Radiant heat in outbuilding for boiler

[headrc]

I wanted to start a thread on this separately here .....regarding heating the boiler room ....it is a bad idea to put radiant heat in the floor of a boiler room? Do these things radiate out a lot of heat by themselves and would this be overkill? I know it will not solve the problem when you leave the premises for an extended period of time unless someone is committed to feeding the boiler ....but if I proceed with this I could put radiant heat in the floor of the boiler room for very little extra cost and I would like to know if this is a bad idea.

Thx for everything ...

RH

 

[heaterman]

If I was building a combo boiler and wood storage room I'd put radiant heat in the whole thing. Can you say dry, warm, easy to start and quick to burn wood?

 

[Chris S]

I'm thinking of a wood rack made of 1 1/2" black pipe with boiler water running through it to help with the drying. In my experience boiler rooms are hot because of the piping not the boilers. That being said I will probably put my scrap 1/2" pex into the floor just in case
chris

 

[Chris S]

I wish I'd thought of that!!

 

[Eric Johnson]

Most boilers, especially around the chimney outlet and black pipe sections, put out enough radiant heat to keep a small boiler room well over 100 degrees. So I don't think you'd need infloor radiant, and probably never use it if you put it in. But the idea of putting in a separate, heated wood-drying area is a good one, I think.

 

[ISeeDeadBTUs]

My outdoor, uninsulated 'boiler room' stays 40-55 most of the winter. Though I store 1-2 week supply WAY too close to the GW, the results in how quickly it produced heat is amazing. Not sure that the wood is getting dried that much, but it eliminates the introduction of any NEW water (damn tarps suck) and it makes the wood 40 degrees warmer from the get go.

And this is with a hole on one gable end and the enire gable open on the other end, plus the eaves are open. My WAG would be that heating the slab wit Pex, insulating and sealing the boiler room, then ducting in warmed, outside air to the air inlets, would be more efficient . . . though more costly initially.