HELP? Which system for 3 story brick 100 yr old gutted house

nicholas bonham-carter

if you are down to the brick, you will be able to insulate very well, especially with new windows. if you want to go back to the way the house may have been heated when it was first built + some modern improvements. you could have a wood, or coal-fired boiler, with another more modern fuel backup boiler, fired with whatever fuel is available--oil. gas.

why not do a search here, using the button on the orange banner above for "dual fuel", or "wood", "coal",etc. many post here are about the dual-fuel setup.--nbc

Megan_3

INSULATING, HEATING& COOLING an old brick house

We have a 3 story (about 5000 sq.ft) 100 year old, brick (2 and 3 bricks thick) house in pennsylvania. We have it gutted down to brick walls. We will also put in new windows, etc. I wanted to use geothermal but it is sounding too complicated due to insulation/tonnage/yard space issues, so I would love to get some opinions on our best options for heating (and insulation if you are willing). I don't mind a higher initial cost for later efficiency.

Erich_3

What Kind of Heating System?

What kind of heating system did the house have and is it still there? Is it oil fired or gas?

tim smith

Just heating or do you need cooling also. If just heating I

would go to period heating, cast iron ornate radiators in some areas and infloor radiant in others if you like, oversized radiators for low temp operation which gives you best efficiency and keeps system at one temp. Use a mod/con boiler, my preference, Triangle tube prestige boiler with Heat transfer products superstore indirect water heater ran off boiler. I have done 3 +, total redos on houses this size and bigger with this exact system in last year. With brick, I might suggest you look into spray foam after framing against brick. It would give you super tight envelope with very little air infiltration that hurts heat loss dramatically. They make a good green foam also. Name evades me right now but spray foam will do you best. Now if a/c needed. Maybe look into multi zone VRF heatpumps with ducted and non ducted air handlers depending on space and looks. Just 3 cents worth. Tim

Brad White_191

Careful here

Insulating old brick from the inside, if it has a certain porosity, can lead to freeze-thaw cycles the uninsulated walls never experienced.

Check out Building Science Corp. and Joe Lstiburek's work on the subject. I have another reference somewhere, just not with me know. I may post it later or you can write me off-line.

You have a great opportunity here though! Let's see if we can all get it to be right for you.

tim smith

Brad, what about a vapor barrier on the inside of the brick wall

then blow in Icelyne foam or the such. Would that give it enough area for air movement?? Just spacing out here.

Megan_3

The house is currently a shell. It had forced air, but everything is gone. Starting from scratch so all options are open. We need both heating and cooling. We are more concerned with efficiency and long term cost than initial investment - to a point of course!

Megan_3

The Building Science Corporation website is quite a resource. Thanks. I have already linked it to my husband. That has been my concern with the geothermal company's insulation. They want us to build the wall in about 6 inches to use Nu-wool insulation (it is mold resistant). The windows would seem quite deep and I am not sure about moisture issues. ALso, since there is so much emphasis on insulation/new windows for us to be able to use geothermal, I am thinking that a boiler or radiant heat might be close in efficiency. THanks so much for your input.

Brad White_203

Hi Tim

The issue in this case is not about interior moisture getting into the wall. It is more about exterior rain and snow when it is borderline freezing out.

Porous older brick, rather soft clays as they are, will absorb this and hold it.

Normally, the out-driving heat from the building will drive the moisture out and keep the wall above freezing.

When you insulate the walls from the inside, this heat source is denied and what moisture is within the brick can freeze, expand and spall the brick.

As Joe Lstiburek once said, this may only happen to about 15% (or 20%, whatever it was) of such structures, but who wants to be in that percentage?

A copy of one article is attached.

mark ransley

You will need AC so why not the highest efficency forced air, have ducts sealed and insulated. There are different foams but they can have double the R value of most anything else. Most windows Anderson, Martin, Pellas are R 3.3 or so for Low E argon, Loewen and Alpen are near R7. You have options www.energystar.gov is a place to start.

Mark Custis

Brad's brick issue aside

I would go with radiant floors and high velocity a/c. The nice thing about radiant, besides comfort and the saving in fuel do to the delivery system, is the water does not care how it gets warm.

