What do we know about in floor heat?

In reply to tr8todd :

my small water heater is 65 gallons and the big one is 80,  They aren’t that old.  

when did the rule about 50 gallons begin?  

In reply to frenchyd :

I started this with my cursor next to the colon after your name, then hit return.  That's not starting on the next line.  That's starting on the same line and hitting return  .

If you click on the next line with your mouse (not returning to get there) it will look like this. 

In reply to SVreX :

Yes I understand the purpose of Tyvex.  I also understand the difference between conduction and convection.   

My old house was about 2300 sq ft and had 34 windows. In Dec and Jan it cost me over $500 a month to heat with the same furnace I am using now.   It was carefully and properly insulated with fiberglass using Tyvex  as  a building wrap ( yes the seams were all taped with proper Tyvex tape) and a solid vapor barrier on the inside. 

The new house is 5500 sq ft and has 105 windows.  Using the same furnace I’m comfortable at 70 degrees and my bills are $200 a month

This house has Tyvex building wrap too!   

What do you attribute the $300 a month reduction in heating bills to?  Mind you the $500 was more than a decade ago and $200 is last years

In reply to frenchyd :

I'm assuming you used foam on the new house. 

Foam is a better system. I just take exception to your position that fiberglass is inadequate. It's not. 

You also haven't said what the delta was for the average heating day, so there isn't anything I can respond to.

No one has ever installed fiberglass who thought they did it poorly. Very few do it well. 

Most people can't feel the difference in R values, but everyone can feel a draft. Foam is more user friendly in sealing drafts (it's really easy to make a mistake with fiberglass while thinking you did everything right). 

All caps is shouting.  Bold is like lecturing . Funny thing is I can't make something bold.

Frenchy, I believe the law was enacted in 2007 to take effect on April 15 2015.  The way the rule is written goes like this.  No water heater shall be manufactured for residential use after said date unless it meets the new minimum energy requirements.  Supply houses stocked up with the old ones.  New water heaters now have twice the insulation and its made of denser foam instead of fiberglass.  A new 30 gallon looks like an old 40.  The new 30s don't even fit in those compartments in the older trailer homes.  Basically anything over 50 gallons couldn't meet the requirements, so there are no more standard electric water heaters or chimney vented gas water heaters larger than 50 gallons.  You want bigger?  You need to buy electric hybrids, install two smaller ones, or go to direct vent gas water heaters.  It was the governments way of forcing more expensive slightly more efficient water heaters on us.  Problem is, they didn't think it thru.  Ran into problems with this twice in the last month.  Had to put in an 80 gallon electric at a house with a huge jacuzzi tub.  Went with an 80 gallon electric hybrid.  That baby was $1731 for just the water heater.  Had a 75 gallon 80,000 BTU gas water heater let go in a restaurant.  80 gal commercial was $3200 and was 125 miles away in New Hampshire.  They offered to meet me in Boston with it.  Ended up installing one 50 gal residential and one 40 gal residential water heaters in series.  Out the door price with permits was $2700 and I had the place up and running in 4 hours.  Don't even get me started on all the reasons why you shouldn't install those fancy, expensive, nobody wants to fix, wall mounted water heaters.

In reply to SVreX  

Darn it!  Still. No now it’s working!  Honest, I’m trying and eventually I will get it.  

Yes I built with SIPs  or they call them freezer panels down south because that’s their common application 

My objection to fiberglass is that they work but far less than their R rating implies.  Hot air rises, cold air settles.  That’s the law!  It doesn’t matter if it’s a hot air balloon or a stud wall cavity.  Take a perfectly made fiberglass wall.  Go inside the wall and measure the temp near the Sheetrock  it will be near the inside temp let’s say 70 degrees.  Now measure the temp near the outside wall  that will be near the outside temp let’s say minus 30f .  

In a fiberglass stud cavity, Air near the inside wall will rise.  Air near the outside wall will settle  as that happens heat will be scrubbed outside through rules of conductivity.  

The greater the difference the quicker the heat will be lost.  Now look at the rules used to provide R ratings.  Under those rules fiberglass looks pretty good doesn’t it?  Now change it to real world with much greater differences and humidity and even wind.  Then test that fiberglass.  

My gas company used degree days instead of delta but the difference is so big it wouldn’t matter. Over twice as large with three times the windows?  Ignoring price increases in the last decade?  And less than 1/2 of the operating costs?  

My belief is that foam as an insulator will provide the same benefit down South during air conditions season.   

I don’t know, our summers while getting warmer still barely cause a blip in my summer electric bills.  This house stays cool on 80 degree days with relatively high humidity.  Some of that is due to the foam but also due to the proximity of the lake and some is due to the  105 windows that allow a cool breeze off the lake to cool the house nicely. 

In reply to tr8todd :

Thank you, I bought mine at a big box store like Home Depot  ( called Menards) a few years ago  and paid regular ( sale) prices.  I also bought my instant on gas water heater at the same time.  All three cost me less than $1500 total.  When they go out I won’t be upset.  They took me only hours to install.  Hopefully by then I’ll replace them with whatever is more efficient and better made.  

The one thing I know is things change.  Hopefully for the better.  

