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There are so many tough calls to make when working on project of this size. We have reached the crux of one such decision this week. What to do with the heating? In an ideal world, or one in which we had a bank full of cash, it would be an easy call. We would very much prefer to have a [wikipop]geothermal power[/wikipop] set up for our hydronic radiant heat system upstairs and down. Problem is geothermal systems don’t grow on trees they just save them and the quote we have starts off in the neighborhood of $15,000.
So far we have been building the barn/house with the idea of using an electric boiler to operate the radiant heat with a two zone system, upstairs and down. The down stairs could run at a much lower temp because the radiant heat piping is submerged in the slab foundation. This material radiates the heat very effectively, unlike the upstairs where the piping would be run underneath the sub-floor. Upstairs will also have a high-efficiency wood stove as back up, but until we have significant solar and wind energy produced on site this would be a big electricity draw and we’re afraid would run up our monthly bills too high.
That got us thinking… we need a better alternative and our current plans just aren’t going to meet our desired results. The best way to go is geothermal but financially we just can’t make it work. So in comes some creative problem solving and a bit of sacrifice and we have an alternative plan. We’re not sure it will work, but this week we hope to do enough research to see if it will be a viable option. Here’s the purposed solution.
First, we will complete the pex installation just as we had planned. Regardless of what we end up with we know we at least want to have the possibility of radiant heat upstairs and down. Then we’re going to install a poor man’s boiler system for the slab downstairs. We need to check code in Stevens county but we’re hoping that we can connect a hot water heater with a re-circulating pump to the down stairs radiant loops. We’ve heard of others making systems like these work and it would be a cost effective way of getting the downstairs heated through the winter. Upstairs we’ll get by on the wood burning stove. This will allow us to either figure out how to get a geothermal system installed on our own. Or, buy us time until we can sort out enough financial resources to pay to have a geothermal system installed.
For now we’re comfortable with this decision and think that it really makes sense long term. It would be nice to have everything 100% the way we want it right from the get go, but the early sacrifice will be well worth the advantages of the future system. Hauling wood for a winter or two for the high efficiency wood stove will be well worth the possibility of a incredibly efficient geothermal system down the line. It just seems to fit.
Talk to you soon.
That’s great input Chris! Thank you! I think we’re going to plan the upstairs for the eventual geothermal set-up so we’ll talk to our guy about keeping the design for them close. I’m wondering if keeping them close will be enough to get through the sub-floor and underlayment with enough heat with a low temp system. Hoping so. I have a guy who is going to design the pipe layout for me to install, so I’m sure he’ll be able to tell us. Have you ever seen a “poor man’s” system that I eluded to in the post. Do you think that would work for downstairs for a winter or two?
I’ve seen just about everything:-)…and had to fix just about everything. Sometimes it is too late. All the money saved up front is spent trying to patchwork something together at the tail end. Solar hot water might be an option for you as well.
A good resource for you to bounce this off is the geothermal forum in which some of us professionals discuss such things with everybody – http://forum.geoexchange.org/
Thanks for the resource, we’ll check that out. And I definitely feel you on the not skipping corners up front. We’re trying to do our best to ensure that the system will last and be easy to transfer over to an alternative power source if we do have to go with an electric boiler up front.
If you are planning to do a future retrofit to geothermal, you need to pay particular attention to your radiant floor design. Standard boiler temperatures operate at much higher temperatures than geothermal output. 160F vs. 100F is a rough guide. That’s the difference between 6-12″ spacing vs. 12-18″ spacing (roughly).