Quote:
Originally Posted by scottorious
...Does anyone think a centrally located radiant thermal mass would heat the open areas of the house...
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There are quite a few things that need to be considered, such as:
- Design temperature. How cold will it be out side when you want your wall to keep you warm?
- R-factor. This will depend on your total wall insulation value. each layer of material in your wall will have some R-value. You will do this for every outside wall and roof, and basement, and window. You must know the R-value and area of each square foot of wall, roof, floor and window.
- Heat load. This will be derived from your design temperature and the total BTU/hr that will escape your house... which will be a result of your R-factor for walls, roof, etc. etc.
- Thermal wall size, in square feet.
- Water temperature in the wall.
- Spacing of the pipes you put in the wall to carry hot water.
So it's really not possible to intelligently answer your question, unless someone takes the coward's way out and says:
"Yes, it is possible, if you get your water hot enough."
I think your best bet would be to get a hydronics design program like Watts Radiant,
RadiantWorksPro, which was free last time I looked.
You could fool the program a bit and tell it that the thermal "wall" is actually the floor, and just add the real floor to the list of walls. RadiantWorks will figure the rest out for you.
Good luck with your project, there is very much to learn before you build that wall.
Regards,
-AC_Hacker