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Natural Gas Hydroponic Fernace

tstok
tstok Member Posts: 4
Hi all.

I have a natural gas hydroponic heater.

It's an Eco King H200:
http://westmountheating.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/eco+king+supreme+new.pdf

I also have a 2, 000 square foot room that is struggling to get above21 degrees centigrade without the assistance of a fire, stove or external factors. I have 7 baseboard heaters that average 5 feet per heater. The boiler's water temperature has been set to 78 degrees centigrade. The maximum heat setting in the .pdf above says this system can go to 85, but the company that installed the boiler highly recommended not going above 78 because it would cause "problems" (that's all they said, "problems").

If we did increase the water temperature setting, how much hotter could the room get? We aren't thrilled at getting more baseboard heaters (due to the layout of the room it would be difficult) but if we did would that fix the problem? How many more heaters would we need? Is there something else that could be causing the issue? The heaters do get hot and stay hot until we light a fire to get the temperature up so the thermostats seem to work.

There is heat loss because it's a post/beam house, however we've had significant draft proofing and the insulation is sound.

Thanks in advance!

Comments

  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,160
    One would need a lot more information -- particularly, where is this located? What is the outside temperature? What are the walls made of? Insulation? Glass? Is this the ceiling of the room the underside of the roof? What is that made of? Insulation?

    In other words -- one needs to do a complete heat loss on the space to determine what heat output from the radiation is required.

    Also the type of installed radiation, to find out what its output per lineal foot at your water temperature is.

    That said, however... I find it hard to imagine that a total of about 35 linear feet of radiation is going to be able to do that much in a 2,000 square foot room.
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
    Ironman
  • Steamhead
    Steamhead Member Posts: 16,796
    First, do a heat-loss calculation on the room and get the baseboard's output rating to see that you have enough baseboard to handle the heat loss.

    If you have enough baseboard, check the flow rates to make sure they're getting enough hot water.
    All Steamed Up, Inc.
    Towson, MD, USA
    Steam, Vapor & Hot-Water Heating Specialists
    Oil & Gas Burner Service
    Consulting
    Ironman
  • tstok
    tstok Member Posts: 4
    Air leakage of the entire house was listed at 10.05 ACH at 50 Pa. Temperatures outside range from -20 to +10 (Whistler, BC).

    How do I get the baseboard output rating? How would I check the flow rates?
  • bricksea
    bricksea Member Posts: 13
    Slant fin has an iPhone app that you can use to figure out the heatloss of your structure. It will also calculate the baseboard length.
  • Ironman
    Ironman Member Posts: 7,366
    You're gonna have to do a detailed heat loss calculation of the intire house, ACPH are just one small detail. You can go to Slantfin.com and down load their heat loss calculator for free.

    Standard baseboard has an output of about 500 btus per lineal foot @ 170* AVERAGE water temp. So you might be getting about 18k btus output from your baseboards. That would mean that your house would have to have a heat loss of 9 btus per square foot for the BBs to keep up. In 35 years of doing heat loss calcs, I've never seen one anywhere near that low.
    Bob Boan
    You can choose to do what you want, but you cannot choose the consequences.
  • Ironman
    Ironman Member Posts: 7,366
    I just looked at the specs on your boiler and I think you've got some major issues. Why would anyone connect a 200k btu boiler to radiation that can only emitt 18k btus?
    Bob Boan
    You can choose to do what you want, but you cannot choose the consequences.
  • tstok
    tstok Member Posts: 4
    edited April 2015
    Ironman- this is just one room in the house.

    I had a heat loss audit done and have many more numbers I can throw at you. But regardless, Im going to go back to my original question.

    With average insulation, average everything, for a 2000 square foot room what effect would increasing the water temperature setting on the boiler?



  • bmwpowere36m3
    bmwpowere36m3 Member Posts: 512
    edited April 2015
    Increase boiler supply temp and the baseboard will put out more BTUs.

    *edit* 2000 sqft ROOM? what kind of room is this?
  • tstok
    tstok Member Posts: 4
    A very open room.

    So that's as expected, are there really efficient baseboards out there that could significantly increase BTUs without increasing the amount of baseboards needed?
  • SWEI
    SWEI Member Posts: 7,356
    There are a number of options for increasing your emitter output. Here are a few you might want to look at:
    http://smithsenvironmental.com/html/he.html
    http://www.mysoncomfort.com/Radiators/Select
    http://www.runtalnorthamerica.com/residential_radiators/baseboard_uf.html
    There are others, generally sold as commercial baseboard.
  • Ironman
    Ironman Member Posts: 7,366
    tstok said:

    Ironman- this is just one room in the house.

    I had a heat loss audit done and have many more numbers I can throw at you. But regardless, Im going to go back to my original question.

    With average insulation, average everything, for a 2000 square foot room what effect would increasing the water temperature setting on the boiler?




    Increasing the water temp will increase the output, but nowhere near enough to get what you need. It will also decrease the efficiency of the boiler and keep it from condensing which is the exact opposite of what you want it to do. It is a modulating CONDENSING boiler (mod/con). No condensing will take place at those higher temps and the efficiency will drop to about 87%.
    Bob Boan
    You can choose to do what you want, but you cannot choose the consequences.