For those of us nerdy enough to be reading this during the summer.....a topic perhaps to kick around...inspired by the shoulder season thread.
Does anyone use their radiant floor for cooling during the summer? Biggest issue is likley condensation obviously....and I don't think there's much of a chance unless there is lots of massive concrete.
But I have that....6" floor that is 44x32. That's quite a mass. When it is nice and cool in the evenings, and no rain, so I can leave the windows open all night, if I can get the slab down to 66 or so....it does a remarkably nice job keeping the house cool throughout the next day. What happens though here in the north east is the 5 days or so of 90's temps with nights that dip maybe in the high 60's....and there's no much help cooling the slab it seems. That's when the big AC in an upstairs windows turns on...and spins that meter. The 55 degree air really does a nice job on an overnight "soak".
Sometimes I toy with the idea of plumbing things up so I can circulate well water (about 45 degrees at the house) through the floor to keep it cool during the day. Would have to plumb in some valves to make the switchover and disconnect the manifolds from the primary loop of the heating system....but doable. ALso, would be introducing fresh water into the heating system everytime I switched back over.....not a good idea either. So I have never bothered. But right now it is about 55 outside and clear, so when I hit the hay I will open all the windows...and the slab will be 65-66 in the AM. Easy enough to run the numbers and it seems like I have to run quite a bit of water through the system....and it would be dumped on the ground...quite a waste...but it might be overall cheaper than running the AC.
Running a few numbers it is in the realm of doable it seems, to perhaps keep the slab at at 65-66 degree temp during the day...which really seems to help cool the house....though I guess I have to really think about how much this cools the house as opposed to how long it just takes the house to heat up....
But if I only had to introduce say 1 gpm of fresh water into the floor, 60 gallons/hour, and I could get a 20 degree temp change, that's about 10,000 BTU/HR. Doesn't seem like much...not even one ton of AC. The well pump would be running every couple of minutes (pressure tank appears to still be behaving fine). So 60 gallons/hour used....for 8 hours a day...or 480 gallons. Maybe I could irrigate the garden with this.... Well pump at 240V * 10A (guess) but only at 5minutes/hour so just maybe 50 cents a day for 8 hours. Well should be OK to do this rate of water forever...though I did run it dry when I was sprinkling water on my garage floor (two big sprinklers running full bore for many hours straight......learned I had to go out and turn them off for awhile!)
So likely not worth all the effort and risk (to heating system, to well, well pump, and water waste, floor condensation/mold, etc).
But does anyone else have any cooling methods?
Does anyone use their radiant floor for cooling during the summer? Biggest issue is likley condensation obviously....and I don't think there's much of a chance unless there is lots of massive concrete.
But I have that....6" floor that is 44x32. That's quite a mass. When it is nice and cool in the evenings, and no rain, so I can leave the windows open all night, if I can get the slab down to 66 or so....it does a remarkably nice job keeping the house cool throughout the next day. What happens though here in the north east is the 5 days or so of 90's temps with nights that dip maybe in the high 60's....and there's no much help cooling the slab it seems. That's when the big AC in an upstairs windows turns on...and spins that meter. The 55 degree air really does a nice job on an overnight "soak".
Sometimes I toy with the idea of plumbing things up so I can circulate well water (about 45 degrees at the house) through the floor to keep it cool during the day. Would have to plumb in some valves to make the switchover and disconnect the manifolds from the primary loop of the heating system....but doable. ALso, would be introducing fresh water into the heating system everytime I switched back over.....not a good idea either. So I have never bothered. But right now it is about 55 outside and clear, so when I hit the hay I will open all the windows...and the slab will be 65-66 in the AM. Easy enough to run the numbers and it seems like I have to run quite a bit of water through the system....and it would be dumped on the ground...quite a waste...but it might be overall cheaper than running the AC.
Running a few numbers it is in the realm of doable it seems, to perhaps keep the slab at at 65-66 degree temp during the day...which really seems to help cool the house....though I guess I have to really think about how much this cools the house as opposed to how long it just takes the house to heat up....
But if I only had to introduce say 1 gpm of fresh water into the floor, 60 gallons/hour, and I could get a 20 degree temp change, that's about 10,000 BTU/HR. Doesn't seem like much...not even one ton of AC. The well pump would be running every couple of minutes (pressure tank appears to still be behaving fine). So 60 gallons/hour used....for 8 hours a day...or 480 gallons. Maybe I could irrigate the garden with this.... Well pump at 240V * 10A (guess) but only at 5minutes/hour so just maybe 50 cents a day for 8 hours. Well should be OK to do this rate of water forever...though I did run it dry when I was sprinkling water on my garage floor (two big sprinklers running full bore for many hours straight......learned I had to go out and turn them off for awhile!)
So likely not worth all the effort and risk (to heating system, to well, well pump, and water waste, floor condensation/mold, etc).
But does anyone else have any cooling methods?