New construction, what type of heating radiant floor or hot air?

[Stew]

Hi all
I have a friend building a new 1200 sqft bungalow with a walkout basement. Standard construction for our region in Quebec ie
6" fiberglass walls, R 40 ceiling and basic double pane windows. He has heated his 100 year old farmhouse with a 10 year old
Benjamin wood/oil boiler. //www.benjaminheating.com/brochures/DO110_180_English.pdf He will be demolishing the old house and can therefore reuse this combination boiler in the new bungalow. He wants to heat with wood(he is a farmer with lots of supply).
He does not want a woodstove in the main floor living area. ie he wants the woodburner in the basement. He is not crazy about adding a storage tank. The question is
1) Go with radiant floor in the basement slab, and under floor on the main floor and reuse his Benjamin wood/oil boiler?
2) Use a furnace such as the caddy or mini caddy and go with wood hot air?
We are both a little worried about overheating with the wood boiler, however the basement slab would provide a fair amount of storage and could serve as a heat dump.
My suggestion is to install pex tubes in the basement slab, reuse his existing boiler, but what is the best (cost effective) way to heat the main floor? Will the basement slab provide enough heat for the mainfloor as well?
Thanks for your input
Stewart

 

[Chris S]

Are you kidding? forced air?
Radiant in the slab , and some type radiant for the main floor. Staple up , quick track, anything but forced air. He'll love it.

Chris

 

[2.beans]

second that ,duct work is for ac

 

[flyingcow]

Geez... hot air? Nope I gottta agree and go with radiant or at least baseboard. Why spend more $$$'s on a hot air system.

 

[MrEd]

I'll say radiant also. If I was building new thats the way I'd go...second choice would be a cast iron baseboard, hot air would be way down on the list...

 

[barnartist]

Make sure if you radiant your slab, you insulate it correctly, or you'll never have enough wood. 2" foam board, and don't forget the sides.
I have both- the nice thing about forced air is it operates well at low temps, and you can save heat by turning down the thermostat, and quickly reheat your area when you want it.
Comfort though, well, I really love the radiant when using the John and the shower....you can use your floor as a towel warmer!

 

[pybyr]

I have forced air and may someday add underfloor radiant; know lots of folks with the latter

if I were building from a clean slate, NO doubt that underfloor radiant would be the priority- but Barnartist is right. Radiant floor is _very_ slow to respond. Warm air heats rapidly (although it loses heat rapidly). So the best of both worlds might be a radiant floor to keep chill out, and then a timed warm air supplement to bring it all up to full coziness during, but only during, the times that someone is home and awake.

 

[WoodNotOil]

I love my radiant in my downstairs and wish I had it upstairs too. Go with the radiant! He won't regret it for a second.

Also, tell him to get a gasifier. With new construction the cost diff. is only the difference on the boiler (and the storage he will inevitably want to add!) It's not as painful financially as changing over can be.

 

[Tony H]

I have forced air but if I were doing new construction or even an addition I would do radiant . My folks had it and those warm floors were great plus like you mentioned the slab acts as storage . The best deal would to get a small gasifier and also keep the old one for the oil backup I would even consider a seperate room and outside door for the boiler room with a nice under the deck protected wood storage area just outside.

 

[BrownianHeatingTech]

if I were building from a clean slate, NO doubt that underfloor radiant would be the priority- but Barnartist is right. Radiant floor is _very_ slow to respond.

Depends on the installation. Radiant above the subfloor tends to respond fairly quickly. Especially if you use 6" on-center tubing layout.

Slow response tends to relate to poor or less-than-optimal designs. (poor being bad work, less-than-optimal being properly done retrofit to difficult situations, like thick floors)

Joe

 

[Stew]

Thanks for all the great responses. There sure isn't too many hot air fans(no pun intended!!) around here!
Stewart