Can anyone recommend good books on hydronic heating?
 

With the garage work well under way, its already time to start looking at future projects. The next thing on the list will probably be a new floor for my living room.

The current floor is really old and beat up carpet, and the current plan is to rip it all out and put in hydronic heated floors with some sort of wood/bamboo/cork flooring. However, I don't know much about hydronic heating like how to size the tubing, how to space it, if its better to pour the floor, or just use grooved boards with heat spreaders.

So, does anyone know of any good books on hydronic in floor heating? Otherwise, all I have to go off of is amazon book reviews.

Modern Hydronic Heating...
 

This one is generally refered to as the bible of hydronic heating:


Not cheap, usually found in college courses on radiant floor heating. Has some computer software to run on PC. Leaves no stone unturned. About $170.

It is tailored to hydronic designers who will be using standard commercially available heating units.

My only beef is that it is a bit light on using a heat pump as the heat source.

...to say nothing about someone who is rolling their own heat pump or other non-standard heat source.

I don't think that OUR hydronic book has been written yet.

Regards,

-AC_Hacker

Yeah, I looked on Amazon after posting above. It seems all the other books aren't worth the time or money. Looks like I'll be taking a trip to the local library.

It's more so about solar hot water heat, but this book is pretty good
I would like to do a heat pump with the fluid running through hot water panels instead of the ground, unless it was night time then you have a small ground loop.

Ryland,

I like your thinking.

I'm considering a very similar idea myself.


I've been haunting Craigs List and have found 10 solar hot water units,from various sellers, for very cheap. In fact, buying the solar collectors also bought me three rather expensive circulation pumps and a differential controller unit. All of which I will need in my master plan.


This is the graphic from my first heat pump performance experiment. It tells me that heat pumps can operate very happily with feed temperatures from above freezing to 80 degrees, and that the COP goes up as feed temperature goes up. But I have heard, and it does sound reasonable, that there is an upper limit where overly-hot feed temps will boil the refrigerant, and unexpected results can follow.

So, I have found out that a very well designed radiant floor can operate on feed temperatures as low as 90 degrees. This would help with the overly-hot feed temps, just switch the heat pump out of the loop and feed solar water directly to the slab. The concept sounds easy, the implimentation would be more difficult.

Another approach would be to use a large (very large) well-insulated heat storage tank. All solar heat would go there, and house heat would be removed, as needed by the heat pump.

But the earth could also be used as a heat storage reservoir. In this scenario, all solar heat would be pumped through a loop-field and into the ground (a very large heat reservoir) and removed by the heat pump as needed.

underground heat storage

Food for thought:

• underground heat storage
• aquifer heat storage
• solar assisted heat pump

Regards,

-AC_Hacker

Anyone considering thermal solar should read "Nonimaging Optics in Solar Energy" by Joseph O'Gallagher. About $30 on Amazon.