In final design stages of my 3000 sf home to be build in Malvern,PA. Construction will be 10′ Superior Wall Xi system, Nascor EPS wall panels from Canada and Openjoist 2000 floor system. Planning on using radiant heat driven by 2 Rinnai instant hot water heaters. They will also supply domestic hotwater. Since the house will be extremely tight, fresh air will need to be introduced to all living space. I was looking at the Lifebreath Clean Air Furnace with built in HRV and the ability to add conventional air conditioning. Does anyone see any reason why this configuration would not work? Any other recommendations would be much appreciated.
John
Replies
I looked at a similar set up but ended up with a Mod-Con boiler and an indirect water heater. Never looked back. Local installers had no experiance with the Rinnai, I didn't want to be the test case for them.
Garett
bump
I've installed a few of the Lifebreath units and they seem to work really well. I've hooked them up to all sorts of things that make hot water and they all seem to do just fine. The most common way was to hook them up to a domestic HW tank with an internal heating loop. I believe Polaris was the name of the HW tank. A few years ago the biggest unit I believe was 60,000btu which in some cases in Canada was a little light but by turning up the temp of the tank increased the BTU rating. HW tanks are much cheaper to buy than boilers and easier to maintain.
I was actually thinking of putting one in where I live now but the rep. never called me back and I lost interest.
roger
skip the rinnais for heating and use a real mod-con boiler. On a house that size, I am fairly sure that you'll be glad you did unless your heat load is less than 20kBTUs/hr under design conditions or so.
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