The complete source for building, designing, and remodeling green homes
Do you really want to delete the list, ?
This won't delete the articles you've saved, just the list.
This feature has been temporarily disabled during the beta site preview.
Replies
Sounds like you have some good ideas. Infrared ceiling panels such as ducoterra solaray might also be worth considering:
https://www.ducoterra.com/smartchoice/
Note that if your goal is to reduce emissions, you're better off using the natural gas boiler instead of electric RESISTANCE heaters like baseboards. The reason is that most electricity in the country is sourced by a mix of coal and natural gas, and it's less efficient to use electricity produced from natural gas to heat than it is to just use the natural gas for heating directly. If you use electric resistance heaters, you will ultimately be using more fuel than if you'd just used natural gas for the heat. This is likely to be true regardless of any net zero solar efforts, since you'll still be using that fuel to run those heaters regardless of what happened with your solar system at others times of the year.
What I would do is if you only have one room needing some extra warmth, see if you can use some circulation fans to even things out a little if you have some warm and some cold areas. It takes a lot less energy to move warm air around than it does to actually warm up cold air. Sometimes you can use small duct booster fans to act as small air handlers between rooms.
The next option would be "spot heating". This is similar to how task lighting works: with task lighting, you put light where you need it (such as a desk lamp), which is more efficient than lighting an entire room just to get the desk bright enough for you to see. The same works for heating: use a small supplemental heater only in the room that really needs it. In this case, an electric baseboard might make sense, since you're only using it to add a little heat in one room, with the heat pumps doing most of the work. Since heat pumps are moving heat (pumping it in from outdoors, like an air conditioner in reverse), not making it directly, they are much more efficient in terms of energy use compared to electric resistance heaters.
If your yougest is old enough to safely use an electric blanket, that's the most efficient way to go. I use electric blankets myself, and let the rest of the house drop down quite a bit at night. The electric blankets let us keep everyone at a comfy temperature for a minimum of energy use, while the rest of the house is only minimally heated while it's unoccupied.
Bill
Deleted
Are you sure you mini split cuts out at 5F? 5F sound more like the rated minimum temperature but most will continue to run well bellow that, a call to the manufacturer should get you the right answer.
As for supplemental heat, some form of resistance heat is probably your best option. Since the heat will be running for around 8h/day, spending money on something more efficient is most likely not worth it.
If you do want something more efficient, you can look at an air to water heat pump. Something like a SpacePak Solstice LAHP48 would do it. Not cheap, but not that expensive either. Since the air to water is around the same efficiency as your wallmounts, you can run both at the same time to improve comfort.
P.S. Any infrared radiant heat, such as the first post, it is mostly marketing fluff (or link spam in this case). When it comes to resistance heat, all setups have a COP of 1 (1 Watt of electricity makes 1 Watt of heat), there is no way around that.
Not entirely true. Yes, all resistance heat has a COP of 1. But radiant heaters can provide spot heat that allows you to be comfortable with lower air temperatures in the rest of the room. They can work well in workplaces, for example where a big, open room does not need to be heated if a workstation can be kept warm with radiant heat. OTOH, the recommendation of using electric blankets is even more efficient, as the heat is provided right where it's needed. But if electric blankets are not possible for some reason, a ceiling mounted radiant panel located over the bed could save energy over electric resistance baseboard heat. Might look better and make furniture location easier, too.
Deleted
I have a very similar scenario as yourself. We gutted our oil boiler and radiators. We put in a total of four Ductless 1 to 1 units. We’ve only used two out of the four units 100% of the time on the first floor because as you said The units downstairs heat upstairs well. We have a third unit on The first floor that we will likely move to the basement. I’m having the same issue for my upstairs toddler‘s room. I put an envi 500 W Cove heater in With thermostat that will turn on when the temperature drops below a certain temperature. This worked out well and is pretty easy. We also have solar. It doesn’t make any sense to me to install gas anything in your scenario because of your solar. We purposely got it for gas to not have to pay for the meter monthly.
I would like to retrofit a CERV Unit to help redistribute the heating as well as dehumidifier for the summer. We do not have an E RV now and the CO2 levels can get quite high even though it’s an old house. I’ve been working on their ceiling and the last floor door was six ACH 50 but likely closer to five at this point.
Other things people with mentioned on this forum to improve room to room differences is improving airsealing. I have terrible old leaky Aluminum windows that need to be replaced Winter likely contributing to the temperature drop I’m seeing similar to yours.
Deleted
Well, I hadn’t actually seen those reports so that’s helpful. There’s definitely off gassing for 72h so I set mine up in the garage at first. In terms of wall heat I’ll definitely keep track but similar To what you were set up would be, I have mine plugged into the thermostat and only comes on when The temperature falls below 67° at that thermostat. I have it set at that temperature because my Awair Device on the other side of the room reads approximately 63-64°. Data From the energy Monitor I have it plugged into shows it runs probably about an hour or two at a time. We haven’t had a polar vortex yet so I don’t know how much it will run during those days but it has been Low as 20° out. Again This is supplemental heat for when the door is closed for my toddler so much different than someone who has this thing running all out 24 seven. Certain parts of the plastic top can be pretty warm.
Deleted
Yes. Insulating and air sealing that room will reduce the rate of temperature drop. Doing it for the whole house will allow your minisplits to do an even better job.
You could install an electric boiler with the downsides mentioned above. Or, you could install an air-to-water heat pump that will provide hot water for your radiators. But why? This would be a big investment for use just a few days of the year. Once you know your minisplits are adequate, I would tear out the old boiler and radiators and reclaim the living space. For the upstairs bedrooms, as much as we hate equipment in attics, you might be able to put in a ducted minsplit. That will give you upstairs A/C as well which is a nice bonus. Sometimes you can find space in a centrally-located closet for the equipment and use short duct runs to the bedrooms without anything in the attic.
Deleted
“they keep the downstairs at 70F and the upstairs at around 65F (with the three upstairs bedroom doors left open).”
To my ear it sounds like you have more work to do on air sealing and insulating before you start throwing equipment at the problem.
Walt
Deleted
Wasn’t the original plan to install a ducted mini split upstairs in a few years for cooling? If so, you only need to bridge the gap until then?
Deleted