Busy day today no time for mail :-(
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kim Knapp [mailto:kimknapp@vail.net]
> Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 8:09 PM
> To: Madurski, Ronald M.
> Cc: Shop
> Subject: RE: building a shop - radiant heat
>
>
> I think there are two problems with this. One, the slab will
> be blocked from
> an external radiant source by a car, equipment, etc, causing
> it to pick up
> very little heat from the source. Two, the mass of the slab
I would change the "will be blocked" to "may be blocked", and , at least in
my case, only a small portion of the floor will be covered by a car. The
concrete floor will eventually conduct the heat all around.
> is so great,
> that the areas that are heated by radiant heat won't get very
> warm and will
> cool quickly when the room gets up to temp and the heat
> source cycles off.
I'm not 100% sure on this but based on my understanding of radiant heat this
is only partially true and raises another issue as well. Again, the source
of the radiant should not make a difference in what objects get heated.
Using something other than in floor radiant, the whole mass of the slab may
take longer to warm, but the surface of the slab would become warm quickly
(which is what I want). With radiant in the floor you are heating the whole
slab before you heat anything else in the room which means you have to leave
it on all of the time to keep everything warm or wait a long time for the
rest of the objects in the room to get warm.
> With in floor heat the whole slab becomes warm (it IS the
> radiant source),
> which is very nice when you are on your back working under
> the car. The only
Welll, since I plan on installing a lift I will (hopefully) not be spending
much time on my back under the cars.
> problem (slight) with in floor heat is that, because of the
> huge heat mass,
The in floor heat also has more maintenance involved (boilers, manifolds,
valves). It is more expensive. It is harder to install. You can't upgrade
in floor radiant.
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to have in floor radiant also. I spend enough
time in the garage that leaving it on all of the time is not a problem and
it would be nice to have an uncluttered ceiling line. In some buildings the
ceiling height wouldn't be sufficient for ceiling mounted radiant (Mine are
going to be 13' 6" so it's not a problem). It's just that the economics and
ergonomics of a ceiling mounted radiant unit will work better for my
situation.
> temperature changes are slow. In other words, although the
> slab will start
> getting a little warm soon after turning the heat on, the
> room won't get up
> to temperature for a while and, if it is too hot, well, you
> are out of luck
> for an hour or so while the slab cools down. We are bringing
Yup. And you may also notice that opening a window or door does not
significantly cool the room since the radiant heat doesn't heat the air in
the room.
> the heating
> system up in our new house and, initially, we didn't have the
> thermostats
> running so it was going full blast (it just snowed up here
> last week). Once
Some people have all of the luck. I'm looking forward to the ski season
already.
> I installed the thermostats, one bedroom stayed hot for so
> long I thought
> there was a stuck valve. Under normal operation, where you
> turn the heat
> down from 71 to 68, for example, it isn't quite that bad, but
> if can take an
> hour or so even with low outside temps.
Especially if the radiant source is well insulated.
>
> Kim
>
> > Except that where the radiant source is
> > located does not
> > matter. If the slab is cold it will warm from any radiant source.
> >
> >
> >
Have a good weekend,
Ron.
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