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Hi, all! My wife and I currently have a raised ranch, ’70’s vintage, with about 1600sf upstairs, with oil-fired forced air and AC. The basement is unheated(except for a woodstove), bare concrete slab/fieldstone foundation and living space is about 400sf. We also have a separate oil-fired hot water heater that was probably put in in the early ’80s, so it’s almost due to go kerflooey.
What we’ve been thinking of doing is this: Radiant zone in the basement, hydronic air handler to heat and cool upstairs, DHW storage tank, all powered from a high-efficiency oil boiler. We have several questions about all this…
1-Should we go with radiant, or put a zone or two of baseboard/panels?
2-I like what I’ve heard about Boilers such as Viessmann and Buderus, but are we just putting a Ferrari engine in a VW body? Price is a factor, as is serviceability. How about a Weil-McLean?
3- Will the upstairs be at least as comfortable with an air handler as it is now?
I’m sure that you folks out there can think a few more questions we should be asking as well.
Thanks in advance, Walter
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Hi, all! My wife and I currently have a raised ranch, '70's vintage, with about 1600sf upstairs, with oil-fired forced air and AC. The basement is unheated(except for a woodstove), bare concrete slab/fieldstone foundation and living space is about 400sf. We also have a separate oil-fired hot water heater that was probably put in in the early '80s, so it's almost due to go kerflooey.
What we've been thinking of doing is this: Radiant zone in the basement, hydronic air handler to heat and cool upstairs, DHW storage tank, all powered from a high-efficiency oil boiler. We have several questions about all this...
1-Should we go with radiant, or put a zone or two of baseboard/panels?
2-I like what I've heard about Boilers such as Viessmann and Buderus, but are we just putting a Ferrari engine in a VW body? Price is a factor, as is serviceability. How about a Weil-McLean?
3- Will the upstairs be at least as comfortable with an air handler as it is now?
I'm sure that you folks out there can think a few more questions we should be asking as well.
Thanks in advance, Walter