That's a whole lot of power usage...
- Thread starter signal15
- Start date
An occasional 222 Amps is fine, but if this is the state your at quite often, you might want to think about upgradding. You must have a whole lot of floor heating.
Wow, draw that amount constantly and you'll have a $1600/month bill. (@ $0.08 KWH)
It's about 1000 sq ft, but that's just for the garage. There's another 2500 in the basement, and they system was sized to actually heat the entire house, including the garage, which works out to 5400 sq ft or so.
The cool thing about this boiler is that it's not just on/off. It will self regulate the power going into it so you don't get fast cycling when heating only a small space. It's a Steibel-Eltron Hydroshark II 28.8kW, which works out to 100,000btu. I still need to run the piping from the boiler in the garage to the manifolds in the basement. And whenever I end up doing flooring in the upstairs, I'll lay down some barrier PEX and pour gypcrete over it to get floor heat in the rest of the house.
It's cycling on and off right now, running at about 16000 watts. It's trying to calculate the thermal mass of the concrete to determine the most efficient timing to keep it at a constant temp.
Costwise, it was about $100 a month to heat my garage last year with it, during the month of -20 weather we had. And I kept it at 60 degrees since I was working out there quite a bit. Figuring that my garage is fairly poorly insulated as compared to the rest of the house, it's probably not going to cost much at all to heat the place entirely with it (using gas forced air inside now). Electricity is 6.5 cents/kwh. But once I get my other meter in, it's only 2 cents.
The cool thing about this boiler is that it's not just on/off. It will self regulate the power going into it so you don't get fast cycling when heating only a small space. It's a Steibel-Eltron Hydroshark II 28.8kW, which works out to 100,000btu. I still need to run the piping from the boiler in the garage to the manifolds in the basement. And whenever I end up doing flooring in the upstairs, I'll lay down some barrier PEX and pour gypcrete over it to get floor heat in the rest of the house.
It's cycling on and off right now, running at about 16000 watts. It's trying to calculate the thermal mass of the concrete to determine the most efficient timing to keep it at a constant temp.
Costwise, it was about $100 a month to heat my garage last year with it, during the month of -20 weather we had. And I kept it at 60 degrees since I was working out there quite a bit. Figuring that my garage is fairly poorly insulated as compared to the rest of the house, it's probably not going to cost much at all to heat the place entirely with it (using gas forced air inside now). Electricity is 6.5 cents/kwh. But once I get my other meter in, it's only 2 cents.
Channel 1 is both legs. Channel 2 is my air conditioner. Remember you can have multiple coils on a single channel on the brultech. The legs are staggered evenly. It threw me also the first time I was looking at it.
The inputs on the brultech are Channels 1 and 2, and Aux 1-5. Channel 1 should be both legs of your main feed.
pete_c
Guru
On the subject of heat but off the subject of energy usage - I was thinking of a modification of one of the bedrooms heating over to "floor" style heating.
Looking for ideas. The bedroom has one duct for forced air/heat and one return. It sits over the garage and therefore (my guess) is always cooler / warmer than the rest of the bedrooms. I had been considering ripping the carpeting out and maybe putting some electric elements down and putting tile down over this. Hot water heat could also work but I have never done this and know nothing about doing this over wood.
Looking for ideas. The bedroom has one duct for forced air/heat and one return. It sits over the garage and therefore (my guess) is always cooler / warmer than the rest of the bedrooms. I had been considering ripping the carpeting out and maybe putting some electric elements down and putting tile down over this. Hot water heat could also work but I have never done this and know nothing about doing this over wood.
As soon as you get out of the city, some people are paying like .12/kwh. Actually, they have one meter option where it's only active from 10pm to 6am, but I can draw as much as I want from it at .01/kwh. It's meant to be used to charge up heat storage systems. I have other ideas for it if I can ever find some special equipment I've been looking for.
Floor heat is nice because it radiates upward. If you used forced air before and kept the house at 70, setting the thermostat at 60 with in-floor will feel about the same.
