Radiant Heat in the South?

Amber

Hi-
I live in Southern Louisiana and my hubby and I are designing our home now with plans to start building in about a year. My family is from PA and I love the radiant heat they are using. I can not find anyone knowledgeable or experienced locally in radiant heating systems to help us out. The builder we are considering is not for it and almost all of the builders we spoke with advised against it because, “ we only have winter for a few months out of the year.” This is not true, we used our heat from Oct till mid to late Feb this past year. With this in mind is there a cut off, so to speak, when it would not be cost advantageous to consider radiant heating rather than radiators or base board radiant in my climate?

We use slab foundation construction here and the home we designed is a split 2 story (a lot of open space, ceilings about 24’ in open area, 10’ in closed rooms. My hopes are to do geothermal cooling(for the other 7 months), solar powered radiant heating/hot water system.

Are my expectations too high in the deep south?

All thoughts are very welcome.
Amber

Elevation: 32 feet
Average Temp: 74.5
Average High Temp: 78.8
Average Low: 56.4
Average Precip: 4.0"
I have yet to find a ground temp ave, but I seem to recall it is around 63 or so.

S Davis

Geothermal Radiant

You might consider geothermal radiant, you can use a water to water unit to heat a buffer tank and draw off the buffer for your radiant floor heating.
The one thing to watch is the design water temp for the radiant as most geo units have 120-125 degree max water out.

S Davis

Tim Doran_2

Customer relations

Contact our customer relations group. They should be able to help you locate some local help. 1-800-321-4739

Tim D.

Doug Wagoner

Deep South Radiant

A water sourse geothermal heat pump can do both the floor radiant heating and the air cooling too. The biggest obstacle that I see poseing a problem is the 32' above sea level. Your house may be prone to high ground water that would suck the heat out of the concrete slab on the first floor. This problem can be over come unless other problems preclude attempting such a design in your near tropical climate. I am thinking of insects making a home in the thermal barrier that would be needed on the ground contact floor. Only a competent architech and/or builder familiar with your area can answer these questions. From a mechanical point of view the house could be made to operate comfortably using radiant heating. It may not be the best thing to do in your area.