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Old 04-02-16, 09:47 AM   #10
bdgWesternMass
Lurking Renovator
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Location: Williamstown, MA
Posts: 21
Thanks: 3
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Hey All,

Sorry I dropped out for a bit. After my last post I resolved to buy a Daikin Altherma system.
Only to find they are no longer available in North America. After more searching and pleading with various sources the mostly likely story is that they have a 3rd generation model that they are trying to get through UL certification. They stopped bringing in the first generation won't bring in the second so we must wait for the third generation. I don't know if it is true but I will choose to have faith.

To answer some questions.

My set-up is unusual. I live in old plank new england farm house 25'x25'. That happens to have a 7 car garage 60'x24', carpentry shop 25'x30', 13'x30' "school bus garage". All from around the 1920's.

All of the boilers, solar inverters, power, network are in the basement which is a maintain room. We have a Daikin outdoor unit in the far back corner of our lot that has underground tubing and branch points in various buildings so that all the split tubing is concealed and I have a single hidden location for the outdoor units. I also have an additional line set for a Daikin Altherma system that doesn't exist going from this location to the basement 120' away. Currently a gas fired boiler heats up water and pumps it through insulated pex tubing that is buried underground connecting the 7 car garage and the house.

The 7 car garage has more or less 22' x 10" x 59' thermal mass made of masonry sand. This has the appropriate insulation and pex-al-pex tubing. There are times during the heating season when my return water is hotter then my input water.

The carpentry shop has a perimeter with 98' of rental UF-2 low temperature baseboard. The more baseboard surface area the lower the water temperature that can be used. This office also has a Daikin for AC/heating.
I tried to post link for runtal radiators but I need one more post.

Both the buildings are connected together in the garage using a single main loop that is fed by the builder in the house. The main loop also has 1" pex-al-pex connection to the "school bus garage" where I may put solar thermal collectors.

I have done various logging and at this point I can comfortably say that the carpentry shop has negligible impact on my heating. bill.

I believe that my set-up will greatly benefit from a very steady 95-110 degree hot water source.

@Jeff5May you could see how with my thermal mass generate a couple of BTUs a day might add up if I start in aug.

I'm considering an air source heat-pump the COP on hot water to meet my needs when it 13 below F is still over 1 and it will be around 3 most of the heating season.

So what am I going to do. I found that Daikin Altherma line now contains a chiller that looks like it runs off hot water.

We have a PV array and I'm considering expanding to meet the projected load of the Altherma system. I think I'm going to try for net-zero by large solar array and high-surface area of low water temperature. The real trick will be replacing the steam boiler that heats the plank farm house.
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