Adding-on Radiant heat

[Rob]

I have a circa 1850 home in southern Ohio with half-basement/crawlspace. 92% propane forced air heat, central air, and electric hot water.

The kitchen (25X12) is on the far end of the house, over an insulated crawlspace (although the flooring is still rather cold). It currently only has one 6″ duct running to it, placed directly in the center of the room. The kitchen gets colder although it’s not that bad considering the lack of air flow. Cooling isn’t a problem unless the oven is running.

We have been updating the duct work in this house as we go so I’m trying to determine how I want to heat/cool this room. The simple solution is to just properly place some ducts and forget about it. For cooling purposes, that’s likely to happen regardless. We are planning to put either a tile or hard-wood floor down and i would like to use radiant heat. What are some options for heating this end of the house in this manner? Is there a smaller system that can be added to supply radiant heating in localized areas? Would this be efficient over a crawlspace? Would I be able to add-on to the system later to supply more radiant heat to other rooms?

Electricity runs about $.09/kwh and propane typcially ranges from $1.00-$1.70.

[Harold hydronicnetwork.net]

Your kitchen floor is cold as no warm air is blowing across the floor from floor level registers, so cold air sinks to the floor keeping it cold in spite of under-floor insulation. The cold breeze falls from the cold walls across the floor.

Because there is a habit in the Midwest of installing the cheapest type of heating to have cooling for a few months, it takes a considerable investment in equipment to change to radiant floor heating using hot water heating from a ducted air system.

Electric and propane are near in price per unit of heat after efficiencies are compared.

Search on http://www.google.com for electric floor radiant and you will get instructions on how to install electric radiant heat in the floor of the kitchen. You can add additional rooms independently of the kitchen when you desire.

If you are going to do the entire house with radiant, melt your snow from your driveway and walkways, heat a hot tub and make hot water at the least cost, change to an oil boiler as the source for a water heated radiant system. A hot water duct coil can be put by the furnace blower to heat the house through the ductwork in addition to the radiant, so not all rooms would have to have radiant floor heat.

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