New House Build

[ovrszd]

Ironically I can't give you an accurate number on my shop heat. Had a new tank set at the beginning of Winter. It leaked the first tank full as I used it.

They repaired the tank and filled it again on 13 Feb. The next time I filled it was 20 Aug. It held 320 gal. That heated the shop and provided domestic hot water for the house. They share the tank.

I'll have a better idea of both buildings useage at the end of this winter.

 

[KubotainNH]

My house that was built in 2003 has radiant in the basement slab and under both the 1st and 2nd floor, 4 zones as my master bedroom has it's own. Definitely a learning curve, biggest thing to remember is what you have listed. Mainly that it takes awhile to warm and easily overshoots especially in concrete. I was told when I got the system to set it where you like the temp to be and then leave it alone, that with this type of heat you don't save much having it drop temp overnight. I mostly follow that advice with some caveats. Spring and fall I do not run it as high of a temp as winter, on the thermostat or on the water heater. I gradually move up, too hard to control otherwise during those huge outside temp fluctuations. The other thing that I found was Uponor (Wirsbo) thermostats that are made for radiant heat, as the temp nears the temp the thermostat is set for it starts to cycle the pumps until the temp is reached. These make for a really stable temp, no overshooting. I don't recall these being an option 16 years ago but maybe they were just too costly.

My system is also open so whenever you run water elsewhere it goes through those floor pipes before going into the water heater. This brings some pluses that are not always thought about. One being the water going into the water heater is already somewhat preheated. Also, the faucet water is always warmish which is nice, no waiting for hot water as it picks up heat from the floor seeing the pipes are near each other. The other plus is I've never seen my toilets sweat as again the water is not very cold coming in. My system also has a diverter for summer that makes all the house water coming from the street go through those pipes bringing the floor temp down slightly because of the cold water. Probably doesn't help a ton but I'll take any extra benefits.

Having enjoyed this heat for all this time I really dislike going to peoples houses that have forced hot air, hot/cold...hot/cold...yuck.

 

[ovrszd]

Excellent post Mike. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

The guy that installed my HVAC also lives on a slab with floor heat. He said he uses his Air to Air Heat Exchanger system to heat his house until first frost. Then he fires up the floor system. When grass starts to green in Spring he turns it off.

He also said that his thermostat setting changes as Winter goes along. I didn't do that last Winter in the shop. But I don't want it to be as warm out here. Becomes too hot to work.

Friend of mine has the same open system as yours. He really likes it. All my water system is located in the same Mechanical Room. My floor heat system could be changed to work like yours fairly easy. I discussed this with the installer. He didn't really have any negatives about doing that. Just said let's try it this way first and see how you get along. Only part about it I don't understand is, I turn on the shower. Water from my floor loop would feed my Tankless domestic heater. So, in my case, my floor heat system would kick on because it detects movement. Aren't I going to overheat my floor if a couple showers are taken close together??? Maybe I don't understand exactly how everything is plumbed. So my floor heat system has to heat 55F degree water coming into the house from outside rather than maintaining a temp in the slab??

I am using an Azel thermostat in the shop. It's the one with the slab probe. I am going to investigate the Wirsbo thermostat. Thanks for mentioning it.

You didn't mention how you are heating your floor water?

Thanks again for your input. Good stuff!!!

 

[ovrszd]

Want to add, I checked on my Propane use to date. I filled the tank on 20 August. Topped it off on 06 December with 285 gallons. That's heating 4,300 sq ft of concrete slab in two separate buildings plus providing Domestic Hot Water for the house. Too many variables for that information to be of much value because of location and weather patterns. I think I will be able to offer a lot more valuable information in August when I can report a year's useage.

 

[dodge man]

Very nice, I like the floor plan and the concrete floor came out great. I tell my wife I’m not color blind but color dumb. I think the color of the floor is perfect. My wife would agonize over things like that before the build.

I went back and looked at all the pics. I didn’t see a finished pic of the outside. Can you post one up? What area of Missouri are you in roughly? Looks like a great location. Enjoy the new home.

 

[ovrszd]

Very nice, I like the floor plan and the concrete floor came out great. I tell my wife I’m not color blind but color dumb. I think the color of the floor is perfect. My wife would agonize over things like that before the build.

