My New House Build

[Fordguy64]

no heat plates for the underfloor?

[buffalobillpatrick]

No heat transfer plates.

This is the 4th house that I have done this way.
Works fine in climate zones 4 through 7.

Heavy (thick) heat transfer plates do work well & would lower the required water temperature by about 25*F
They are expensive to buy and time consuming to install.

I’m using a cast Iron Burnham ESC3 high altitude boiler that will deliver about 35,000 BTU’s at my 8,750’ altitude.

This type of boiler needs to run hot to boil off condensation from the exhaust gasses.

The boilers only task is to heat the 79 gallon Viessman dual coil indirect water heater via the bottom coil.

This tank provides Domestic Hot Water (DHW) to the fixtures
AND
acts as a buffer tank for the heating system, the boiler and the heating system are asynchronous with each other.

System heat is drawn out of the tank via the top coil.

The boiler will have only long semi-efficient cycles of at least 30 minutes, even longer in heating season.
The aquastat on the tank controls the boiler firing and will keep the tank 130-160* range.
(Kills Legionella)

This application (heating an indirect) would require a mod/con to run at 100% high fire at about 86% efficiency, about 1% better than my cast Iron boiler.

[buffalobillpatrick]

All of the structural load bearing of the upstairs & roof is on the downstairs perimiter concrete walls, so no load bearing on the downstairs interior walls.

In the Spring I will start on the interior wall framing. For the downstairs 10’ walls I will use LSL’s expensive but straight, 24” OC

Most of the inside walls will be shiplap pine painted white. I’m avoiding Sheetrock if possible.

I have decided to fill the perimeter stud walls with R15 Roxul for a total of R40 including the 7” of foam on the inside of the concrete exterior walls. These walls will be 21” thick.

The roof has R49 for 85% of it & R63 for the 15% that frames the sloped 4’ sides of the upstairs ceiling, this is all closed cell SPF. ($12,600)

The top of exterior concrete walls to truss junction at the top plates is very well air, moisture, & thermally sealed with the same closed cell SPF. This is a critical area that is very important to get it right.

[buffalobillpatrick]

Pics of closed cell SPF

Middle pic is the 4’ of R63

[buffalobillpatrick]

Pic of outside as it sets over Winter.

I think the light pastel green synthetic stucco (StyroTuff2) is a fitting color.

The Teller County building inspectors think I’m nuts for insulating so much above their currently adopted IRC building code (R19 walls & R38 roof/ceiling)

[buffalobillpatrick]

Radon abatement, Colorado Rocky Mountains has a lots of Radon.

40’ of green pipe is perforated & wrapped with landscape fabric, then covered with 5” of screened gravel. Then 6” of EPS type2, then 10mil black plastic, then concrete slab.

[buffalobillpatrick]

Upstairs will have a full bath & 2 bedrooms, front with sliding glass door out onto balcony/carport

[buffalobillpatrick]

House is a 1-1/2 story walk out basement.

Earth covers about 50% of the main level walls, this will help it stay cool in the Summer & warm in the Winter.

As all the insulation is on the inside, the outside structure will get cold, design temperature is +2*F but on rare occasion it can drop to -25*F

This makes it very important to have a near perfect water vapor barrier in the walls, as water will condense at the Dew Point (but not inside impermeable foam).

All of the 2 layers of foam boards have a 3/4” gap around each perimeter, this was filled with GreatStuff closed cell spray foam, they are my vapor barrier.

air at 70*F & 20% Relative Humidity (RH) becomes 100% RH at 32*F

That is Pikes Peak off to the East.

[buffalobillpatrick]

outdoor reset:

“It changes the supply temperature in response to an ANTICIPATED change in demand indoors. I say "anticipated" because your house shell and insulation introduce a lag in demand.

If your system is digitally controlled it will try to keep calls for heat as long and as infrequent as possible regardless of the temp outside. The more closely your reset curve matches the actual loss, the longer and less frequent the calls for heat.

If your system is proportionally controlled (IE: TRV’s)
it will try to keep flow through the system as consistent as possible by ensuring that the temperature of the circulating water closely matches the heat being lost by the structure.”

This is a quote from an expert “Mike T., Swampeast MO”
On Heatinhelp.com

[buffalobillpatrick]

Before backfilling around rear of house & retaining wall, I put down a 450’ loop of blue 1” pex.

I’m thinking about how I can use this loop to help heat or cool house.

The soil (ha) is really about 90% small decomposed granite gravel with about 10% clay.
It stays damp year round from Summer rain & Winter snow.

I think? it could support a 1/2 ton heat pump.

The emitter/collector could be the slab pex heating loops? Low cooling capacity though.

The climate has low RH, so reaching dew point is not likely?