41–45 of 45 posts
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That's interesting, as Hydronic heating is the standard heating method over here in the UK. Reason its not done in the US I image is we don't often ever need AC, so we only need to be able to turn the temp up.
As an aside, we simply call it "central heating" in the UK. "Hydronic heating" sounds like something i would install in a geodesic dome.
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I once had a new house with hydronic under floor heating - the worst heating setup I've every had - horribly slow to respond and expensive to operate. We turn down the heat to sleep and finally I just shut off the heat to the bedrooms and heated them a different way. Our initial experience with the system was even worse than it might have been. The people who installed it including the thermostats were plumbers and d…
I wonder if better PID tuning would help, maybe adding stuff like ambient outside temperature or weather prediction as a system input. I know the nest thermostat does a lot of systemic learning and understands the outside temperature. (I'm not recommending that system, just that a little modern control theory might make things workable)
There is a setting on the thermostat (True Radiant) that takes into account the long heat-up times of radiant systems. With this setting off, overshoot is real. On cold days, True Radiant does start the system earlier. For example, it take about 2-3 hours in the deep of winter vs 30-60 minutes now.
However, it seems to be based to on a look-up table rather than an algorithm. It doesn’t take into account forecasted conditions, such as a temperature rise overnight, strong winds or decreasing/increasing radiance of the sun over the season. Those latter factors do make a difference in whether the house reaches the target temperature on time or whether overshoot occurs, and whether I am slightly uncomfortable.
As far as I can tell, there is an automatic set-back for heat pump systems. I wish this was given as an option for manual scheduling in True Radiant mode. To this day, I can’t tell whether there is an effect on efficiency (based on run-times which the thermostat dutifully displays).
I also wish the thermostats (in a dual-zone system with a single boiler) be “genlocked” or run on common firing times with demand prediction for temperatures to make use of boiler run-time, rather than running the boiler just when there is a request for heat in one zone.
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Forced air was very briefly in in the UK. For a few - maybe as few as five - years around the early or mid 60s forced air was fairly commonly seen in new build houses and the type of small blocks that have 6 or 8 flats. By the seventies no one was putting them in new builds any more, and people were already ripping them out - or sealing up the vents - to go back to just a fire - though without a chimney it would have…
We lived in a house with this under-floor-air system until we moved last year. We inherited it from my mother-in-law a few years previously. She didn't really think of maintenance, and so turns out it was using the original gas heater system. This was quickly condemned when we got it inspected - it had a crack in the heat exchanger and - these things were apparently only designed to last 25 years. Lasting 50 was pret…
From various encounters over the decades they all seemed to come with feint smell of burnt dust or just dust. By the eighties it was usual to see a radiator in front of or above the old vents, or the vents simply boarded or painted shut.
No idea why it was so comprehensively and quickly rejected despite that brief popularity. Maybe the impossibility of proper cleaning or expense? Though I wonder what they do for cleaning in the US. It's the only approach that hasn't managed to keep some spot in the market even after large declines - like storage heaters or, more surprisingly, even coal have.
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UK hydronic systems usually use radiators. US systems are almost always under-floor.
I once had a new house with hydronic under floor heating - the worst heating setup I've every had - horribly slow to respond and expensive to operate. We turn down the heat to sleep and finally I just shut off the heat to the bedrooms and heated them a different way. Our initial experience with the system was even worse than it might have been. The people who installed it including the thermostats were plumbers and d…
My underfloor water heating is powered by a wood pellet burner. The house is very well insulated so the burner is off May till late October. The burner has an outside temperature sensor and since it was initially set I haven't really had to mess with the settings beyond testing how to change it. The temperature in the house is pretty much constant 21C or 69F during the heating season. If I want to change it the response time is around 1-2 hours so although I don't use those settings one can imagine programming it for 5 degrees lower when you're at work and for it to bring up the temperature to the normal setting before you arrive.
As for the cost, I have a rather small 3 bedroom detached house (110 sq.meters or 1185 sq.feet), I live in a climate where we have -20deg.C winters (eastern Europe) on top of a rather windy hill, and I pay around 460 Eur per year for the fuel for the burner. I usually burn 2.5 tons of it. This is only to heat the house. Water heating for shower use etc uses electric on demand heating. Compare this to when I was living in a city in the north of UK, so much milder climate, in a 2 bedroom semi-detached house smaller than my current house with typical central heating (or what is called hydronic heating here) using gas fired burner. I would pay around 700-800GBP so almost 900EUR per year of heating so almost exactly double. I realise I'm comparing here two houses built 50 years from each other, but the UK climate is much milder and the older house is only semi detached. This should work in its favour. Still I spend half of what I used to.
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Hot water "hydronic" heating with radiators is very common in the US as well, at least among homes in the Northeastern US constructed before the 1960s. It's a shame more new construction does not use hot water heating in conjunction with central air for cooling because radiators are much quieter, more efficient, and better for those with asthma.
I live in a house with steam heat. Steam systems often get converted to hot water, but in general I have a few observations related to radiated heat. 1) Steam and other radiant systems don't deal with temperature setbacks well. They take FOREVER to warm up a house after a set back, so don't bother with a deep setback overnight, and if you are gonna turn down the heat because you are going to be gone for a while, expe…
If the fuel is natural gas or propane, and,
If the thermocouple and gas valve are millivolt,
Then you can have fully functioning heat even when the power is out, because the steam does not need either a blower or a circulator pump to circulate, and the thermocouple provides the electricity to operate the thermostat and the gas valve.
Even without a millivolt system, a small UPS can run the little low voltage transformer a long time, while it would take an impractical amount of battery (which will crap out in only 3-4 years) to run a blower or circulator for any length of time.
Your points are all valid, and frankly outweigh this one except maybe at a vacation/camp house or something way out where the electric is bad, but this is something nothing else can claim.
It is pretty nice that when the ice storm pulls the power lines down, and, because it's an ice storm and it affected entire states all at the same time, your power may stay down for days, and does so coincidentally in the winter...your heat just keeps working even if nothing else does, and indefinitely not just until a 45 minute ups runs out.
Also... everyone with steam, replace your pressurtrol with a vaporstat and run your system at much lower pressure than it's probably set at. 1/2 psi per floor not counting basement, at most.