I went back and looked at all the pics. I didn’t see a finished pic of the outside. Can you post one up? What area of Missouri are you in roughly? Looks like a great location. Enjoy the new home.

Thanks for the compliments.

I let Terry pick the floor plan. Then we sat down with the Builder and the Supplier and tweaked it some. The Supplier was very helpful in that regard. Originally it was designed with a two car garage. He moved the living room/garage wall 8ft making it a one car 18' wide garage, adding that 8ft to the living room/dining area. Originally the front wall was straight. He pushed the garage portion forward 8ft adding length to the garage and breaking up the front of the house a little.

As for colors, I stayed out of that. I let her pick all colors, siding and shingles. She's a grey lady. I'm a brown guy. But it's all good. She doesn't tell me what color to paint the inside of my shop and I don't tell her what colors to use in her house. Win/Win.

I'll get into the outside finish next. Got a funeral to go to this morning. My 3rd and 4th grade teacher died. I've loved her since I was 9 years old. A great educator and a very Classy Lady. She was 90.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

Ovrsized. The place looks great. I love the discussion of the heat system.

 

[ovrszd]

Ovrsized. The place looks great. I love the discussion of the heat system.

Thanks. I tried to not ramble about it, but there's a lot of information to digest.

 

[ovrszd]

I want to discuss the garage for a minute. It's 18x30x9. Has one 12' wide overhead insulated door with window panes. A walk out onto the front porch with glass. A walk out into the yard between the house and shop with glass. A walk thru into the house Laundry room. One window on the side facing the shop.

The floor is heated. It's also sloped toward the overhead with a 3" drop. The slope starts about where the front of the vehicle would sit when parked. Idea being any water dripping off the vehicle would go to the overhead. My insurance guy was very happy about it. Said if the vehicle loses any hazardous fluids they'll go to the door rather than trying to seep under the walls into the house.

We haven't been in it thru a Winter yet so we'll see how well it all works when Terry parks in it with a slush covered vehicle.


This pic is standing at the overhead looking toward the entrance door to the house. The wall on the right is also the living room wall. Wall next to the walk in door is the laundry room wall.

 

[ovrszd]

Sorry, I meant to post all the garage pics in one post. Oooppss?


This pic is again taken near the overhead door. The walk out door is into the yard toward the shop.

This pic is taken near the walk out, facing the overhead.

In this pic you can see the drop in the concrete at the overhead. The mopboard is level, starting on the concrete at the upper end of the garage. You can see how far off the slab it is at the overhead end. The walkout is the only door in the entire houseplan that has any threshold. Would be slightly inconvenient to get a wheelchair thru that doorway. It goes out onto the front porch. A wheelchair might require going thru the house to get from the garage to the front porch. Couldn't figure out any way to avoid that ledge.

 

[ovrszd]

My wife Terry will be very disappointed that I posted garage pics with the floor dirty. I took those while she was gone.

Proof to Big Barn that we do have dirt in Missouri!!!

 

[airbiscuit]

Somebody likes plants

 

[ovrszd]

Somebody likes plants

She would also be disappointed that you saw her Winter clutter in the garage.

 

[KubotainNH]

Excellent post Mike. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

The guy that installed my HVAC also lives on a slab with floor heat. He said he uses his Air to Air Heat Exchanger system to heat his house until first frost. Then he fires up the floor system. When grass starts to green in Spring he turns it off.

He also said that his thermostat setting changes as Winter goes along. I didn't do that last Winter in the shop. But I don't want it to be as warm out here. Becomes too hot to work.

Friend of mine has the same open system as yours. He really likes it. All my water system is located in the same Mechanical Room. My floor heat system could be changed to work like yours fairly easy. I discussed this with the installer. He didn't really have any negatives about doing that. Just said let's try it this way first and see how you get along. Only part about it I don't understand is, I turn on the shower. Water from my floor loop would feed my Tankless domestic heater. So, in my case, my floor heat system would kick on because it detects movement. Aren't I going to overheat my floor if a couple showers are taken close together??? Maybe I don't understand exactly how everything is plumbed. So my floor heat system has to heat 55F degree water coming into the house from outside rather than maintaining a temp in the slab??

I am using an Azel thermostat in the shop. It's the one with the slab probe. I am going to investigate the Wirsbo thermostat. Thanks for mentioning it.