Things are changing all right.  We are just getting out of the worst cold snap I can remember.  Before this started I stocked up on all the usual parts needed for no heat calls.  Bought several thermocouples, fill valves, expansion tanks, draw offs, air vents, zone valves, etc.  Not one call for a no heat call on a conventional sit on the floor, vent into a chimney boiler.  Every call was for a high tech wall mounted boiler that wouldn't fire.  Every call was from someone I didn't already know.  Every call was from a desperate homeowner that couldn't get anybody to even come look at it.  The phrase I hear all the time at the supply house is "I'll install it, but when it breaks, don't call me."  Any of you mechanical minded people on this forum that wants a lucrative career, get into high tech boiler service work.  There is a city here named Taunton.  The supply house there has sold thousands of Baxi, Rennai, and Lochinvar boilers.  The only guy in Taunton to get certified to repair them for warranty claims, charges a $390 a year fee just for you to get on his customer list.  $690 a year gets you an yearly cleaning service.  If he needs to make a service call during regular business hours, its $140 an hour- 2 hour minimum.  After hours and weekends its time and a half.  The biggest issue with these boilers is nobody has parts.  There are too many and they are too expensive to stock them even at the supply house level.  Once you guess which sensor is bad, you have to order it from a distributor and then go back and install the part once it shows up.  Then you cross your fingers and hope that part fixes the problem.

In reply to tr8todd :

You know I heard the same thing about fuel injected cars when they first started coming out. Yet here we are. It will get figured out.  Maybe you’ll learn how to and earn a premium while the rest of the HVAC community catches up.  I’m sure your forefathers had the same experience.  “ Electricity and natural gas?  Sure recipe for disaster”. 

In reply to frenchyd :

The original poster of this thread is asking about installing radiant heating in an existing wood framed house with a basement. He doesn't have the choice to switch the building to SIPs panels, or any other alternative insulation. Therefore, an insulation discussion is not very useful. 

I am backing out of further discussion of insulation in this thread. Or water heaters, or slabs, or...

If I decide to try it i would continue using a boiler.  I haven't read any positives for using the hot water heaters and my experience with them compared to a boiler has been less then spectacular. We don't have natural gas out here so I would continue using oil since the thought paying for electric heat is frightening.  I'm not too concerned about changing the temps during the day.  The wife is home often during the winter so we generally keep the thermostat on 65 all the time.  I am tempted to try this in my kitchen since It is currently unheated and Rube Goldberg laid it out in a way that there is no convenient place to put radiators and since I have open access to the underside of the floor it shouldn't be too rough to do.  I'm not expecting miracles but the past two weeks my kitchen has been brutal.  If I can help make it livable that would be a win.

For a kitchen, maybe look into a kick-space blower.

I did all of the electrical and piping rough-in to install one in the ex's kitchen, but after she hooked up the baseboards in the adjacent rooms, she decided she didn't need it.  But part of the renovation was converting to an open floorplan for the kitchen, living room and dining areas, so now it's basically one big room that is better insulated than it was previously.

In reply to Wally :

That makes sense Wally. Use what you already have ( your boiler).  Will you zone it or just tap into an existing zone?  

In reply to Wally :

As far as electricity, how much land do you have?  Which way does your roof face?  

There are alternatives to electric bills you know.  

Ian F said:

For a kitchen, maybe look into a kick-space blower.

I did all of the electrical and piping rough-in to install one in the ex's kitchen, but after she hooked up the baseboards in the adjacent rooms, she decided she didn't need it.  But part of the renovation was converting to an open floorplan for the kitchen, living room and dining areas, so now it's basically one big room that is better insulated than it was previously.

My parents did this on their vacation house. They took out a wall between kitchen and dining room, and that took out baseboards in two different rooms. One of these was the answer, and it has worked excellently. 

They also put them in two of the bathrooms. Big fan of them. 

Here's is a different version of the toe-kick hydronic heater:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5D52NZ8602

You can just install it in the middle of the floor if you have the joist space below.

frenchyd said:

In reply to Wally :

As far as electricity, how much land do you have?  Which way does your roof face?  

There are alternatives to electric bills you know.  

How bout we add solar collectors to the list of completely irrelevant things in this thread?  

Have you looked into changing from copper/aluminum baseboard to cast iron baseboards?

The added thermal mass may help with comfort while avoiding the compromises present in retrofitting radiant floor heating.

Its not cheap to buy, but could be done on a room by room basis, or by watching CL for takeouts.

In reply to Wally :

Your wife will like in floor because her feet will feel warm.  ( so will you for that matter)

. If you are just doing the kitchen your material bill won’t be too bad. Buy don’t rent a pex clamp and I prefer the brass fittings over the plastic ones.  I hate to admit it but I’ve broken one of the plastic ones when I first started putting it together.  

You will need something to hold the Pex up against the floor and transfer heat from the tube to your floor.  A cheap way is to staple up some aluminum flashing and lay the Pex on top of that. Better still are the steel brackets that hold the Pex and transfer heat all in one.  Either way you will need some 1 inch thick foam with aluminum foil on one face.  Cut it to fit snug between the joists and press it until it contacts the Pex. Then spray great stuff or other sprayable foam around the edges to both seal the foam and hold it up tight.