Laying down electric elements is probably going to be cheaper than doing hot water (hydronic). But, there are benefits and drawbacks to both. And if you plan on doing a large part of the house rather than just the bedroom, the hydronic could turn out to be cheaper because the price difference on a small boiler versus a large one with the stuff I got was only a couple hundred bucks. My boiler was around $700 when I bought it last year, and it's large enough to heat the whole house.
There are a few different ways to do hydronic on an existing installation:
- Attach the PEX loops to the bottom of the subfloor and get the heat to radiate through the wood. (Bad idea, but some people do it)
- Cut a series of 3/4" wide channels in the subfloor, insert these aluminum plates with a channel that sits down in the slot you cut, run your pex through that. It works, but those aluminum plates can add up in price. Plus, you don't really have a good thermal mass to retain heat.
- Get some plastic framing stuff that sits on top of the floor and has slots to run the PEX. Then put cement board over it and then your flooring. Raises your trim by 1", and you'll have to cut the bottoms off doors.
- Put down adhesive foil to the subfloor to reflect heat back up into the room. Anchor the PEX to the subfloor to hold it in place, and pour enough gypcrete to cover the PEX. It still raises your trim, but you get a ton of thermal mass from the gypcrete. It's probably the cheapest option also.
You'll need to hook each of your PEX loops into a return and supply manifold, and then these go to the boiler system. I built mine, a photo is attached below. Basically it's just a pump controller, a boiler, air eliminator, some pump flanges with fill spigots, a purge valve, a filter, and some other stuff. It cost me about $2200 for everything, but as I said, it could heat the entire house by itself. I could have bought a premade panel that was almost identical for about $1k more.
And, it's 100% efficient, which you won't find with a gas forced air system.
Attachments
86turbodsl
Active Member
Man, I wish my hydronics looked that nice. Mine's a disaster. (I didn't install it either)
pete_c
Guru
Thank you Signal15 for the quick overview on using hydronics.
I have a friend who just finishing is home and used hydronics for his basement. Forced air thruout the rest of the home though.
The bedroom in question isn't being used at this time so I could take my time in this endeavor.
One of my cousins in Europe built his home and used hyronics thruout the home. Interesting in that he showed me his setup I noticed that he used small valves to control the heat for every room in his home.
I have a friend who just finishing is home and used hydronics for his basement. Forced air thruout the rest of the home though.
The bedroom in question isn't being used at this time so I could take my time in this endeavor.
One of my cousins in Europe built his home and used hyronics thruout the home. Interesting in that he showed me his setup I noticed that he used small valves to control the heat for every room in his home.
First, compliments to Signal15 on a great looking system. Very nice indeed.
I've had both types of radiant heat: hydronic and electric heating elements. I think you have to think about the fact that you're going to be doing a single room, and how the room is going to be used (including frequency of use).
In my opinion, the electric heating elements heats up the floor (and thus the room) faster than the hydronic system, but I haven't actually measured it. The heating elements were very easy to install when I did it a few years ago, and the thermostat is about the only thing that can break in that type of system. We were pleased with it, as are the current owners of that house (who became friends of our after we sold it to them). We now have hydronic in two rooms in the present house. If you go with a hydronic system in a single room, a simple hot water heater can be used as your heat source (rather than a boiler) and it will be much less expensive to purchase. We have this now in two bathrooms, the master and a guest bath. Both get their heat from a single hot water heater (which does not supply domestic hot water) and each room has its own zone and thermostat. The previous owner installed it but we believe it's just placed over the subfloor with lightweight concrete or similar over that, holding the tubing. One room has a marble-like tile and the other a large stone-like tile as the final surface. The floor works well in both. Some will say you shouldn't install radiant under wood flooring but that's just not accurate. As long as the temperature does not go too high, and if you keep the floor at at fairly steady temperature, you should be fine. Tile or stone are great, though, and do add helpful thermal mass to hold and distribute the heat.
If I had to do it over again, I would install hydronic in a single room if I could also tie it into solar or geothermal, but otherwise I'd be hard-pressed to decide between it and the heating element style. It probably works out to be a cost calcuation.
Some sources to check out (there are many) are Radiantec and Pex Supply for hydronic and WarmlyYours for electric.
Good luck with your decision. We like radiant so much we're hoping to make it our primary means of heating our next house.
