SB: Re: Radiant floors for A/C

["Richard" <rharris1@ec.rr.com>]

Matt,
Your idea of using heat transfer to pre-heat is a start in the right
direction. Tim makes some very good points, however. In effect, you would be
drawing heat out of your floor. This might be useful for cooling your house,
but I wouldn't care or a damp floor.

In my climate, heating will be more of an issue. I plan to use solar energy
to pre-heat my hot water. The solar collectors will be hung inside my
attached greenhouse, so as to help prevent freezing problems.
http://www.sierrasolar.com has such collectors, although you could build
them yourself.  A solar boiler (using reflector panels) is also an option.

The hot water would pass through a hot water tank and then be pumped through
the the floor tubes.

SiarraSolar has one closed-loop sytem which uses an antifreeze (probably
Glycol) in the solar collectors and then transfers the heat to the water in
the tank. The tank has an heating element to makeup any difference.
The item (HW-067) is in the catalog, but not on the website.

I think I'll connect the radiant floor tubes to the closed loop Glycol
system to prevent microbiotic contamination. Somewhere in the loop, I'll
transfer the heat to a domestic hot water heater.

Richard H

Here are some sites which may be helpful:
http://www.eren.doe.gov/RE/solar_hotwater.html
http://www.azstarnet.com/%7Erecorder/Hydronic.htm
http://www.greenbuilder.com/sourcebook/HeatCool.html
http://www.sea.vic.gov.au/energy_smart/hot_water/shw.html
http://www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/bp/16/owen.htm
My search yielded over 200 sites. I'll be happy to send the results to
anyone who wants to see them.


----- Original Message -----
From: M HOLik
To: strawbale@crest.org
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 12:30 AM
Subject: SB: Radiant floors for A/C


Hello all-

Just a thought, but what if (assuming that you use ground water) a person
were to run water first through your radiant floor tubing then to your water
heater.  Wouldn't this effectively preheat the water while at the same time
remove heat from your thermal mass and hence your house?

This system could also be used if you harvested rain water by either:
a) storing your water underground or
b) running tubing from your storage underground and then through your floors

It would probably work best if you had a maximum of tubing in your house, or
enough so that the volume of the tubing was similar to the volume of the
water heater as to allow for maximum heat transfer.

Just wondering what you all think.

Matt


MM&J


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