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[Johnfarrugia]

I purchased a 50 Acre piece of property in Strathroy, Ontario, Canada and I've already started cutting wood to make sure its seasoned for when I need it. Currently there are no buildings on this lot. I plan on building a 60x90 shop with 16 foot ceilings. I'll be heating half of it with radiant floor heating and the other half wont be heated. The shop will be located about 100 feet away from the owf. In the the future, we are looking to build a 3500 sq ft house and heat it with the same owf. I would also like to heat our driveway during the winter months too. The house will be about 100' from the owf in the opposite direction of the shop.

My question is about purchasing a unit large enough for future expansion yet will still work property when only heating the shop before the house is built. What are your thoughts about purchasing a large owf yet only heating a 60x90 shop for a few years?


 

[slimjim]

In my opinion, not a good Idea, perhaps you could convince a company to set you up with a smaller unit to start with and trade up to a larger unit when you put a larger load on it, You will eventually have a big load on it, have you looked at our chip boiler, it can be run at different loads by simply changing feed rate and air adjustment with no creosote buildup, it's not cheap but with a load such as you are looking at it might be a good solution for you

[cantoo]

Where do you live now? I'm about 80 miles from Strathroy, north on Lake Huron. I wouldn't put too much money into heating the driveway until you do some calculations on BTU's and amount of wood it would take just to keep that square footage warm let alone melt snow. You might need a pretty big chunk of that unheated shop to store enough wood just for the driveway. There are other guys here from Ontario who could give you a better idea. Will you be living in the shop now while you build the house or how do you plan to keep the owb full?  Logstor is about $17 a foot here for 1" lines inside.

[LittleJohn]

In regards to your shop, I would put tubing in the whole thing; even if you only plan to heat half now - hard to retrofit in-slab radiant.  Once you get the radiant, you will want it everywhere.

I too am not so sure about snow melting driveway; I have heard quotes of 150-200+Btu/sf/hr, or about 10x what a normal radiant heating application sees.