Hello All,
After a long summer, we moved into our brand new house in October. The house is a ranch style home with an unfinished 2500 sq ft. full basement (with North walk out exposure). We used a general contractor and tried to plan for completion of the basement "some day". The bathrooms and a kitchenette are roughed in and we put the radiant floor tubing in the concrete floor to be "hooked up" in the future.
We were just notified that our application for the energy company rebates were rejected because the gas water heater doesn't meet the criteria (must have EF >= 62 but ours is 58). The plumbing contractor reminded me that the original quote called for an electric water heater (which he assumes met the requirement) which I changed to gas (added on $500 for exhaust flew).
This small tecnicality jeopardizes $2500 in rebates (ie all or nothing). I have expressed my displeasure to the plumbing contractor, he apologized for the selection of water heater, and now we're at the next step.
My thought has been to go ahead and hook up the radiant floor heat and hope to be treated fairly using the sub-standard water heater for the few months it gets used and install a qualifying gas water heater in its place for the rest of the house. Maybe even make that new heater larger than the 50 gallon we started with since we have four children.
The ball is in his court right now. I intended to do some research for alternative heat sources for the radiant floor and shop around for competitive bids someday, but since it has to be changed I might as well use it and hope they're fair with the net cost [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img] .
Does anyone have a guess as to the cost of hooking up the radiant floor heat this way? I'd like to be prepared somewhat.
LeeF
BTW here is our web log which chronicaled our construction: http://heirloomacresadventures.blogspot.com/