House "NOT Freezing

radmix

This is a follow up to a post that I made on the R-Value of stone. I went to the project today and did a heat loss to a 1800s stone house with no insulation in the walls or the floor. The only insulation the house is in the ceiling which is R-50. I came up with a heat loss of 50 BTUs per sq ft. The has house never had heat The only way to heat the house with enough heat emiters is with high output baseboard wraped around every wall.There are three bathrooms in the house. One on the first floor and Two on the second and a kitchen. The house is a weekend house located in  the catskills in upstate N.Y.The homeowner only comes up from the city every three weeks. I said it must be a big pain draining the house down every time you leave for the week. He informed me that he has owned the house for 20 years and has never drained the house down and he has never had the house freeze even with no heat in the house.. The R value for the walls are R-2, single pain windows on insulation in the floors and all of the fireplace dampers were open for a big draft in the house. It will be 7 degrees tonight. Has anyone ran across a house that does not freeze with no heat in this climate.

World Plumber

No

Our buildings in France are all stone and they freeze if we don't keep them heated and it rarely gets below 20 there.

Steamhead

The perfect system for that house

would be................. Steam!



With steam, not only do the radiators and most of the pipes drain dry when the system shuts off, but you don't need nearly as much installed radiation for a given load.



A mini-tube system, such as Gerry Gill's, sidesteps the big-pipe issue.

radmix

No Room

Some of the rooms in the house are small and the homeowner opted out of radiators. They wanted radiant but the heat loss was to high

World Plumber

Ductless heatpump system

I did a ductless heat pump system in a 16th century chateau. Lot of work but works well.

Problem would be the low temperatures there. Does Sanyo still make the one with the little Bunson burner in it? That might work. If he doesn't keep it heated a hot air system would be next in line. But where do you run the duct work? Any hydrronic system would require a lot of maintenance to maintain the freeze protection. Electric radiant, how long would that take to heat up the stone and how much electric would it burn? It takes a couple of days to heat the stone up but once it's warm the buildings are comfortable.

     An 80% hot air wouldn't have any freeze problems. The warm air feels warn as long are you don't get too close to the walls before they warm up. Is there a basement? Attic?