Low temp heating
The methods we utilize for the space heating is extremly important. In our home in Canada burrr I had attempted to heat a room over a garage. The garage has in-floor concrete heating but being its not a living area we don't heat it very much (60-65deg.Slab temp75 deg.)The bedroom I had installed loops between the floor joists. Even for just a few more BTUs it was completly ineffective. The room is dam cool with a northern winter wind on the outside wall. Even though at the time we had an water temp of 180 deg.F there was no heating for that room. Now with the Geothermal the water temp is only 105deg.F that underfloor system has no hope. However the main floor concrete slab is the holy grail of low temp heating. There is nothing like a cup of coffee on a sunday morning with bear feet on a warm tile floor (88 degF) looking out the patio door at a -10deg F.wind wipping up the snow.
I don't want to discourage anyone but the benifits to the system are huge. The comfort, uniform steady warmth and the cost to operate. Oil fired heating was costing us more than $5000.00/yr. now with geo thermal $1100.00/yr
The method of tubing routed into a OSB strand board may be effective expecially with some aluminum sheet stock formed into the void and around the tube to dissipate the heat. Keeping the tubes closer helps 8" centres.
My project this summer is now the shop. We removed all the conventional oil fired forced air equipment, maybe a little too soon its still cold here. The real down side is we will have to remove 1200sqft of good concrete floor to install ridgid foam insulation and a new floor with a loop. We have been contacting excavators to dig in our loop 4 ton. For our area thats about 2400 lin ft. We have a very heavy clay soil here and we will be placing the 3/4" dia tube down 6ft. I've obtained 2 compressors 2 tons each. I'm thinking of a double compresor system like that was posted earlier.
Randen
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