Radiant in the basement/garage? First time builder, need advice
I will be building a carriage style house/barn in Maine this summer. See attached photo for the vision (not my photo). Instead of garage door I will have a barn door that is insulated and swings out.
I am deciding whether or not to put radiant heat in the basement floor, it would be supplemented with a wood stove on the floor above, as well as some radiant wall panels on the upper levels.
My thought is the radiant from the basement would heat the building from the ground up, giving me more living use out of the basement and also giving the first floor above it a little boost in temperature as well.
I wouldn’t use the basement swing out door while the radiant is on to let out the heat of course, but my concern is that the barn doors closed even if insulated, would still allow for some draft.
My other option would be to not do radiant in basement, and instead put it in the first floor to use in conjunction with wood stove, but I’m learning that the radiant might not play well off of wood stove heat?
I could ditch radiant all together and invest in a masonry heater/soapstone fire place, and pair that with some heat pumps for when I’m not home.
I’m picky about heat quality and don’t love any blown hot air such as heat pumps etc. Hence why I’m looking at radiant styles of heat, but understand there are drawbacks, and oh yeah, I’m also on a budget.
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If you’re on a budget, a masonry heater or radiant floor isn’t for you. In-slab Radiant floors are slow to respond and won’t work well with wood heat, a further disadvantage.
A well ducted cold climate heat pump would be high comfort.
Otherwise, panel radiators work too, but anything hydronic will be expensive.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your response. That all makes sense.
I am on a budget but do have radiant budgeted in so it is a possibility. To be honest, having spent time in heat pump heated spaces, I do notice a difference in the quality of hot blown air verse radiant.
If the radiant was installed in the basement floor, and the wood stove was on the floor above it, do you think that would still create a lag in the radiant since it would be on the floor above it?
Thanks!
Maybe someone else here can also give their opinion, but I think radiant heat is very vulnerable to drafts and air tightness. I also lived with a wood stove for 40 plus years and while I loved the feel and the independence it provided, you have to move the heat around the house. That doesn't make it easy to get uniform temps in all the rooms.
We recently built a PGH draft free garage apartment and used a heat pump. We are both amazed with how even and comfortable the heat is. If you don't actually put your hand or bare foot over the vents, you can't even tell it's on.
Every house is different. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions, if one choice was better in all situations the other choices wouldn't exist. A corollary is that if a choice is rarely used, it's likely that it's rarely the best choice.
Have you talked to your local authorities about code enforcement? Every state but Illinois has adopted the International Energy Conservation Code, which limits infiltration on swinging doors to 0.5 CFM per square foot. The kind of doors you're envisioning may not be legal where you are.
Heating systems are designed. The first step is to design the house, including the insulation. Then an energy model is done which estimates room-by-room heating loads. Then you can start selecting components for heating. It's an iterative process, do as many iterations as necessary until you're happy with the results. Until you have an energy model there's really not much to talk about.
Barn doors: While they might be tighter in theory than overhead doors, they are difficult to detail when large. LArge doors can get caught in the wind and get torn right off their hinges. They need a bottom board to seal to. When it snows you need to shovel the entire area out to open them.
RAdiant heat: I love radiant heat, but it does not heat the upstairs from the basement .You will need a boiler, and all that entails. I also prefer hydronic over forced hot air, but if you are ever going to have AC, you are paying twice for heat and ac.
If you are planning on really running a wood stove, mini splits are the way to go
Radiant is probably the most expensive way to get heat into your house and if the place is well insulated, the radiant floors won't run warm enough to even "feel" warm. As others have said, most minisplits run so quietly that you can't even tell they're running most of the time, and the near-constant gentle airflow can be very good at mixing the air for comfort. Plus, you get the benefit of A/C automatically.
I don't see your photo and I am a bit unsure of your design and use of the space. Why the barn doors at all? Is it just style, or is part of the space going to be used as an actual garage? That makes a big difference. If it's just a carriage house style building that will be all house, then you don't need the barn doors at all. You can attach barn doors as trim for the aesthetics and use well-insulated doors for actual entry and exit. That will save tons of heat. If you want the ability to open the whole space for entertaining and the like, you could spend some of the money from the radiant system to build a serious set of insulated doors that might be awkward to open but still able to be opened when you want it. I'm just thinking that those doors are going to be most of the heat loss of the structure with potentially little benefit.
I have lived with both floor in slab radiant and wall mount radiator hydronic. Any floor radiant definitely has a slow ramp and is not good and quick temp changes. The wall radiators on the other hand are very fast at heating a space and don’t use a forced air system. The fins inside them work very well at transferring the heat and you get a noticeable convective air flow through them.
If you are using gas, hydronic can be not much more or even equal to mini split. If using heat pump, it is a lot more expensive.
In the last house that I had wall radiators in, a combiboiler gas unit was used, which cost about 2500 and did both radiant and domestic hot water.
Both wood-burning and radiant heat are best suited to houses with high heating loads. In a house built to modern codes the heating loads are going to be so low that responsiveness is going to be an issue.
In terms of comfort, you're much better off investing in air sealing and insulation than in a fancy heating system.