Need help with hydronic explorer 2.0

ralman

I have a ranch style home where the kitchen is separated from the living room by a wall. The dining room is open to both rooms with no separating wall. I was going to calculate this heat loss as one large room. Is this the correct way to figure it?

A.J.

Yes

Heat loss is only interested in the outside walls, but it will not give you the amount of heat per room that way.

Brad White_35

Heat Losses

as A.J. said, only take into account those surfaces across which heat is lost (indoors to outdoors, ceiling to attic or roof, floor to a basement that is cooler, etc.). Room to room there is no loss if the rooms are at the same temperature.

But to perhaps expand upon what A.J. said and to slightly disagree, my answer would be "no" it is not correct to figure it (to take the open and contiguous spaces as one large room), IMHO.

Take the area of each room however defined and ignore the boundaries between the rooms. Just take into account the outside surfaces. This way, as A.J. said, you will know what each area needs in and of itself, for radiation.

The downside of taking the spaces all as one room is that the apportionment of heat loss to each area may not be equal and probably is not. You may overheat one room because that is where you can fit more radiation for example. This in turn becomes a secondary way to heat the other rooms but at a cost in comfort. Give each room the correct amount and type of radiation and you should be all set.

ralman

Thanks for your input. The reason I asked the question is I ran it both ways, and get two very different numbers. 8000 btu as three rooms, 26000 figured as 1 total room.

Brad White_9

Odd figures, Ross

The total exposed wall should be the same however apportioned. Sure it was not 8,000 per room times three? That at least would be close.

All other factors such as infiltration should be proportional. I would check your inputs.

ralman

I have been playing with this free program for awhile and like

it but.... I am not certain of the accuracy and this is why. Originally I had drawn imaginary lines and calculated three rooms, 2000, 2000, and 4000 for a total of 8000. I then calculated as one total room 25' by 25' which came to 26000 btu heat loss. The total exposed wall is 75' regardless which way I calculate. I have lots of CI baseboard and was considering a change to panel radiators but I wasn't sure if the heat would spread evenly and reach everywhere because the rooms are open to each other.