What Are You Doing Right Now
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@dafyre said:
I've got a crawl space under parts of the house... I wonder how much work it would be to get some radiant heating put in under there... and tie it in to my furnace and/or stove...
It isn't that difficult we did my parents house. The basement is unfinished so we installed it in the ceiling of the basement. The big thing is you need to keep your loops under a certain length or else the far side won't get heat.
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@coliver Cool. Our house only has about 1/3 of it that would actually benefit from the radiant heat, I think, so we probably would only do a small section of the house. Keep that area a little warm and the area with the wood burner a nice and balmy 86 degrees, lol.
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@dafyre said:
@coliver Cool. Our house only has about 1/3 of it that would actually benefit from the radiant heat, I think, so we probably would only do a small section of the house. Keep that area a little warm and the area with the wood burner a nice and balmy 86 degrees, lol.
A bit less work but they sell pre-insulated piping that is already configured to be setup in a circuit. This sits in one bay and you can connect as many as you want (up to the length limit of radiant floors).
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@coliver said:
@gjacobse said:
I miss having a really wood stove. simple and reliable. We had one in the house I grew up in,.. cooked on it, lots of family time around it. It was in the basement so if the power went out, we would retreat there. it was a 4 bedroom house, my room was on the 3rd floor.
Now, we have a ventless Propane fireplace upstairs, and some day I'll add one in the basement. if I could, I'd use an external wood burner and radiant floor heat...
Next house... maybe.
I'll be installing coal and radiant floor heating in my next house if it doesn't have it already. Radiant floor heating is the best, as in comfortable not sure about efficiency.
Why coal over pellet or other type? I'm rather surprised by the number of people that still have coal.. neat,..(interesting) but surprised.
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At least around here Coal is significantly cheaper than Pellets. It was barley above the cost of buying wood (which is still the cheapest).
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@gjacobse said:
@coliver said:
@gjacobse said:
I miss having a really wood stove. simple and reliable. We had one in the house I grew up in,.. cooked on it, lots of family time around it. It was in the basement so if the power went out, we would retreat there. it was a 4 bedroom house, my room was on the 3rd floor.
Now, we have a ventless Propane fireplace upstairs, and some day I'll add one in the basement. if I could, I'd use an external wood burner and radiant floor heat...
Next house... maybe.
I'll be installing coal and radiant floor heating in my next house if it doesn't have it already. Radiant floor heating is the best, as in comfortable not sure about efficiency.
Why coal over pellet or other type? I'm rather surprised by the number of people that still have coal.. neat,..(interesting) but surprised.
Expense, at least mostly for us. Coal is significantly cheaper around here and from everything I've read produces more heat per unit then pellets. Wood is less expensive then coal but the amount of labor that goes into cutting wood is staggering. We also pre-buy our coal with two other families so we get an even cheaper rate/ton.
I hate burning it... I really do it isn't a great industry, it pollutes like crazy, there is dust and coal ash everywhere... but for the price of the furnace and coal it makes little sense, for us, to do anything else.
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@Minion-Queen said:
At least around here Coal is significantly cheaper than Pellets. It was barley above the cost of buying wood (which is still the cheapest).
Have you noticed using more pellets then you did coal? Everyone I talked to says you need ~10-15% more pellets then you did coal.
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Yes we do need more when it's really cold but less when it's a cool night that we just need to take the chill off. And it only takes about 5 minutes to get the stove to heat up and have it kick on the blower to heat things up.
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@Minion-Queen said:
At least around here Coal is significantly cheaper than Pellets. It was barley above the cost of buying wood (which is still the cheapest).
The funny thing is my brother is in Maine. He can get pellets for dirt cheap but coal is exorbitant.
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It really does depend on your location on what is cheaper where.
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@coliver said:
@dafyre said:
That's a right good idea! I have an indoor woodburner... It's got an electric blower on it, so that it will heat that room and the back of the house once the fire gets hot enough. If the power goes out, we can still cook and huddle together in the red room (that's what we call it... all the carpet is a deep red color).
