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Old 02-09-17, 08:08 AM   #1
Ron342
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Default Anyone using their old baseboard hot water units with geo??

My house and many older homes here on the mid to northern east coast have (or had) fuel oil or nat. gas fired hot water furnaces piped to a string of convection baseboard units in each room. They were and are great heat and kind of gurgled at nite.

A long time ago i wondered if they would work fed with 120 degree water from a geo heat pump condenser or even with 40 degree evap water.
So lowered the furnace temp from 180 to 120 and quickly found I'd freeze fast! Never tried cooling but t think that would be even worse.
Now i have an air ducted heat pump but the old system is still there as backup (we lose power often and the furnace will run on a small generator, not the heat pump)

This am i looked at AC's post in Actuario's thread on predictive weather inputs and saw a mini wattage muffin fan pumping air thru a finned convector and immediately thought about my base board units gathering dust. Then looked a the thread on using refriges as mini splits, maybe per room.

Muffins fans could fit at the end of each old baseboard unit and if you boxed off the bottom air input slot of the baseboard as a plenum for the muffin fan, you'd force feed the whole long finned unit, maybe enough to work with 120 degree water, maybe even cool with 40 degree water??

Anyone tried this or something close? ??

My wife loved the quiet baseboard heat and hates the heat pump air ducts but they are kind of in the way if i can't use them!

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Old 02-09-17, 08:39 AM   #2
Fordguy64
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You could try adding more baseboard heaters.. That would increase btu output at a lower temp.
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Old 02-09-17, 01:39 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fordguy64 View Post
You could try adding more baseboard heaters.. That would increase btu output at a lower temp.
I agree with Fordguy.

max temp from most heat pumps is going to be in the neighborhood of 120F.

The baseboards are designed for around 160F +/- 20F.

May not sound like a very big difference, but it could mean as many as 4 to 8 times the number of baseboard heaters, for the heat pump to operate within it's optimum range.

If you have access to a very large supply of free or cheap baseboards, it could work out very well.

I think you should go for it!

Take lots of photos so we can see your progress.

Best,

-AC
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Old 02-09-17, 05:46 PM   #4
Ron342
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Thanks guys - More might work but some rooms really don't have more space. They do make double pass units which stack one finned unit over the other and in kitchens since there is usually so little baseboard, there is a kick space unit that fits under the cabinets and has a thermostatic fan that blows out into the kick space. They are maybe 16" x 18" x 4" & fit flat under the cabinets but would likely work vertically flat up against a bedroom wall for instance
I am leary of buying more natural convection units because i was really amazed by how very little the existing system put out with the dropped temp and the kitchen units are about $250.
I have a couple of the little muffin fans & it wouldn't be much work to mount one to blow into the bottom space, block up the rest of the bottom opening and fire it up. Measuring how effective it is may be more trouble than hooking it up!

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