Looking for a designer to help with whole house system for my remodel

honeybyte · September 23

Hey everybody,

So I am remodeling my house down to the bones and wanted to install a silent cooling and heating system. I decided radiant floors were the way to go for heating and cooling with a whole house fresh air circulation system to control humidity and air quality. While I do have a few people i have talked to, I am located in cincinnati oh, and I cant find anyone specifically that can help me with a comprehensive design.

I was hoping i might work with someone to design the system, so I could implement with the help of local help. I have architectural plans, strucutral plans, and a preliminary layout using geothermal for the system, but really need a pro at this point.

Anyone got any ideas on how to find someone legitimate to help me get this over the finish line?

-Dan

honeybyte · September 23

Geothermal Radiant & Ventilation System - Design Brief.pdf

To give an idea, this is what I have so far, but I realize it is probably lacking in most of the required detail. I am running a home-assistant automation backend to maintain and control things. I am a computer engineer by trade.

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes · September 23

Dave Knight at Monterey Energy Group dave@meg4.com (831)372-8328 https://montereyenergygroup.com/

Dave has been around since the 80's; smart guy.

mattmia2 · September 23

you're going to have to be really careful about who installs it too, it seems like getting what is on the plans you give them is very difficult in every realm of construction

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes · September 23

Radiant cooling is a wonderful idea and can be tough to get it right. Dave mentioned that you can only get about 8 BTU's/[] from tubing in the floor which may not be enough. And that's bare concrete. Forget about any wood on top. Radiant in the ceiling fares much better.

All the piping has to be well-insulated with special insulation to prevent condensation.

John Ruhnke · September 27

If you are interested in Radiant Cooling you have to go with Messana. They have just changed names and are now known as RBMmore. RadiantCooling.com

Ask for Francesco and tell him John Ruhnke sent you. RBMmore is the only one that has the controls to properly do what you are trying to do.

John Ruhnke · September 27

If you have any questions let me know. I have been involved in the design of many radiant cooling systems.

Mad Dog_2 · September 27

JR's knowledge and experience with Radiant Cooling is very deep. Mad Dog

DCContrarian · September 27

I'm going to try and discourage you from radiant cooling.

Looking at the ASHRAE statistics, which you can see at : https://ashrae-meteo.info/v3.0/index.php

The weather station at Lunken Airport reports a 99th percentile dew point of 74.0F and a 98th percentile dew point of 72.8F. That means you have over a week a year with dew point over 72F. If the dew point is above about 50F you need dehumidification.

Your 99th percentile outdoor temperature is only 90.1F. The mean concurrent dry bulb temperature for the 99th percentile dew point — which is a long-winded way of saying how hot it is when it's really humid — is only 81F.

You are in a humid but not very hot climate. In the summer, you need dehumidification more than you need cooling. Conventional AC provides dehumidification along with cooling. There is no way to dehumidify air without blowing it over a cold surface and collecting the condensation. In your climate, it's likely that in order to get conventional AC to provide enough dehumidification it will have to provide more cooling than you need.

Radiant cooling provides no dehumidification, and cannot. In your situation it just makes the problem of excess cooling worse.

There are places in the US where the 99th percentile dew point is below 50F, in those places radiant cooling can work. But I'd be very cautious about accepting design advice from somebody who works in one of those climates, in your climate.

TheUpNorthState88 · September 28

A few background context questions I have.

How old is the house?
What is the current system in it now for heating and cooling?
How long are you planning to live here?

I too agree with @DCContrarian that I would avoid radiant cooling. A lot of resources for that are devoted to cooling the mass explosion of data centers happening across the country are going to rob talent away from residential. And companies may not even find the residential market worth it to even devote resources to supporting residential installations.

There is also tricky science to this which further complicates things. Especially since the house itself isn’t a new build. You are proposing building a very expensive and complicated system. I’m still 100% onboard for geothermal and in-floor heating, but I would stick to more traditional ducted heat pump/air handler options with the cooling side of things as the market is already there and established. There’s trained techs to support it.

hot_rod · September 28

A good watch for small Hydronic Cooling design and examples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMEG6ml4aWc

DCContrarian · September 28

From the video:

I'm sending that chill water through a coil in an air handler. One of the questions that I get asked a fair amount: "what about radiant cooling?" Well radiant cooling is possible. You have to be careful with radiant cooling: you cannot get surfaces below the dewpoint without major and very expensive problems. If you're new to chilled water cooling I would encourage you to get your — and I shouldn't use the term "get your feet wet," that's a bad way to describe that — but you should become familiar with small scale chilled water cooling, I would recommend, through piping to an air handler.

Keep your condensate in one location, okay? Don't start off with getting involved directly with dewpoint control, that's just my own personal opinion on it. I'm not saying that radiant cooling doesn't work. I'm not saying we can't get there. But in the residential sector, when you're getting involved with small scale chilled water cooling on that first project, try it with an air handler make you know, because you're going to learn from that project and especially you're going to learn about piping insulation.

I've seen other talks by Siegenthaler where he recommends just running chilled water into a big air handler to serve the whole house. Functionally, this gives an experience that is no different from what you get with a conventional AC, this approach basically throws away any benefit of using hydronics. But when you start messing with hydronics, everything suddenly costs three to four times as much. No benefit, big added cost.

hot_rod · September 28

If you are set on geothermal then a chilled water air handler makes some sense.

I have seen hybrid where the slab takes some of the cooling load, use a dewpoint control, and a smaller sized ducted air system handles dehumidification, air filtration, etc.

The other challenge with a HP doing heating and cooling is when to do the change over. It's tough to heat in the morning, cool in the afternoon :)

I've been in Colorado trophy homes where the front glass wall southern exposure rooms are in cooling mode, while heat is going in the back north facing rooms.

Typically when money is no issue you see these 1%er homes.

DCContrarian · September 28

"I have seen hybrid where the slab takes some of the cooling load, use a dewpoint control, and a smaller sized ducted air system handles dehumidification, air filtration, etc."

I want to specifically advise against that approach in the OP's climate.

There won't be any "surplus" sensible load once dehumidification has been taken care of by conventional air conditioning. More likely there will still be unmet latent load.

John Ruhnke · September 29

Messana now RBMMore has been doing radiant cooling systems for 30 years now with great success. They have lots of systems world wide including the East Coast. The key to success is their controls. They also have extensive testing with radiant cooling. RadiantCooling.com. They have 1000's of successful installed systems.

John Ruhnke · September 29

Every zone is measured for humidity levels and adjusted to dew point levels In the ceiling or floors. Messana can run cooler water temps than the dewpoint by about 5f and still not have condensation problems with their ceiling systems. I remember when I was first selling and installing radiant floors back in the 90's. I was told you can't put radiant heat under hardwood floors. Now it is done all the time. There is a lot of misinformation out there. Radiant Cooling if done right does work and is very comfortable. The controls can run two stages. First stage radiant and a second stage fan coil units or air handlers. The controls can handle dehumidification too.

hot_rod · September 29

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1904943#Comment_1904943

i like that they incorporate some Jaga components

Mad Dog_2 · September 29

The jobs I've been on that JR designed are working very well - no issues from the homeowners. Mad Dog

Looking for a designer to help with whole house system for my remodel

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