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I've lived in Volcano since the late '80s, grew equally sick of tending a woodstove, and so incorporated solar-hot-water radiant heat into the house I'm building.
Radiant heat is well known for its advantages, I know of two other builders in Volcano who've done the same thing and love it. The heat is even throughout the house, which is good for keeping things dry as well as warm. (Keeps the mold and mildew away).
My solar hot water system is a single "open loop" type, so there's not a second set of hardware and controls, just a couple more valves and sensors on top of the regular domestic hot water supply. I have three 4' by 8' panels on the roof, with room for two more if need be. The house isn't yet done -- it's a long, slow project -- but the solar (both PV off-grid, and hot water) have been running for 6-7 years and the house is always warm-ish, when not completely warm or downright hot.
A consideration when planning panel capacity is that, unlike PV panels, the excess hot water on long hot days needs somewhere to go. In my case I just dump it into the ground floor slab (it's a two-story house) and then open windows if it gets too warm. There's a lot of delay time, like 2-3 hours, from when you put heat into the slab to when the room temperature goes up.
The solar hot water storage tank has electric heating units as well; the plan is to use these as generator-powered backup heat when we have long cold spells without sun.
Radiant heat sounds like a good permanent solution for heating your house instead of the rather primitive solution continuously tending to a wood stove. You can e!iminate the hassle with wood, the soot, the smoke, and polluting the environment. It's amazing that people will put up with the never ending continuous hassle burning wood when the problem can be permanently fixed just by investing in a permanent solution. I bet the toasty warm floor feels nice when you're walking around the house barefoot when its cold outside.
That's interesting that there's a 2 to 3 hour lag before the rooms warm up. A guy at work has randiant heat, and I think he told me the lag time is about one day. So, you have a lot less lag time compared to living in a cold climate.
Maybe a smart thermostat could be used with the radiant heat so that the heat could be automatically be turned on earlier to compensate for the heat up lag time and shut off the heat early to compensate for the time it takes for the floor to cool down.
Are you in the part of Volcano that is on catchment? You could always put a heat exchanger in the bottom of the catchment tank. It would take a LOT of heat to heat that up very significantly. We did that with a waterfall on Oahu at a place over near Blackpoint. The waste heat from the air conditioning system put too much heat in their garden area so we put it in the waterfall instead.
So your system will warm up the house no matter what? It will suck to have a hot house in a hot day. Can't you just shut off the water cycle? Not sure I understand how this system will keep things dry since all it does is warm up the air and not remove any moisture from it.
Normally the hot water from the rooftop panels goes into the storage tank, same as any solar hot water system. So no, the house is not being warmed up no matter what. But when the storage tank reaches a high enough temperature it'll no longer take hot water from the panels, as the system pump only runs when there's a difference in temperature. At this point if the sun is still beating down on the panels, the water in them will turn to steam and an emergency-bypass pressure-relief valve will open.
To avoid that steam discharging onto the roof, an alternative is to use up some of the hot water in the storage tank, lowering the tank's temperature and therefore freeing it to start pumping cooler water up to the roof panels again. One could run a bath, or, in my case, just send it into the slab's radiant heat tubes. The radiant heat in the slabs takes a few hours to heat up the room, so it's not like it's still in the middle of the day when the room is finally heating up. Plus it's usually breezy here, and opening a few windows is all it takes to cool the room down.
As for the dehumidifier effect: I agree, it doesn't make sense in terms of "where does the water go?," but it works in practice. Most homes in Volcano are constantly battling mold and mildew but there's none in this place. I noticed a dramatic difference the week I first fired the system up, years ago. My hypothesis is that when the interior of a home is consistently warmer than the outdoor temp, and there's a degree of air exchange, that the airborne humidity isn't condensing anywhere inside, thus preventing mold and mildew. Kind of like a piano heater -- the electric rod isn't removing moisture, just forcing it to go elsewhere.
A guy at work has randiant heat, and I think he told me the lag time is about one day. So, you have a lot less lag time compared to living in a cold climate.
Well, I assume you mean Minnesota, and starting from no heat?
It all depends on how much thermal mass you have. I have one loop in a slab, downstairs, and that takes a few hours. Another loop, upstairs, runs between the joists, with a tile floor on top, so much less time required from when the system starts up to when you feel the heat.
Are you in the part of Volcano that is on catchment? You could always put a heat exchanger in the bottom of the catchment tank. It would take a LOT of heat to heat that up very significantly. We did that with a waterfall on Oahu at a place over near Blackpoint. The waste heat from the air conditioning system put too much heat in their garden area so we put it in the waterfall instead.
If there's a part of Volcano NOT on catchment I want to know about it
Good idea with the tank, thanks. The current system works good enough, but who knows, with global warming?
That makes sense, thanks for the explanation. I believe you are right on the condensation issue.
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