Well, I just moved houses but haven't listed the other one for sale yet. I plan to bring my boiler with me at some point and install it in the spring. My new house is a 1985 modular rancher with a full finished basement. This house has electric baseboard and propane furnace throughout the entire house. The baseboards are controlled on their own room thermostats, the furnace has it's own thermostat centrally located in the house near the return. On my previous house, I installed a coil in the ductwork and setup the heat pump on the same thermostat at the zone valve for the coil with a temperature switch on the main boiler pipe that broke the circuit going to the heat pump compressor when water temperature was over 120 degrees. Works like a charm, but I'm not going to setup this house that way.
I want radiant floor heat. The basement is in need of a remodel anyways, especially to get rid of that ugly drop ceiling. I have plain 2x floor joists spaced on 16" centers with the only wonky thing being a doubled up center support beam for the house since it's a modular. I've never done radiant before and I don't know much about the installation of it. Is it as simple as opening up the joist space, stapling up loops of 1/2" PEX, insulating the joist space again, and installing thermostats to zone valves for each zone I want? I've read a little bit about transfer plates, but are they really necessary if I'm reinsulating the joist space after I put the PEX in? All of the heat has to go up into the floor doesn't it? For the basement, I was planning on radiant walls since the floor is a slab and I don't want to build a raised sub floor. For the radiant walls (I need to replace the ugly wood paneling too), I would run 1/2" PEX loops in the bottom half of the walls with 2" foam board insulation keeping it insulated from the block foundation. The only other thing I want to add is of course domestic hot water and that's as simple as another outlet on a manifold and a plate heat exchanger.
Any thoughts on this setup? This way I basically have 3 independent ways of heating my house (no plans to ever use the baseboard) and I get the radiant floors I always wanted. I don't have to muck with a well working propane furnace setup or hear that blower run all winter long either. I'm already planning on 1-1/4" underground lines insulated with spray foam like my other house and I'll use the same 3 speed Grundfos pump I'm using there. I forget which model, but it's a bit bigger than I needed on it's slowest speed. I know I'll have plenty of pump to run multiple zones for radiant here.
Also, should I do zone valves or zone pumps? The upstairs is 1500 sq ft and and finished portion of the basement is about 1200 sq ft. I really only want a zone for my bedroom and then a zone for the entire rest of the upstairs. Then I want a zone for the den area of the basement and a zone for the rest of the basement. The main floor big zone will probably be pretty large, I would imagine. 2 loops, 3 loops, or 4 loops of 1/2" PEX in between the joists? I live on a hill in a valley between two mountains in WV now.
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Topic: Planning a new install with radiant (Read 2065 times)