geothermal cooling tied to radiant floor or radiators

brad rutherford

I am looking for an info on closed loop geothermal cooling. Has anyone tied this into a radiant heat or radiator system, and controlled dewpoint? I am from lower michigan. Thanks, Brad

Nron_9

radiant cooling

tere are several ways to do this ,you can use the radiant floors to switch between heating and cooling cycles or add radiant to the ceilings and use them for cooling and second stage heating for the coldest days , they make a special radiant mat for the cooling system ( KaRo quiet cooling ) this should help you get information on radiant cooling Nron

GMcD

Yes, it's been done

But not in your area. As long as the interior room dewpoint/humidity is controlled properly in climates where extended warm humid summers happen, radiant cooling floors, ceilings, and/or panels is possible. There is one large scale radiant cooling floor slab at Pier 1 in San Franciso which uses a seawater heat exhanger loop to serve the cooling plant, and there is the Gleneagles Community Centre in West Vancouver BC which uses a geothermal heat pump plant to supply heating and cooling water to radiant slab ceilings and tilt-up concrete walls. There are also likely a few residential projects that are working well, that I don't have on my radar. The one that comes to mind is the "Our Cool House" guy who is running a nice website at: http://www.ourcoolhouse.com/

There are about 5 large scale commercial radiant cooling slab buildings in my area (Pacific NW) that are under construction right now, and I know of a historical large scale radiant cooling panel Office Building in Oakland, CA that the folks at LBL did some upgrading work on, so there is no real magic to designing a hydronic radiant cooling system, as long as the appropriate air side and building envelope issues are designed properly for the climate where the building is located. I trust you've done some Google searches on "radiant cooling" to see what kind of information is out there? I think the guys at Flack & Kurtz Consulting Engineers have also designed some radiant cooling floor systems for a church as well- I think that was a Daniel Nall authored paper if I recall correctly.

I am currently designing a small "demonstration" radiant slab ceiling system that will be located in West Virginia as part of a new building. Hopefully, if the funding comes through, the building will start construction sometime early this summer for a completion next year.