what your system needs or how it came into being. I suspect it is oversized, especially if that's in a 2000 sq ft house that is actually insulated, as I assume it must be or your fuel bills would be higher. But I'm guessing, really. it's not worth ripping out, for sure, but starting smaller could have offset initial cost, and there is no way you need that many pumps, so your electrical bill could drop (but if electricity is cheap there, hey, no worries).

But the real point is that in the pictured system, a real cost design would have been required (if it's not 4500 sq ft of distribution, probably not $2500, but a real number, not "a few hundred"). You just didn't see that, if it occurred for real, because it was called a "part margin".

so don't mistake someone making a part margin for design being easy or cheap, is all. design isn't a few hours sketching something and estimating heat loads at 30 BTUs/sq ft. it's quite a bit of work, really, to make sure it's done right.

I still dont know what pinkrobe is putting into his 2000 square feet of conditioned space (not 1000 sq ft as you say) or what is included in that design fee.

Just to be clear, I have no intention of throwing down $30k+ on heat for this house. For that much money, I could install gas fireplaces in 5 rooms, replace the furnace, buy a new gas BBQ and take my wife to Hawaii for a week. I posted up the info so that others could have a look and confirm my suspicions that the pricing is on the high side.

I'll be getting more WAGs and quotes over the next few weeks, and I'll post here with my progress. I really appreciate the recommendations and comments everyone has been contributing. Keep up the good work! :-)