10-25-2014, 02:36 PM
OK, take this with a grain of salt, because I'm probably prejudice towards systems I've either had direct experience with or at least know about.
Putting a water coil in a forced air system is going to be HORRIBLE. You'll get maybe warm air blowing out, certainly not the nice hot air of a direct hot air furnace.
Now, running hot water through baseboard heaters - that actually IS very efficient. In my area, the energy award winning house every year has a multi-zone hot water heat system, where the furnace heats water and pumps circulate it through the radiators. Multiple thermostats in different areas of the house control the pumps for those areas. My new house has 3 zones, the house I grew up in was just one zone for the whole place, but it was always warm. Back in the late 70's/early 80's when oil was so ridiculously expensive, a bunch of us neighbors all got together and installed wood stoves, and we'd go out together to cut and split wood to supply everyone. The kind of wood stoves we got had water coils in them, and tied in to the hot water heat system. The wood stove was not enough to make the radiators as hot as they got from the oil furnace, but they were constantly warm - the oil furnace almost NEVER turned on as long as we had a fire burning and it heated the entire house that way, not just the room where the stove was located.
I've visited Toronto a few times, seems ot be similar climate to here, with more wind and probably a bit colder in winter (I wasn't there in winter). In this area, heat pumps are HORRIBLE - it gets too cold to get decent heating and a backup heat source is almost always needed. I made the mistake of agreeing to buy a house where said backup was electric resistor grids in the air flow - with winter time electric bills over $600 (and the thermostat was set on like 65, not 70 something!) it's little wonder I quickly went broke. I can't imagine one hot water radiator in the air flow would be much better at generating heat, though it shouldn't be as costly.
There seems to be just too many parts exposed to the water in this Polaris system. It's bad enough on a traditional water heater when corrosion finally eats through the tank, but what about that fire tube coil in there? Also, this is vastly different from the sorts of things we have here. For example, in the house I grew up in, there's just one oil burning furnace, but there is a separate water coil in the main tank for heating the domestic hot water. That water you bathe in that comes out of the taps never mixes with the water that circulates in the heating system. We either have systems like that or like what I have in this house, which is a gas fired furnace that supplies hot water to the heating system and a separate gas fired water heater for domestic hot water. The new on demand hot water heaters for domestic hot water look pretty good, and should be more efficient - a traditional water heater is 40+ gallons and is kept hot at all times, meaning every once in a while it kicks on even though I am not using any hot water. The on demand tankless ones only heat water when you actually use it. I would look in to it but part of the appeal of this house is that the furnace and water heater were both no more than 2 years old so that's one worry I don't have as a new homeowner.
--Randy
Putting a water coil in a forced air system is going to be HORRIBLE. You'll get maybe warm air blowing out, certainly not the nice hot air of a direct hot air furnace.
Now, running hot water through baseboard heaters - that actually IS very efficient. In my area, the energy award winning house every year has a multi-zone hot water heat system, where the furnace heats water and pumps circulate it through the radiators. Multiple thermostats in different areas of the house control the pumps for those areas. My new house has 3 zones, the house I grew up in was just one zone for the whole place, but it was always warm. Back in the late 70's/early 80's when oil was so ridiculously expensive, a bunch of us neighbors all got together and installed wood stoves, and we'd go out together to cut and split wood to supply everyone. The kind of wood stoves we got had water coils in them, and tied in to the hot water heat system. The wood stove was not enough to make the radiators as hot as they got from the oil furnace, but they were constantly warm - the oil furnace almost NEVER turned on as long as we had a fire burning and it heated the entire house that way, not just the room where the stove was located.
I've visited Toronto a few times, seems ot be similar climate to here, with more wind and probably a bit colder in winter (I wasn't there in winter). In this area, heat pumps are HORRIBLE - it gets too cold to get decent heating and a backup heat source is almost always needed. I made the mistake of agreeing to buy a house where said backup was electric resistor grids in the air flow - with winter time electric bills over $600 (and the thermostat was set on like 65, not 70 something!) it's little wonder I quickly went broke. I can't imagine one hot water radiator in the air flow would be much better at generating heat, though it shouldn't be as costly.
There seems to be just too many parts exposed to the water in this Polaris system. It's bad enough on a traditional water heater when corrosion finally eats through the tank, but what about that fire tube coil in there? Also, this is vastly different from the sorts of things we have here. For example, in the house I grew up in, there's just one oil burning furnace, but there is a separate water coil in the main tank for heating the domestic hot water. That water you bathe in that comes out of the taps never mixes with the water that circulates in the heating system. We either have systems like that or like what I have in this house, which is a gas fired furnace that supplies hot water to the heating system and a separate gas fired water heater for domestic hot water. The new on demand hot water heaters for domestic hot water look pretty good, and should be more efficient - a traditional water heater is 40+ gallons and is kept hot at all times, meaning every once in a while it kicks on even though I am not using any hot water. The on demand tankless ones only heat water when you actually use it. I would look in to it but part of the appeal of this house is that the furnace and water heater were both no more than 2 years old so that's one worry I don't have as a new homeowner.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad of the 1950's in HO
Visit my web site to see layout progress and other information:
http://www.readingeastpenn.com
Visit my web site to see layout progress and other information:
http://www.readingeastpenn.com