Radiant Heat & Heat Pumps

Big Idahoan

We had a homeowner contact us adout retro-fitting into their home. When the home was built 5 years ago they installed a heat pump to facilitate the heating and cooling system in their home. Heat pumps aroud here usually get the water to 55-60 degrees. We usually need water temps between 120-140 degree to make our systems work. We have never done a radiant system in conjunction with a heat pump, is there a way to use it in a new system? How would we set the system up? I'd appreciate any help I could get on this one.

Thanks in advance.

Craig Bergman

What kind of...

heat pump are you refering to? I don't understand the 55-60 deg water temps. Here in Cedar Rapids, Iowa we do a lot of Ground Source water to water Heat Pumps with radiant systems. When properly designed they work like a dream and save our customers a lot of money every year.

Our GeoComfort heat pump will produce 120 deg water for the radiant system. We can get higher temps but the effieciencies start to tank above 120 deg. Our design temp is -5 deg so we will only do a geo/radiant system with a gyp overpour. Insulation is also a very important part of the system. If the customer invests in better insulation we can usually drop the size of the heat pump required.
Between the heat pump and the loop field, each ton of heating and cooling required will add about 3K to the cost of the install.

We set our systems up to automaticaly switch between colling with the air handler, heating with the air handler and heating with radiant. Our controls will bring on the radiant system when it falls below 34 deg and shuts it down if the temp risies above 44 deg. This helps eliminate the flywheel effect during the shoulder times of the spring and fall.

Bergy

Big Idahoan

This is the first time we've been involved with a heat pump, we are trying to learn how to incorporate them into a radiant system. Any info on how exactly they work would be great.

Big Idahoan