From: sml@plato.ds.boeing.com (Stuart Lewis)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house
Subject: Re: Heating a house
Date: 7 Jan 93 01:28:49 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Boeing Defense & Space Group

In article <C0EHAn.87s@fs7.ece.cmu.edu> mhl@spirit.ece.cmu.edu (Mikko H. Lipasti) writes:
>Does anyone have any insight on the respective efficiencies of 
>various means for heating a house?  I am looking at buying in the
>next year in Minnesota (cold winters), and most of the houses on
>the market appear to use forced air with natural gas furnaces.
>.....
>.................  I'm used to hot-water heat with radiators in
>each room.
>
>What are the trade-offs involved?  Is it just so much cheaper to 
>install forced-air (especially considering the ducts are needed for
>A/C anyway) that houses with hot-water heat are no longer being
>built?  How about the different types of furnaces?  Gas? Oil? Electric?
>Heat pumps?  A pointer to a good source of information on these
>issues would be appreciated.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Mikko Lipasti
>mhl@ece.cmu.edu

There will be some variance, geographically, as to the most cost
effective method of heating.  Generally however, natural gas is
the cheapest method (no availability in your native Finland,
perhaps why you're not real familier with it?).  Being in Minnesota,
there is probably an abundance that is piped from Canada.  (That's
where we get ours here in the northwest - and it's cheap)

As far as the hot water radiators you mention, you just don't see
that in new construction (moderately old either, for that matter).
But.... this falls back on what method is used to heat *that*, i.e.
oil, natural gas, or electric boiler.  You still fall back to "what
do I want to use."  Some of the reasons you don't see hot water
radiators any more are that they are very big, very heavy, and take up a
lot of room.  They must use metal pipe rather than plastic and are
thus prone to rusting at the couplings.  And, there's just plain
better systems out there today.

A heat pump in Minnesota for heating in the winter is not going to
work too well.  Once it gets below ~25 F, forget it.  The unit will
then rely on a back up system - typically forced air, again, either
natural gas or, more likely, electric.  The heat pump will work well
for cooling in the summer, and for heating in the early fall and
late spring.  For moderate climates, these are tough to beat
though.

Unless power is real cheap, like here in the northwest, electric can
be real spendy; oil is moderately inexpensive right now, but that is
a market that can change very rapidly - it's a choice you have to
make with respect to future supply, really.  Personally, I'd hate to
have my heating bill depend on some sand baron in the gulf.

Just my opinion but, I'd bet you'd be real happy with a natural gas
fired radiant floor heat - quite efficient, pretty cheap, but spendy
installation.  In a nutshell, you have a central boiler fired by gas
(or electric), and a manifold with valves for each room.  The
manifold is in line to a closed system of flexible pipe which is
routed throughout all the floorspace of the home, "weaved" all over
(sort of like an electric burner pattern, for lack of a better
definition) and stapled down.  This is covered with ~1 to 2
inches of lightweight concrete.  The heated water is then routed
through the system.  The concrete acts as a heat sink and heating is
from the floor up, rather than the top down; i.e., it may be 75 F at
the floor, but maybe 65 F at the ceiling instead of 85 F at the
ceiling and 75 F at the floor.

That's real simplified but you get the idea - this gets hashed
around every few months or so.  I don't know how far you are from a
large metropolitan area, but spring is when all the home shows are -
go to one and you can see all the various home heating systems
there.  Or, go to a heating and refrigeration contractor and ask
them to educate you - there's really a lot of interesting and
innovative stuff out there and these people will be more than happy
to sit down and go through their products with you.  If you get a
good one, they'll be real up front about cost effectiveness of their
wares.  Get them to bid out you home for a couple different
installations.

Stuart Lewis
sml@plato.ds.boeing.com
From: duanej@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Duane Jacobson)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 20:26:47 GMT
Subject: Re: Should I install a gas furnace?
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA