Radiant tubes infloor used to cool house

Bob Gagnon plumbing and heating

and a fan coil unit to provide addational cooling and to remove some humidity. this works in northern mass. my house stays about 70 degrees. even this summer when the outside temp. was near 100 degrees. bob

Mickey

Cooling a house using radiant tubes in the floor. After owning a brewery and being a general contractor, was wondering if I could use a glycol chiller(used to cool and control the fermentation temp)and run cold water thru the radiant heat tubes to cool the house?

Mason

radiant cooling

Tha answer is yes. But it brings with it other aspects like dehumidification....
Mason

flange

this type of cooling could be used, however you need to have enthalpy control to keep your floor temps above dewpoint. this would be bad as infiltration will invariably occur so your floor temps will be relatively warm, and because of this you will have zero dehumidification. i have worked in older highrisers that utilized this exact scheme to counteract the solar gain imposed upon the structure at the window line, but if your controller goes whacko you get condensation everywhere!

Mickey

The house will have a Vemar air excanger installed, will that help with the humidity?

Ken

extra loops to provide cooling

A friend is building with radiant and he is planning to use circulation in the pipes for cooling. His plan involves having the cooler water from the basement loops helping to keep the upper floor slab cooler. Now he has decided to add a heat exchanger to chill the water and use the heat produced to help pre-heat his domestic hot water. He does have slab temperature controls for his upstairs.

My question is would it work to run an extra loop or two of pex below his basement insulation or outside his foundation wall below the frost line to provide the cool water rather than use a chiller. These lines could be off all winter and only run during the cooling season.

This is in a very dry summer climate in the Okanagan Valley of B.C

I didn't start a new thread because this is so related.Possibly the same answers will apply.

Ken Caverly

Bob Gagnon plumbing and heating

Ken i cool my house

by sending well water through 1 side of a flateplate exchanger, the other side of the exch. my primary heating loop passes through. in cooling mode a solenoid valve opens cooling off my primary piping and the radiant zone that is calling. this is much more comfortable than AIR conditioning. bob

Ken

Thanks Bob

What sort of temp would you keep the floors at during the hot part of summer.

I am envisioning this as not requiring a large amount of cooling relative to air conditioning. Do you think using some cooler loops buried under the house or around the foundation would be enough. We aren't all lucky enough to have a well nearby.

How many gallons a minute would you be running.

Ken Caverly

Bob Gagnon plumbing and heating

56 dergee well water

with my staple up system keeps the floor around 68 degrees. i only have a point driven well and i use the water for sprinklers anyway. when it's real hot is when you need more water for the lawn and garden, so it works out. it takes about 10 gal. a min. to cool my house. i guess a loop system would work, like a heat pump but i never installed one. bob

Art Pittaway

Two things will beat you,

time and BTU's. Unless you have a source of cold to tap from that is large enough or turnover is constant (well water or a lake) the longer the cooling season goes the warmer the heat sink becomes. A few loops around the basement of a house won't last to long when it comes to cooling. The State of Illinois has done several energy conservation projects that included brine tanks (large swimming pool with no shallow end) buried in the yard. They froze the brine in winter with the idea of cooling all summer off the stored cold. Didn't work, made it for a few months before it all melted and got warm. Also, look at the trade off of trying to preheat water, by the time he pays for the electric to run the pumps and harvest the heat it may have been cheaper to run an electric Hot Water Heater to preheat. Solar water heating will work but once again payback should be looked at. If it's just average domestic use, it's questionable, if he's heating a swimming pool with a boiler, solar starts to look real good if it's done right. Just a few thoughts, Art

Ken

Thanks for the responses from both of you. It sounds like this requires a lot more cooling than I had imagined. Around here it cools down well at night so you only need cooling for the afternoon and early evening. Opening up the windows every night will cool the concrete for a fresh start every day.

Our house has good overhangs and with all the concrete it only warms up to about 78 degrees during a 100 degree day if we get the cool air in from the night before. Thats why I didn't expect it to take so much cooling.I know he is putting in some type of a high speed whole house fan to bring in fresh cool air every night.

I'll pass this on to him to help him decide. Once again this site has provided hard to get answers.

Ken Caverly