Looking down from above

Leo G_99

of a 4 block, 14 unit townhouse complex. We are actually installing radiant into these!?!?!?!? Of course they are asking over a mil per unit. Once the trees are down, I'll shoot a pic from the top floor and you'll see why!

Leo G

GMcD

Nice

There are three 8 storey high rise student dorm towers just completed at one of the local Universities here, all in-slab radiant for 750 dorm units. It was only a 2% premium capital cost bump compared to electric baseboards, but the energy modelling indicated that they would use half the energy compared to the all-electric system due to the thermal mass storage (and the heat recovery ventilators used for the central corridor vent/washroom exhaust). Connected to Campus hot water mains from 85% efficient power boilers. Large scale residential floor heating works too.

Leo G_99

Geoff

are these the towers that Aurthur Erickson was so POed about?

A client of mine's sister was looking into buying an Erickson house from the sixties in S. Van, still had the original steel piped in floor system running. Don't know if she went ahead with the purchase or not.

Sweet looking job!!!

Leo G

GMcD

Erickson

I'm not sure- they are the new Dorm towers up on the Hill at SFU. I don't normally follow Architectural criticism, but to my eye, they look good. Really good project architect in charge at the primary Architects' office (Davidson Yuen Simpson/Downs Archambeault). Erickson has a great reputation, but the detailing sometimes leaves a little bit to be desired. In the trade, an Erickson designed building was expected to leak somewhere, guaranteed.

Brent_2

what is SFU? Is it in Canada? I assume they are not giving the students air conditioning. I think comparing all electric to hot water radiant heat is a little odd. I wonder what the comparison for hw radiant heat vs. hw baseboard would be.

brent

GMcD

SFU is in Canada

It's Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC. The dormitory towers were originally budgetted to use electric baseboard heat as it it the cheapest heating element known out here, and our Hydro rates are just under 6 cents (CAN)/Kwh. The radiant system was designed as a potential heating/cooling slab as future budgets permit. The system is used for heating only at this time, but can be connected to a cooling source at the primary pipe side in the future. There is very little need for cooling in our climate, and during the summer, the building is not fully occupied anyway.

Other Residences at the University use hot water baseboard heat, but it is a real maintenance headache as they get the crap kicked out of them and are never cleaned. The radiant slab system was a lot cheaper than a hot water baseboard system, and wasn't much more than the electric baseboards.