Community: Mechanicals

I am working with a homeowner on the design of an addition to a house. Prior to starting construction on the addition, the existing house had a fire which was contained to the laundry room. Smoke damage, however, is throughout the existing house. The mechanical room is accessed through the laundry room. The furnace was running when the fire started, and then turned off. There is evidence of smoke in the furnace (in the filter and at the connection to the AC). I have one contractor suggesting that the furnace can be cleaned, serviced and remain.

Hi,

I am building a 2 story house wood frame house(with basement) that is heated with radiant hot water system installed in the floor.

The joists have been blown in with loose fill cellulose (for both sound and to keep the heat up) and a plywood floor is on top of the joists. R5 foam board is installed on top of the plywood and the PEX tubes are installed to the foam board. They will be pouring a self leveling concrete on top of the PEX and then gluing down engineered wood floors.

We are considering plumbing in two reclaimed 8"x12"x38" radiators in the upper floor bedrooms of our pretty good, passive solar home near Ottawa. The house is heated by a radiant slab in the basement and will have a 2" radiant slab on the main floor.

We are wondering if the considerable mass of old fashioned radiators, or the possibility of them having a higher designed operating temperature might make them inefficient or ineffective in our system.

We have a Stiebel Eltron Tempra 12 Plus boiler.

Any advice on mixing the old with the new would be appreciated, thanks.

We are installing hydronic concrete slab heating. the slab has already been poured, i thiink the HVAC guy did not use O2-barrier PEX tubing. As i understand it, this means that a cast iron boiler cannot be used. true? how good are the stainless boilers vs cast iron (reliability), what are the pros and cons, which one would you use? Electro seems to come up in my searches, probably a mid-size 34k to 51k BTU/hr seems appropriate. i was surprised to see that they seem cheaper than the cast iron models... but i'm not really sure what features i should be comparing.