I can put you in touch will some clients here in Cleveland we have designed and installed systems for.

If you are at all handy both systems have lots of manual labor that can be done by a homeowner, and can result in a lower cost.

I would start by getting a heat loss program.

tim smith

I would seriously look at the VRF multi zone heat pumps from

mitsubishi, daikin, Sanyo and the like. It could be a good fit in this old house.

george_42

geothermal

I would insulate well and put in geothermal heat pumps. If yard space is limited ,use vertical loops , 150 feet of well for every ton of heating or cooling. Many of the larger homes that I service here in Pa. have this system and their bills are about 1/3 of their neighbors with conventional heating and cooling , At the price of energy today that would be the way to go.

Mark Custis

Geothermal radiant

is very nice. One can use H/V cooling with a chilled water coil. Solar can help with DHW and the heating load.

Throw a few logs in the remote wood fired boiler.

Megan_3

Brad White_191

Just some thoughts, Megan

While geothermal is generally a low temperature system, the need for insulation (or desire to do what you can), is common to any heating system you install.

Geothermal and insulation are not mutually exclusive but you want your load to be as low as it can be and certainly in the range of an affordable or more affordable geo system. Maybe that helps explain the relationship between savings from the system versus just plain lowering the load.

Did you take a look at that attachment I posted? Not all is lost, there are ways but the cautions remain. Many brick structures have been internally insulated without issue, probably most. But when spalling shows up, someone has to ask why, and these folks did.

My company designed a system for a brick building built in 1856. The brick was not suitable for insulation, it was that soft. The consultant on that did send brick samples to a lab to determine this and they put it through a series of freeze-thaw cycles, measured water absorption and so-on, to determine this.

It may be that you would be fine, but you have to know.

Megan_3

Brad,

Yes, the Lstiburek article and really the entire BSC site are great resources. It is interesting reading too, even for a layperson. I now understand that moisture/insulation is a two way street.

A geothermal co. representative came last week for a site visit. He really pushed using their insulation, even if we didn't use geothermal. The rep told me that due to the fact that we have a gutted house, he was unable to estimate the load/cost of installation and told me it would be between 50k and 100k. He would need 6 inches of framing for nu-wool insulation. (He did mention the fact that brick absorbs moisture, so that gives me confidence in their expertise.) I worry that the deep walls will look funny framed around the windows. I found an interesting article about a chicago renovation where they claimed to get r 18 in under 2 inches! But again, that leaves open the absorption question.

my husband is doing the framing hiself, we will hire out for windows, electric, plumbing, roofing, hvac, basement waterproofing, etc. The geothermal company rep voiced concern that if they design a system and then the homeowners (us) run out of money and don't replace the windows,etc. then the geothermal system doesn't work. He is also worried that we will ruin they system by not finishing construction (dust) before installation. He is very cautious, to say the least. Who knows what he has dealt with before.

Really, we would love to do geothermal. The yard is small and after his site visit he said there would only be room for 4 vertical wells which adds expense. He just didn't seem too excited by the prospect of doing our system which has made me doubt my decision. I want the right system for the house - AND to circle back around - which requires the right insulation decision first, which seems to be even more important and complex than the system decision itself! I wish I started this thread as a request for insulation help. Thanks so much for your help here.

Thank you.


http://www.chicagoreader.com/greenchicago/sullivanhouse/
"Ordinarily you'd need six inches of insulation to achieve R 18, but that would have reduced the Sullivans' floor area by more than 100 square feet per floor. George managed to get the same R value with just one and three-quarters inches. Against the brick wall he put a three-quarter-inch CertainTeed fiberglass batt that's R 8, chosen because it meets the standards of two programs: Energy Star (it's produced in an environmentally friendly fashion) and Green Seal (it doesn't contain formaldehyde). Against that he put an extra-thick (ten mil) plastic vapor barrier. Finally he added two layers of a half-inch Dow Chemical board called TUFF-R. These boards, rated R 5, are made of closed-cell polyurethane faced with foil, and he arranged them so that the two layers overlapped, minimizing air leaks. All seams were sealed with foil tape before the drywall went up. "

ttekushan_3

Controlling unwanted moisture in historic buildings

Preservation Brief #39, U.S. Department of the Interior:

Holding the Line: Controlling Unwanted Moisture in Historic Buildings

Good info here. I've attached this one, since part of the issue with porous bricks spalling and cracking has to do with inappropriate modern mortar formulations. Modern mortars are not designed for porous brick, and as such are less permeable to moisture and harder than the brick itself. The house may very well have been built with a lime mortar formula which is as soft and permeable as the original brick and somewhat flexible. Using this now prevents the brick failures we have come to see in repointed historic brick.

This awareness is just reaching the U.S. as U.K. and European preservation experts have long tried to correct the common failure mode of old brick/portland cement mortar problems.

-Terry

Megan_3

geothermal and radiant seem to be mutually exclusive here

I am not sure why, but the geothermal rep told me that geothermal radiant does not work well here. I didn't question this, but I know people rave about radiant heat. This is in part why I am considering a boiler instead of geothermal.

GREG LAUER

suggestion

This will ruffle feathers here but spend the mony and go with a Daikin vrv system. Daikinus.com. more efficant than geo and it is 6 deg in york and all of our Daikin heat pumps are running weel with 120 deg discharge temp and the ones that are cooling are cooling just fine. globally this product has a less than one tenth of one percent failure rate compair that to others. no electric back up heat required but it is very important that a Daikin certifed and experianced company installs and commissions the units. there is a wide veriety of indoor units including ductless and they can be mixed and matched to one yes one outdoor unit.

Megan_3

Another great resource. This will take me some time to digest. I have already put in a request to order:

Conrad, Ernest A. "The Dews and Don'ts of Insulating." Old House Journal 24.3 (1996): 36-41. Kerschner & Baker:
"Accurate information on how to safely insulate and ventilate an old house, [including] practical climate control considerations."

This was listed in the bibliography.

Erich_3

CeiIling Radiant

It seems like you have the perfect opportunity to install radiant ceiling heat. It is much better than radiant floors and it is much cheaper to install especially when the house is in the condition that yours is in. Try and find a radiant ceiling expert in your area. Here is a good explanation of ceiling radiant:

http://www.tesmar.com/html/radiant_floors_vs_radiant_ceilings.html

Megan_3

thinking outside the box

Now that is cool. What a great idea!

Mark Custis

Geo/radiant

Why would the rep say it will not work. The system we built works fine.

What fuels do you have available?

Most geo systems will need some form of auxiliary heat. Besides comfort an advantage of radiant, floor, ceiling or walls is the fuel economy as a delivery system.

For cooling chilled water can be piped to a high velosity air system.

Megan_3

The house had a gas furnace before. So electric or gas for fuel. I am not well versed on this but here goes. I recall him telling me that Geo was an option, but not with radiant floor heat. He just said that they haven't had success with it and I didn't question it. I guess there will be air handlers on each floor because he was talking about needing space for a "unit" on each floor. I know that part of the plan would be to get our hot water through geothermal. He talked about 4 wells because of space and said they would have to be deep and expensive. He said he had just started with the engineer but couldn't get anywhere because we hadn't decided on how to insulate yet, but when I pressed, he said it would cost between 50k and 100k for everything, ducts, drilling, insulation, etc. I would like to get another co. out here to check it out, but they are few and far between and this co. has a good, or rather the only, reputation in my area. It is just too expensive to experiment with. I can't wait for my husband to get home from his business trip and throw this thread at him. It is full of great ideas and information.

Mark Custis

We will google earth the addy

Have tools do travel.

This old guy has boxes of old Mother Earth News issues in the attic. One I love the most, shows a guy in France that heats his home with a compost pile. I can not remember which of the two of them was the gardener.

We are in Cleveland, OH former home of National City Bank, now PNC.

We sould love to come take a look and blue sky in Steelers town. Go Browns.

I could sub the engineering out to Brad.

Megan_3

thanks!