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Old 03-30-11, 11:02 PM   #1
ThomSjay
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Default Radiant wall heaters

As per AC Hacker's suggestion, I have started a new thread.
Before landing on this site, I didn't know much about radiant heating and really, I don't know much more. What I have learned is that the heating medium only has to be as high as 90-120 degrees F. and this in turn allows for better efficiency.
I have also learned that radiant floor heat tubing is lousy for room cooling; ceiling tubing is better for cooling.
With all that in mind, and with the fact that floor heating raises the height of the floor for a reno, I wondered about wall heating/cooling. I happened to see some commercially available unit available on the net but that is not what I was thinking of. Basically what I had in mind was to run tubing along a wall (long side of the room) as one would for a floor. This array would be spaced out from the original inside wall for air flow, and have a water collector on the bottom (A/C use). The tubing would run horizontally, the array on a slight tilt, and each tube run would have a slight "cap" along it to increase in efficiency by transferring more heat. The room would be narrowed by up to 6 inches, and heated by convection flow.
My time is limited so I can't do much digging for info so, if I'm all washed up, tell me, direct me to other links (nothing too deep), direct me to other threads,......

Thanks, TomS

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Old 03-31-11, 07:03 AM   #2
Daox
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Radiant heat is an odd but cool thing. Think of it this way. Where ever you are, everything that is in line of sight to you is either radiating heat toward you, or sucking it away from you. The thing that determines which of those it is is temperature. If the object is hotter than your skin temperature, your skin absorbs the radiant heat. If the object is colder than your skin temperature, you radiate heat toward it. Your body is comfortable when your incoming heat is close to or equals the heat you're giving off.

So, that being said, what you want with radiant heating is large surface areas to be heated/cooled so more of that line of sight to your body is getting heat vs loosing heat. So, only using wall heating/cooling will definitely work, and might work great for certain places, but is not a great idea to do a whole building in IMO. Normally, a floor gives a great, flat area to heat up and gives great line of sight to your body. I would think you would need to do more wall heating than floor heating to achieve the same effect. Also, you'd probably have to heat exterior walls which would tend to loose heat to the outside faster than a heated floor.

Please keep in mind I am nowhere near an expert. I haven't even finished my book on modern hydronic systems yet.
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Last edited by Daox; 03-31-11 at 07:07 AM..
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Old 04-01-11, 12:56 PM   #3
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Default DIY Radiant Wall Heating...(START HERE)

Quote:
Originally Posted by ThomSjay View Post
...can't do much digging for info so...
START HERE...

THEN TRY HERE...

-AC_Hacker
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Last edited by AC_Hacker; 04-01-11 at 01:30 PM..
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Old 04-09-11, 09:28 PM   #4
ThomSjay
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Well, heh, I finally did some searching. I basically looked at five pages on Google using 'DIY radiant wall panels'. As indicated before, radiant floors are more efficient due to lower fluid temp needed to accomplish the same results as wall or ceiling radiators/panels.

One particular interesting site that has a lot of info was HOME PAGE - Radiant Panel Association

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