I recently bought a house (in Chester, NS, Canada) which is heated with in-floor radiant with an electric (slant-fin) boiler. The hot water is an electric 40 gallon tank. There is a small wood stove in the living room (DutchWest 1000, the plate steel model) which has been keeping up with the load so far, but once it gets a little colder it will fall behind and we'll have to fire up the boiler. The house is ~2000 sq. ft., and pretty well insulated (R-40 with no thermal bridging in the roof, R20 in the walls, double-pane modern windows).
We also have a fairly large outbuilding (~1400 sq. ft.) with electric baseboard upstairs and an oil stove downstairs. It is also R40 in the roof and R20 in the walls, with double pane windows. We have a second small outbuilding ((~200 sq. ft.) which is not yet insulated or heated, but I'd like to do so in the next couple of years.
I had been considering solar hot water panels to supplement the various systems, but it turns out that we have poor exposure due to trees both on our property (that we don't want to lose) and on neighbour's properties (that they don't want to lose!).
I'm now considering geo-thermal (we're on a lake) and a wood boiler.
The wood boiler system I'm envisioning would have the boiler in the large outbuilding (downstairs is my workshop) with a large, very well insulated heat storage tank in an appendage to the space that I'd build. I would put a smaller storage tank in the house (space limited, no basement, small utility rooms) which would get it's heat from the big tank as needed. Once I put heat in the smaller outbuilding it would do the same, on a smaller scale.
Heat into the outbuilding would come from some hydronic loops I'd mount on the walls and ceiling downstairs, or alternately some low-temperature radiators. Heat in the house would still be the radiant slab, but the heat for it would come from the remote tank instead of the electric boiler (electric boiler would still be there for times when we were away and didn't have a fire going in the outbuilding's boiler). Domestic hot water (in both the outbuilding and the main house) would be pre-heated by the hot water tanks through a heat exchanger, but would still be electric tanks (the one in the outbuilding is usually off, however). Heat into the small outbuilding would be low-temperature radiators.
Does this sound like an over-complicated system? It would require trenching in lines from the outbuilding to the house, and eventually to the small outbuilding. It would require multiple storage tanks and sensors, and a control system which I can't imagine would be off-the-shelf. And it would require a really well insulated main storage tank to be useful in the shoulder seasons when we wouldn't need to run the boiler that often, to prevent losing the heat before we can use it.
To me it doesn't seem much/any worse than a solar system or geothermal - but I haven't installed something like this before (my last house had a wood stove large enough to be the primary and electric baseboard for when we were away), and I don't know if it's over the top.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Chris
We also have a fairly large outbuilding (~1400 sq. ft.) with electric baseboard upstairs and an oil stove downstairs. It is also R40 in the roof and R20 in the walls, with double pane windows. We have a second small outbuilding ((~200 sq. ft.) which is not yet insulated or heated, but I'd like to do so in the next couple of years.
I had been considering solar hot water panels to supplement the various systems, but it turns out that we have poor exposure due to trees both on our property (that we don't want to lose) and on neighbour's properties (that they don't want to lose!).
I'm now considering geo-thermal (we're on a lake) and a wood boiler.
The wood boiler system I'm envisioning would have the boiler in the large outbuilding (downstairs is my workshop) with a large, very well insulated heat storage tank in an appendage to the space that I'd build. I would put a smaller storage tank in the house (space limited, no basement, small utility rooms) which would get it's heat from the big tank as needed. Once I put heat in the smaller outbuilding it would do the same, on a smaller scale.
Heat into the outbuilding would come from some hydronic loops I'd mount on the walls and ceiling downstairs, or alternately some low-temperature radiators. Heat in the house would still be the radiant slab, but the heat for it would come from the remote tank instead of the electric boiler (electric boiler would still be there for times when we were away and didn't have a fire going in the outbuilding's boiler). Domestic hot water (in both the outbuilding and the main house) would be pre-heated by the hot water tanks through a heat exchanger, but would still be electric tanks (the one in the outbuilding is usually off, however). Heat into the small outbuilding would be low-temperature radiators.
Does this sound like an over-complicated system? It would require trenching in lines from the outbuilding to the house, and eventually to the small outbuilding. It would require multiple storage tanks and sensors, and a control system which I can't imagine would be off-the-shelf. And it would require a really well insulated main storage tank to be useful in the shoulder seasons when we wouldn't need to run the boiler that often, to prevent losing the heat before we can use it.
To me it doesn't seem much/any worse than a solar system or geothermal - but I haven't installed something like this before (my last house had a wood stove large enough to be the primary and electric baseboard for when we were away), and I don't know if it's over the top.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Chris