That's one thing I don't have with the coal furnace. It doesn't work very well if there is no power. We have two old fireplaces upstairs that we can use if it comes down to it.
We had a woodburning furnace when I was young that could do coal. I don't think that we ever tried it, but it was pretty hard core.
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@gjacobse said:
I miss having a really wood stove. simple and reliable. We had one in the house I grew up in,.. cooked on it, lots of family time around it. It was in the basement so if the power went out, we would retreat there. it was a 4 bedroom house, my room was on the 3rd floor.
Now, we have a ventless Propane fireplace upstairs, and some day I'll add one in the basement. if I could, I'd use an external wood burner and radiant floor heat...
Next house... maybe.
I grew up with wood heat. But if the power went out it did a really poor job of heating the house as there was no blower.
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We are going to get a generator just for the pellet stove
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@coliver said:
@gjacobse said:
I miss having a really wood stove. simple and reliable. We had one in the house I grew up in,.. cooked on it, lots of family time around it. It was in the basement so if the power went out, we would retreat there. it was a 4 bedroom house, my room was on the 3rd floor.
Now, we have a ventless Propane fireplace upstairs, and some day I'll add one in the basement. if I could, I'd use an external wood burner and radiant floor heat...
Next house... maybe.
I'll be installing coal and radiant floor heating in my next house if it doesn't have it already. Radiant floor heating is the best, as in comfortable not sure about efficiency.
Purely a guess on my part, but it seems like it would be very efficient because it is direct water to solid heat rather than heating the air. You spend energy heating what matters rather than focusing on heating the air at the ceiling.
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@coliver said:
@Minion-Queen said:
At least around here Coal is significantly cheaper than Pellets. It was barley above the cost of buying wood (which is still the cheapest).
Have you noticed using more pellets then you did coal? Everyone I talked to says you need ~10-15% more pellets then you did coal.
It should, coal is far denser of an energy source.
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My family would all huddle around the wood burner at my grandparent's house (a few miles down the road) and ride out the bad weather there. I only remember once or twice having to spend more than a day or two there because of weather.
Plus my grampa was an electronics genius. He kept his house running with car batteries in super bad weather (He had an array of car batteries that would charge while utilities were on. I remember him switching to battery power during bad thunderstorms and stuff (he ran his ham radio and the house lights off of them).
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I know that @Grey installed radiant heat in his bathroom.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
@gjacobse said:
I miss having a really wood stove. simple and reliable. We had one in the house I grew up in,.. cooked on it, lots of family time around it. It was in the basement so if the power went out, we would retreat there. it was a 4 bedroom house, my room was on the 3rd floor.
Now, we have a ventless Propane fireplace upstairs, and some day I'll add one in the basement. if I could, I'd use an external wood burner and radiant floor heat...
Next house... maybe.
I'll be installing coal and radiant floor heating in my next house if it doesn't have it already. Radiant floor heating is the best, as in comfortable not sure about efficiency.
Purely a guess on my part, but it seems like it would be very efficient because it is direct water to solid heat rather than heating the air. You spend energy heating what matters rather than focusing on heating the air at the ceiling.
That would make sense... all I know is sleeping on my parent's living room and kitchen floors during the winter is the best.
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I often wish that we had radiant cooling.
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@dafyre said:
My family would all huddle around the wood burner at my grandparent's house (a few miles down the road) and ride out the bad weather there. I only remember once or twice having to spend more than a day or two there because of weather.
Plus my grampa was an electronics genius. He kept his house running with car batteries in super bad weather (He had an array of car batteries that would charge while utilities were on. I remember him switching to battery power during bad thunderstorms and stuff (he ran his ham radio and the house lights off of them).
Funny - That is about what I do. can go quite a while on batteries,.. just don't have enough. I'm fine without all the lights and such... nice to have that down time.
ETA: Being a HAM has it's perks.
