Need Help Determining Baseboard Layout

Baseboard needs Hot Water.

Garn's work better with lower temperature water.

I would start by calculating the heat load per room and then taking a view of what is the best distribution system using the water temperature you feel is reasonable to maintain.

Is your problem with not enough heat on first floor because most is directed to second floor ? As in, your air system was designed for A/C rather than heat ? Would it be more cost effective to add dampers to the existing ducts that go to second floor and add a couple extra ducts with dampers to first floor ? Then during season change you open some dampers up and close some down.
Have you thought about radiant on first floor assuming you can get floor from basement ?Are there any areas you could use cast iron radiators ? Some times they can be found on craigslist and provide a nice even heat and once cleaned up can be charming.
There are also flat wall panel radiators. Similar to....
http://www.houseneeds.com/shop/atop/heatersbaseboardradiantindex.asp
Pexsupply is a good place to look at various radiant parts & controllers.

My guess is your duct work is the biggest problem. get a sheet metal guy over to take a look. Average furnace puts out 1500 -1800 CFM and duct design is usually about .01 static for residential. 125 CFM per outlet, equals 3 to 4 six inch runs for an 12 x 8 duct. running a new truck line the correct size may fix the problem. also return air is important, make sure the air can get back to the furnace. The HX is big enough to a big house, if you crawl around and stick some pex in the crawl space you won't regret it, best heat ever. The Garn is a nice first step, think threw the rest of the install. I use finned baseboard as a last resort. The old school way to size this stuff was to put it on every inch of the exterior wall that you could, then adjust the water temp in the boiler to suit.

There is baseboard and there is baseboard.

Conventional baseboard you would get 40% of the output at 140 than you would get at 215, or to put it another way you would need 2 1/2 times the length for the same output.

Both a cost and a practical factor.

como- how did you get the forty percent for 140 degree output water. I ve been looking for a convertion tool to determine what fin type baseboard outputs btus are at lower temps. I ve been looking at the runtal radiant baseboard and have there info but i want to know how much better performance will be from my current fin baseboard

I think it was from the Runtal website. I am not sure Runtal offer better performance, more of a design issue.

If you look on the panel radiator manufacturers sites, Myson for example, they give the specs and the conversion factors.

Here's one online chart to get an idea of how much more baseboard you will need to supply the required heat when using water temperatures lower than the assumed 180F.

http://www.slantfin.com/documents/674.pdf

If you are running low temps you need low temp baseboard.




http://www.smithsenvironmental.com/html/he.html

Garnrules said:

Hi Como, How are you bleeding air from you Garn? I can hear a little bubbling in the pump and the tank - I imagine that is hurting the efficiency of the system. Any thoughts??

Vincent

Click to expand...

Long story, the project is running late, and we missed the window to build the Boiler Room.

So later this month we start the install of the propane boiler, controls, radiators and put a deposit down with Garn.

It was initmated that there might be a price increase on the horizon.