Comments for Hill House

Comment on How much does this cost? by Bruce

Bruce — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:32:55 +0000

I believe ours is .35 as well. I am doing two story glazing so yeah, the Marlins were the only choice. Aluminum casement.

Comment on Radiant heat – luxury or necessity. by SteveK

SteveK — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:16:20 +0000

Yeah.. at that price I don’t blame you.

Also, a mixed forced air and radiant system (unless the radiant system is sized just for floor warming) generally aren’t going to get along. The forced air system (usually with a single, centrally located thermostat) can’t measure the mean radiant temperature of the objects in the home. (It only measures air temperature in its immediate vicinity.) It can’t respond to radiant gains – whether that gain is from a radiant heating system or from solar gain, so it’ll merrily force more hot air into an environment which is perfectly comfortable without it.

And no heating system can overcome the man vs woman argument about what constitutes “warm enough”.

Comment on Radiant heat – luxury or necessity. by darin

darin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:18:00 +0000

We did look into one electric system from Step Floor, but the pricing was between $9 and $16 per s.f. - too rich for our blood. We are still considering something similar for focused locations, like the kitchen floor. In our last house, we had a combination of electric radiant floor heat with forced air and weren't happy with it. I was always way too warm when my wife was comfortable in the areas with the radiant, and in the areas of the house without radiant, we were always cold because I was always turning down the forced air thermostat. The only place in the house we both liked it was the master bathroom floor.

Comment on Radiant heat – luxury or necessity. by SteveK

SteveK — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:14:38 +0000

I’m a little late to this discussion, and at the risk of sounding spammy, have you considered electric radiant systems instead of hydronic? They are considerably less expensive, don’t take up floor space for mechanical systems and don’t have any maintenance. I understand that your electrical rates are quite good compared to the national average, so your operating costs should be very good.

Comment on so many options… by tony

tony — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:48:30 +0000

i have been following the blog out here in texas where we have large cooling loads so forced air is a given… in these parts we use open web wood trusses almost exclusively to be able to run ducts within the floor or roof package without interuption.

http://www.ufpi.com/literature/ojbroch-187.pdf

im sure you are already familiar but this would allow you to do option 4 without compromising the design with soffits. it would be an increase in cost from the TJI it looks like you are using but there may be some additional savings in labor being able to run ducts, plumbing and electrical with free run.

MIKE D, im following your blog as well. thanks guys for sharing your experience.

Comment on so many options… by Mike D.

Mike D. — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 02:25:29 +0000

Option 1 sounds like the least good option to me, mainly because it’s so expensive and gives no easy way to put in A/C.

Options 2 and 3 sound pretty cool, as it seems like the fan coils aren’t as invasive to you as the ducting.

I’m doing a variation of Option 4 and I’m at $26,443 to heat/cool about 5000 square feet, with three separate zones controlled electronically and independently. We went with a Rheem 5 ton 16 SEER 2 stage electric heat pump with a 100,000 BTU variable speed gas furnace as a backup/supplement. What’s nice about it is that you benefit from the efficiency of the heat, but if gas prices are ever extremely low in comparison to electricity prices, you can just switch to the gas furnace as your primary heating source. In my case, the $26k includes parts, labor, 24 supply air runs, 3 return air runs, and all ducting/fans for bathrooms, range, dryer, etc. Perhaps it’s because it was designed with this in mind from the beginning, but I don’t feel like any of the house’s design has been compromised by ducting. It all seems to fit neatly within the walls and in areas of the basement I don’t really need to use anyway (e.g. crawlspaces).

Comment on The grass is always greener… by darin

darin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:21:05 +0000

William,
I agree they aren’t the most efficient. We’re spending 10’s of thousands of dollars to ensure our envelope is as efficient as we can for the cost. Ideally, our mechanical system won’t need much use. At this point, the Unico system is the only forced air ducted system we can use due to lack of space for traditional ducting. We are having a mini-split ductless heat pump system priced out as well. I’m a huge fan of the ductless heat pump. We need to consider the layout of the house and the need for heads inside the house for the ductless system. We will need between 8 and 11 interior heads. The heads can be $2k per, so this adds up fairly quickly. If we had deeper pockets, the decision would be much easier. When we get all the bids in, I’ll post them. I think we’re getting pricing on every single system, or combination of systems we can think of.

Comment on The grass is always greener… by William

William — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:17:45 +0000

I think it is a big mistake to use a Unico unit – these are low-efficiency units with SEERs of around 10 – they are allowed by a special exception for compact installations that can’t be heated or cooled any other way.

If you are really interested in saving energy why not use a ductless heat pump – Fujitsu makes a unit with a SEER of 25! – versus 10 for the Unico unit.

Comment on Radiant heat – luxury or necessity. by darin

darin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 22:59:21 +0000

Mike –
We were going to do radiant with Warmboard. It can adjust much faster than typical ‘mass’ systems, but certainly not as fast as air. We were then going to ‘rough-in’ for a future heat pump just incase we need AC in the future. Thanks to the site, the South side of the house is basically built into the hill. 99% of the glass is North Facing and we have an R-50 rough with an eco roof on top, so our plan was to see how things went without mechanical cooling. Heat pumps are not easy to install cleanly due to the refrigeration lines, so roughing in during construction made sense.

Given the price of the radiant, we may just install the heat pump in lieu of the radiant system. We’ll then have heat and AC – just won’t have the comfort factor of the radiant.

The radiant pads are great! We’ve used them before and they work well. Setting them on a timer is a good way to go.

Comment on Radiant heat – luxury or necessity. by Mike D.

Mike D. — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:15:33 +0000

Agree on the tankless water heaters. We switched to tanks. Tanks have been around forever, they are cheap to replace, and there’s just a lot less to break. If in ten years, tankless technology has come even further along, you can always swap some in and get rid of the tanks.

With regard to radiant, I would have loved to do it, but as soon as you want air conditioning, you’re talking about installing two systems. If you stick with forced air, it’s all just one system. Much, much cheaper. We’re still going to do radiant pads in the master bath and in the concrete hallway, but that’s about it. Another consideration with radiant seems to be that it can’t react as quickly to quick changes in sun exposure. I have a ton of west facing glass, so on a cold day that all of a sudden becomes very sunny, the heating demands should drop pretty quickly, and vice versa when the reverse happens. Seems like forced air is just much better at making quick adjustments. Sounds like you are doing both though, right?