Hydronic does not mean no wood floors, it jsut gets a little tricky. There are techniques that let you use 'real' hardwood but I haven't tried them. Besides engineered wood (i.e. not Pergo) is real wood, just laminated on plywood. Plus there is a Danish vendor of 'real' clip together 3/4" planks.
Anyhow, to answer your question I heat with oil. Proprane is hugely expensive here and natural gas is not an option in the country, at least where I am. I would not have risked doing my own propane plumbing, but oil is pretty safe.
Idaho,
I would suggest that THE most important aspect of any residential “heating†system is not the HVAC proper. It ain’t sexy but it is a truism. The R value of the walls/roof/foundation (including the deduction for the pine studs if you are stick building), the quality and quantity of windows, the home site and the orientation of the home on the site. These issues must be taken into consideration, as any built to order home is a never-ending list of trade offs.
No doubt you have already determined the “style†of your home. That is a big energy trade off.
You have probably selected a placement for your home on your land. Another big trade off.
And resale value.
So we all start behind the eight ball to a certain extent. Nothing is pure.
If you are building custom, and you can’t decide on a wood stove or fireplace the answer is do both. You’re talking about a grand or three for new construction and you will get it all back and more of it back if you ever need to sell.
If you’re gonna do the wood stove thing you need to think about how are you going to get all that “local†hot air “all the way over thereâ€Â. A forced hot air system can do that job if you configure the system so you can run the circulator/blower without the furnace running.
Of course you should also consider inducing moister into the home especially if wood burning comes into the equation. A humidifier or humidistate /dehumidistate could regulate the amount of moisture in the air. You should be able to control humidity independently of the burner for when you have a monster going in the wood stove and/or the fireplace.
Remember, if you build the house too “tightâ€Â, you will need outside air to run the fireplace, woodstove and even the oil/gas units. An air-to-air exchanger will do the job for the HVAC but you will need to duct directly to outside air for the wood stove and fireplace. These things need to be done when you build or you will be very disappointed the first time you try to light a fire in you new fireplace.
There is nothing like a worm and comfortable home. Especially if it doesn’t cost diddly to heat.
Old man winter, bring it on!
<font color="blue"> I really like the hydronic heating but I also like wooden floors, not the expensive once</font color>
Hydronic works just find in wooden floors. About half of my floors are wood and half are concrete/slate. See my earlier post for a description of how they built the wood floors. If you need more details, just let me know.
We have a combination of wood floors and slate. The wood floors on hydronic heating really isn't that big of a deal.
Our floors are 'floating'. The wood flooring is not actually attached to the house. The floor consists of 1 1/2" of concrete, 2 sheets of 1/2" plywood, then the 3/4" white oak. The plywood is not actually connected to the floor anywhere.
The other way it is done is to use sleepers, which are 2x4's embedded into the concrete floor. This is where the flooring is nailed to the house.
Both systems work fine. We did the floating system because it was easier to layout the heating tubes plus we have a couple rather large areas of flooring that needed to expand.
One thing to consider is using quarter sawn material. Wood expands and shrinks. The heated floors cause the wood to dry out a little more than forced air. Quarter sawn wood expands and contracts vertically rather than horizontally, minimizing the amount of buckling and cracks as the wood absorbs and releases water.
There were several types of wood that are known not to work so well over hydronic heating. Specifically, wide plank pine is known to have severe buckling problems.
Our wood floors are even simpler than that. TJI beams with plywood decking. 2x3 stringers with foam insulation foil side up and tubes on top. Flooring nailed to the stringers. Oak downstairs, fir upstairs. We don't have any concrete under the wood floors, only under the slate. We were cautioned to maintain humidity in the winter, but thats probably good advice for wood floors in general. The house is 10 years old now and everything is still working great. I think this system is only marginally more expensive than conventional wood floors.
It doesn't seem to me that concrete is really needed under the wood floors, I mostly go bare-footed in the house and I never notice cold floors. We have concrete under the floors on the south side of the house so that sunny days heat up the mass (and the big center chimney). On the rare New England winter sunny day, the heat doesn't run.
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