Building new home with in floor heat. Need recommendations

[Sako7STW]

Hello all. We are building a new Barndominium. It will have a very large great room at 22x40x18 that the pellet stove will be going in. The home will have gas fired in floor heating. Being in Wyoming, we think it’s a good idea to have a secondary heat source. We will mostly use it for ambience but want to be able to crank it up if need be. Aesthetics is important. I don’t really want one that looks like some futuristic garbage can.

In our current home, we have an older Harmon insert that I pretty much hate. The heat output sucks. Total nightmare to clean. Then we have a St Croix upstairs that is a monster. That sucker puts out some heat. It’s fairly quiet and burns really well. Puts the Harmon to shame. My FIL bought a new Comfort Built that is very quiet and puts out excellent heat. Just not really crazy about the looks. So looking for recommendations on good looks, great heat capability’s, and quiet.

Now for the hard questions. Does any of you have in-floor radiant heat? How do you use your pellet stove in conjunction with it? I have never had radiant heat before. My understanding is you want good steady even heat output as it’s very slow to respond. My worry is, the pellet stove will turn the system off and then it can take a very long time to get your floors heated up again. Would we be shooting ourselves in the foot with even having a pellet stove? Thank you in advance for your thoughts and time helping us.

 

[tbear853]

Heat is heat, if a pellet stove cuts off radiant heat, things are warm near the thermostat. I'd keep my thermostat far from the pellet stove if I was thinking of lying on a warm floor.

 

[shtrdave]

I would put my thermostat in a different room or see if you can get a thermostat with some sort of timer to run the system on a regular basis, to keep it efficient. One of the gun clubs I belong to did radiant floor in the concrete. they heat it with a hot water heater. it is nice if they just keep it at a fairly consistent temp, not turning it down to say 60 when the range is not it use and then trying to get it to 65 or 70 when people are there.

 

[Max W]

We did staple up radiant under our main floor in our last house but seldom used it. It was not that we didn’t like it but wood was a cheaper option. With your room’s 18 ft height you will appreciate the radiant. I wouldn’t discard the plan for the pellet stove. There will be times when you may want heat right away especially in the shoulder season or to give the radiant a boost as the heat come up.

 

[mtnbiker727]

I believe the Harman inserts are low BTU output, and an insert is of course more difficult to maintain, because it's shoved inside a chimney.

Quiet is a really relative term. Anything new will make noises that you're not used to, but eventually you will get used to it and won't notice the noises anymore. When we first got our P68, we heard every tinkle of pellets from our bedroom one floor up. Now I have to go downstairs to see if it's still running.

I really like my P68, because it's powerful, it looks like a stove, and it doesn't have touchscreen controls.