Best Of

I'd prefer something you could restart remotely.

Do you want the hydronic system back in working order. Comfort to many is superior to forced air. Although FA will recover quicker. I would not drain and refill a hydronic system. that allows excessive O2 into the system. You would probably need an air compressor to get 100% drain of the piping if it is fin tube.

Cheap and maybe easy would be a mini split, or two.

Drain the water system when you are gone. Heat cool, efficiently with mini splits.

Wood stove for back up/ power outage and quick heat

The right answer depends on your budget. My recommendation is ALL the below:

Non condensing propane furnace.

Heat pump. Size the heat pump for cooling, not heating

Compromise the performance of the ductwork (a little) to keep the aesthetics. Hardest part of the project, but you will want the AC.

5 to 10 KW propane standby generator with battery bank backup. Check out Generac PWRcell. Pricey, but maybe competition will bring prices down. The batteries in the PWRcell are more than you need. $500 of deep cycle lead acid might be enough.

Cellular Internet and and cameras.

Maintenance contract with Generac Installer and/or propane company.

Shut off well when you are away. Maybe drain the domestic water pipes.

Southern Indiana is a humid continental climate. Some colder winters and many hotter summers than New England.

If it were not for your power supply problems — which are much more common than some on The Wall realise — my suggestion would be a heat pump. You say the climate in southern Indiana is extreme… well, not really, and a good cold climate heat pump should be able to manage. Depending on how large the house is and how it is laid out, you could either use one or two mini-splits, or a central unit. For the latter, you would have air ducts — and my suggestion there would be to admit their existence in the various spaces. Architecturally, that would be preferable to attempting to hide them — which never works well.

However. You do have that power supply problem, which means that the house is going to freeze from time to time — and despite the wonders of the modern internet, you won't know about it. The problem is that an auxiliary generator big enough to power a heat pump is going to be a fairly good chunk of change, particularly if it's automatic.

I think that my approach might be to really evaluate the existing radiators, and replace any which are too badly damaged to use and also replace any suspect — never mind burst — plumbing. Then use an appropriately sized propane fired boiler to provide the heat, and use glycol antifreeze in the system. That could run off a much smaller generator for when you are there and the electricity isn't — the antifreeze in the heating system would allow you to fire it up, no matter how cold it was. You would still have to drain the domestic water plumbing, but that may not be that much of a hassle.

I would drain down the house and turn the heat off when you're not there.

If you put glycol in a hydronic system it won't burst even if it freezes. Forced air doesn't need any special protection other than perhaps a splash of gycol in a condensate trap.

Do you have internet access? It's nice to have something you can turn on half a day before you arrive so the house is warm when you get there.

Generally the house plumbing is a much bigger deal than the heating system. I find it easiest to blow everything out with compressed air. If there are fixtures that aren't frost-safe even when blown out, over time you'll find them, just replace them.

It sounds like a whole house fan could be a great solution for your cabin. The gable vent should work as a mounting spot. For a quieter option, look into fans like the QuietCool CL-1500. Make sure to check the fan's size and compatibility with your existing vent dimensions.

From that photo. I'm going to guess the the 500 sq ft is all first floor, and that @JH3550 has an uninsulated combination roof ceiling that we are looking at in the photo. When I first moved into my 2 story colonial in South Jersey, there was no central AC. but the home felt like it was air conditioned in the morning. Walk outside to go to work and you could feel the heat. The uncomfortable heat from the noon to 3:00PM sun beating on the roof, did not really hit us inside until after 2:PM, and that heat stuck around until well past 9:00PM.

When I added the Whole house fan, I would run it on a thermostat set at 65° overnight. Sometimes the home was 60° in the morning. I would shut off the fan before I left for work and and close up all the windows. When I got home, the temperature was not that bad. After the sun dropped below the tree line, the outdoor temperature would drop by 10° and I would turn the fan on. By just opening a window about 1-1/2 to 2", that cool evening air was all that was needed to make the house comfortable, in no time. Any room you wanted to cool down, just crack the window a little and you got great cool fresh air blowing over you body.

We used that for 5 years until I could afford to put in the Central AC.

I like your Idea! As far as a quiet fan, the larger the opening the slower you need to operate the fan motor. The motor is not the noisy part, it is the propeller moving the air that is making all the noise. A big propeller moving slow, will move the same amount of air as a smaller prop spinning fast.

I have a whole house fan mounted in the ceiling that is somewhat larger than your opening. Because it is a large enough fan, it doesn't need to turn at a high RPM, so it is only a low pitched, rumbly sound. (Actually kind of soothing)

I think some had electricity that was unreliable and had gas fixtures to use when the power was out.

K&T should separate the neutrals by circuit so they can be protected at the panel with a gfci breaker. If circuits are mixed on the neutral you have no way of keeping it from being overloaded. I thought the 12 awg k&t was limited to 15 a by decree somewhere. The 30 a fuses were improper size fuses installed by unqualified people.

Cloth and rubber wire isn't inherently dangerous, some of it is perfectly pliable, others crumbles when you touch it. It is probably somewhat safer in k&t than old bx or romex because it has secondary insulation either from the knobs and tubes or from the loom at outlets.