Solar/Hot water heater radiant heating
Hey there,
My husband and I are building an addition onto our house (24 by 24) – 1 floor plus finished attic. 2br and bath up, office, entry and guest room down with full concrete basement under. We live in northern NE and have a beautifully simple heating system of a wood stove, passive solar, excellent insulation and a backup propane heater. It has served us well, but w/the expansion we need to have a better system for getting heat into the new wing.
I am interested in a radiant floor with an integrated system of solar hot water (thru a heat exchanger) and gas-fired hot water heater (also thru an exchanger). We will again be doing passive solar and super-insulation.
Anyone have positive/negative experiences in either solar radiant heating or h2o heater radiant or more importantly the integration of the 2? Systems/suppliers to consider, articles, etc?
We are very interested in the efficiency and environment-friendly options.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Replies
You might want to check out
http://www.radiantsolar.com
As you have probably already surmized, the biggest challenge with solar source heating in a climate like yours (6000+ HDDs) and probably cloudy skies during much of the heating season, is storage of the BTUs gained during the bright sun for use when you need them the most...at night and when it's cloudy.
And speaking from experience in a SE MN climate, with passive solar, my boilers and circ pump SHUT DOWN, even when its below 0* F, when the sun is shining.
Would you be able to embed tubing in both the walls and floor of the concrete, and use the solar output of your collectors to really ramp the temp of that concrete up? Thereby serving as storage. And in this case NOT insulate the slab or foundation walls except at the perimeters so that you could also use the earth beneath the slab and the back fill also as storage. Seems like this could serve you well, if you had a WH or boiler that would heat the upstairs and supplement the downstairs during cloudy weather. Really using the concrete floor and walls as a baseline warmer for the whole building. If it got too hot from the solar collectors, open a window for some nice fresh cold air, or figure out something else to do with that waste heat.
I'm not an expert by any means in this, just a DIYr with too much time on my hands and successful designer (with some help) and builder of a radiant floor system with electric boiler backed up with a WH.
The compelling thing about your project at this stage is that you can do alot for very small $ that could pay off big once you're done.
At least you could put tubes in the concrete during construction. Low $ at that stage. Lots of tubes...like twice as many as you would need for boiler/WH source.
Why not post this question over at http://www.radiantpanelassociation.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=1
Lots of designers, HOs and contractors are regulars over there.
Edited 1/28/2005 4:00 pm ET by johnnyd