I had fully intended to incorporate staple up radiant into my home when I bought my gasser back in 2008 and was building my new home. Breaking ground in late Oct. on a tight schedule to close in before winter and working with a custom builder that had no radiant experience, a radiant slab in my basement or even my pole barn just wasn't in the cards, even if I could have gotten my wife on board. I compromised with an all electric HP that could both heat and cool and added a water to air HX to utilize the boiler. Fast forward to 2013. Now we are looking to finish the basement and I'm having trouble justifying whether the staple up radiant is worth messing with anymore. 2/3 of the main floor is carpeted with the wrong kind of padding and I'm not sure what that would cost to change. I have look at some of the methods Bob Rohr gave for radiant walls (bottom 3ft) for the basement and it looks like it would work well. The transfer plates and insulation would add up quick it seems though, not to mention the labor involved. The bottom line is the forced air works very well (both HP and wood HX) keeping the home evenly heated compared to the high eff. gas furnace in our old house. In that house we always had hot & cold rooms and air was dry even with humidifiers which I believe made us more prone to colds. If I do forego the radiant completely, I've been thinking an ECM type replacement blower might be worth a try. In the article below they recommend setting it to the speed that gives the correct static pressure as the original PSC motor so as to not mess with the original system design. I could also circulate air constantly on the low setting for about 50-100W as a first stage on my wood (HX) mode and have a 2nd stage with the faster blower speed. The best thing is that it is 120V instead of 240V which would allow me to heat the home when the electricity goes out using just the batteries and inverter that I would have at the boiler.
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/community/forum/mechanicals/20709/swapping-ecm-psc-fan-motor
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/community/forum/mechanicals/20709/swapping-ecm-psc-fan-motor
