Hydronic baseboard heating

It's been a busy month for me. Bought the new Tacoma (2015), sold my first house, took a promotion at work, bought my second house yesterday, and am getting married Sunday. With that said, does anyone known much about hydronic heating systems. I didn't think much about it when we made our offer and it was accepted........We had our agent make the purchase contingent on inspections and successful closing and I've got an inspector and an HVAC company coming to look at the house.

The house is a 3 bedroom ranch, built in 1961, and has baseboard heaters. These are all plumbed back to a unit in the basement, which appears to be relatively new (based on the pretty touch screen LCD on the front showing the amount of pressure in the system and other numbers), and is hooked up to natural gas. That's about all I know about it.

From what I've read: the baseboard heat is great for people with allergies, provides even heat without drafts, and is quiet.

Does anyone have any experience with this? What kind of questions should I ask the HVAC guy, any thoughts on efficiency comparted to the forced air unit in my previous home, and what to worry about?

 

It's good stuff. Heat the water up in the furnace, circulate it and when it cools down, heat it up again. What is the hot water for the house? Is it a separate unit or is it in the burner? Two houses of mine have been "hot water on demand" which basically means there is a coil inside the furnace that provides hot water. In both those houses the coil failed and we replaced with a conventional hot water heater because the coil was prohibitively expensive. One was less than 10 years old. If you have hard water it can corrode the coil. There is no tank (this is not what is referred to as a "tankless" system, those are different) it's all in the furnace and because of that the water doesn't get really hot for a large volume. For instance, taking a bath instead of a shower was basically impossible because there is no 20 gallons of hot water to pull from. It heats as it goes through the coil.

 

I've got a kerosene fired version of a hot water baseboard stand alone system. I don't really use it all that much as I heat predominately with wood, but when I do use it, I am quite happy with it. The biggest thing with my system is making sure it's bled and there's some anti freeze in the water.

 

From what I can tell, there are two units. The boiler is on the left and the water heater is on the right, with a gas line running to each. The system looks very new, so time will only tell.

The story that the realtor gave me is that it was originally owned by an elderly couple and the estate sold it, then the next owners barely had it two years before taking a job out of state and needed a quick sale quick to get out of the apartment they had to lease until it sold. It had only been on the market for 3 days.

 

A house of that age most likely has cast iron baseboard heat. If so, you have the most desired (and expensive today) type.... cast iron radiates the heat for a longer time once the thermostat is done calling for heat. The more popular aluminum finned baseboard heat gets cool in a much shorter time and cheaper to buy.

Got a pic of it?

 

Hydronic heat is awesome

 

Didn't think to grab a picture and the ones on the listing were too fuzzy. The kitchen and dining room have old cast iron ones, but the rest of the rooms are newer aluminum finned ones.

 

The aluminum finned ones are what I have had in both my houses and trust me, they don't help for allergies. Better than forced hot air I guess but they hold a ton of dust and are a pain to clean. When mine kick on the heat rising can cause my allergies to go nuts.

 

Can't you just pop the front panel off and vacuum them

 

Yeah, easier said than done. You have the end caps that are either screwed on or fastened by bent tabs, then you have to pop off the cover. Then you can vacuum them, but its not exactly easy and I don't think they ever get totally clean. Then you need to vacuum or even better wash the backside of the cover because dirt/dust gets on there, then put the cover and end caps back on. Multiply that by however rooms and there is usually 2 per room... ugg. But yes, it can be done.

 

My hydronic heat is in slab

 

That's ideal. When I build that is how I will heat for sure.

 

Whats the insulation value like ?

 

A well insulated house doesn't take hardly any heat to keep warm , the amount of energy you are describing to heat that house sounds like it leaks heat everywhere

 

True

Ever since I had my attic sprayfoamed, I noticed a major difference in my heating/cooling costs.... truly impressive.

 

how much better is spray foam as opposed to the fiberglass rolls. I don't know the r-value of mine . Also did you go from no or little insulation the spray foam?

 

2lb spray foam has more R value per inch but it's main benefit is that it is impervious to air movement at the thicknesses generally used in residential construction , in fact it's classified as a vapour barrier , so no air leakage , no heat leakage .

Fibreglass batts let air pass right through them and rely on a well detailed vapour barrier / air barrier to stop air leakage

 

I already had an R-30 in the attic floors. I wanted to condition the attic for and additional air handler (A/C), so adding the open cell (not closed cell) foam was the wise choice. BTW I had them thermal bridge the rafters as well.

Last season in New England was a bitch for ice dams and icicles..... I had none.. at all.

 

Good choice , thermal bridging through framing is a massive source of heat loss , on my house I used 11/2" XPS styrofoam over the R20 , 2x6 stud walls , what a difference

 

Yup, big difference Pete, thanks.

Because my house is almost void of any heat loss and the snow doesn't melt off of it , I'm concerned when a heavy snow dumps.... I have to shovel it off for fear of collapse. We had a shit load of roof collapses last year in our area.