You didn't mention how you are heating your floor water?

Thanks again for your input. Good stuff!!!

You're welcome. Your latest pics are giving me garage envy, we may finally add one in the spring.

As for the questions, my system whenever there is a hot water demand will have the water heater fed from the floor loops so it will be preheated making that part more efficient. I would assume you'd have a floor temp drop but I can't notice it and if the temp drops the thermostat will kick on. Could be the slab probe would notice it but the air side of the thermostat may tell it not to run. If it does then the preheat savings may be a wash. From what I understand, this is how all open systems work as you need to run fresh water through the system to make sure you don't get stagnant water which could breed legionnaires disease. As for the summer mode, when I switch to that all water coming into the house goes through the floor loops first so cools the floors and warms the water. No sweaty pipes.

My water is heated with a Bock oil fired water heater. My wife is afraid of gas heat so this was the best option and it is pretty efficient. It heats all our hot water and is super fast at heating it.

 

[Big Barn]

Our winters don’t get as cold as yours Richard, but a properly heated shop really appeals to me as I get older.

Thank you for posting all the great info.

 

[ovrszd]

Here's a video of the outside of our House and shop.


Outside House Video - YouTube

 

[Xfaxman]

:thumbsup:

 

[airbiscuit]

Very nice. Is the third building an original machine shop?

 

[EddieWalker]

Nice how the house and other buildings all fit together on top of your hill.

 

[dstig1]

First off, nice work on the house. We did stained concrete for the lower level here - kind of a dark leather brown color that came out nice. I think it is a good solution for slabs.

Radiant floor heat - my experiences. I started off thinking an on-demand HW heater was a great solution. I no longer really think so. There are caveats to that, but what i ran into has soured me on them. I have 3 Takagi on-demand heaters. 2 in the house, 1 in the shop. The 2 house ones are very high efficiency (96-97%) and one is dedicated to domestic HW and the other to radiant floor heat. The one in the shop is slightly lower efficiency but still decent (low 90's?) and only covers radiant heat. From the get-go they have some great advantages - small footprint, the ability to do sealed combustion with PVC venting, high efficiency and very simple controls (your T-stat asks for heat and starts the pump, so the heater automatically starts with teh flow from the pump).

HOWEVER.....

I have learned that these are SUPER sensitive to hard water. We moved in Aug 2015 and did not have a softener in yet. It was on the do to list but I didn't consider it urgent. We started having a lot of issues with hard water plugging up the shower valve screens so finally in Nov 2015, I put in a softener. That fixed those issues and i figured we were good. The next year the domestic HW heater started to leak. Tech support was very helpful and they were nice enough to comp me a heat exchanger, which I had to install (THAT was fun...NOT!). They diagnosed it as due to hard water. Now we ran hard water through it for all of 3-4 months at most, then fully soft water, but that was enough to kill it. I had lengthy technical discussion by phone and email on their diagnosis, and it was clear they were right. I bought a good hard water kit and found my incoming well was 24-26 grains hardness. After softening, it was <1. We have not had problems since, for the past 3.5 yrs.

Radiant had the same issue as those heaters got filled with hard water prior to the softener. The one in the shop crapped out this past spring after only ~5 yrs use - same issue as the house DHW. The one in the house is still going (3-4 yrs) and I did flush it with vinegar to see if I could stop the hard water build up. So far it is OK, but who knows if it will die soon? The other wrinkle is antifreeze. Now this depends a lot on where you live. Up here, if the power went out and it got really cold, I would be at risk of freezing the system after sufficient time down. Can't take that risk so I added 50% antifreeze that is designed for radiant systems to both house and shop. I didn't do that right away but when i did things got worse. I start to hear a low grumbling vibration from the heaters when running. This is cavitation that is happening in the heat exchanger due to the antifreeze mix having lower thermal conductivity than straight water. It is bad for the life of the heater. I can improve it by raising the system pressure. Most in-floor radiant runs at 15 psi, but I run 25-30. It still does not quite eliminate it. You also have to up the pressure in the expansion tank and any relief valve to match when you do this. If you are not running antifreeze, you will eliminate part of this issue, but not the hard water issue.

The next time i have to replace one of these, I am going to find a small conventional tank heater and put that in instead. I believe that will improve things but i will lose floor space. Time will tell.

My $0.02
-Dave