Adding a zone for basement - baseboards
homebound
17 years ago
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baymee
17 years agohomebound
17 years agoRelated Discussions
Adding hydronic loop for basement
Comments (1)You should get calculations. That being said, just yesterday, I added 8 feet of baseboard to a previously unheated part of my house. It's a solid concrete room, 250 sq. feet with 7' ceiling, with little insulation and 8" of uninsulated concrete above. It is heating very nicely...See Moreadding zone to basement w/heat pump.....
Comments (6)"Maybe a 3T unit would allow some extra vents to get us to the point where the rest of the home is unaffected yet it adds enough heat to warm the basement OR gets it warm enough that some ba"seboard could be added and able to take the chill of relatively quickly if some one goes down there. Not sure if that is more economical than adding a zone..." In all likelihood, your basement will add little/none heat load to your house (unless you're planning a media room). As mentioned earlier, HPs should be sized for air conditioning with supplemental heat added as necessary. This would be especially important for your basement if it gets quite humid in summer time. Also, if you're looking for 'fast heat', a HP would might not be up to the job without aux heat operating. You need an accurate heat calc done to establish your exact needs. If I were in your situation, I would install baseboard electric heat w/stats in each room. Easy (fast) on; easy (fast) off. Also, look into dehumidifier for summer use. As an aside, I did not see any mention of installing returns in your options. V...See MoreZoning a ranch house with baseboard heat
Comments (6)Are the baseboards in series, or in parallel? I'm still not getting a feel for which they are. If it's one big series you've got a LOT of plumbing work cut ahead of you. If you try to throttle the flow at any point in a series system you stop heating everywhere. If they are in parallel, you might want to try adding thermostatically controlled valves. Give a LOT more control than a simple gate valve....See MoreAdding Heat & AC to Basement during Remodel
Comments (11)Please, be very careful about the insulation and vapor barrier placement and type. If you don't get it right, you will have a mold farm. I don' t know the situation details, but this could be very easy to mess up. The most important part of the basement to insulate is between the soil line and the floor of the ground level, the rim joist, and environs. I wish I could be enthusiastic about about the Dryloc paint. If you have water outside the foundation, the only good fix is to lower the water level via better drainage. This usually involves a lot of digging. If it is a soil moisture (vapor) problem OK, but get the vapor barrier/insulation right. Given the oil-powered baseboard, I'll assume that you are in the Northeast. My experience with finished basements in the NE is that when a dehumidifier is running in the summer, you have enough waste heat so that you need little cooling, but two tons, that should be OK for 5000 square feet or more. Oh wait, you have 1000. Keep the humidity below 50%. An efficient dehumidifier would probably be a good investment, but I don't know about the return on investment. As Mike suggested, you can stick a portable unit into a purpose-built plenum located in an unfinished area and run ducts using a small blower and external thermostat for a pretty effective system (see below). I am assuming that the whole basement is half again bigger or twice the size of your 1000 sq ft finished area. If that is the case and you empty even a largish portable dehumidifier 2 or 3 times a week, that is not a lot compared to some other situations. I've seen 70 pint units fill up daily or in part of a day. Add the pump for when you are out of town and it will be so quiet that you will forget it is there. Don't (fully) add cooling until you prove that you need it. It if has been cool while running the dehumidifier and the humidity is an an acceptable level, have a plan and and leave an option in place for cooling now, but you don' need to fully execute it yet if it is going to cost a lot in equipment. There are too many unknown (to us and to you) variables in your plan right now that are going to affect your heat and cooling loads. Insulation will be a two-edged sword. Soil temp is probably in the 50s staring a few inches below the surface. Add insulation and you need heat less in the winter, sure, but you lose a heat sink in the summer that might make you need more cooling. If a typical, inexpensive dehumidifier makes it too warm a Santa Fe or similar will make less waste heat and might be tried before adding cooling. Note that a good engineer might be able to model all this for you and get it correct right out of the gate. A mini split is probably a good option but if you can piggyback on your existing cooling system, so much the better. You might have to install all the ducts, of course and might will be the main investment if tapping into your existing system. On the other hand, maybe a mini split can pretty much be added later with no investment now. As lagniappe, it may provide heat for less cost than the oil burner. Do the math. If you want to use it for heat, location nearer the floor will work better so consider a floor console or setting up a ducted unit with high and low supplies/returns that you switch off seasonally rather than the typical high mount version. They are not as efficient and cost more, but may work a lot better. My experience in finished basements in heating climates is that the floor and feet are always cold. The mini splits in dehumidification mode can take a lot of the load off of a dehumidifier while giving you some cooling at the same time. Make no mistake, however, they are not dehumidifiers. They are always net cooling whereas dedicated dehumidifiers heat as a byproduct. To see some examples of a dehumidifier in a plenum, find these articles, You can probably forget about most of the other stuff found there unless just for interest. Note that this organization might be a good place to look to check or form your insulation plans: Conditioning Air in the Humid South—Creating Comfort and Controlling Cost Research Report - 0214 November-2002 Building Science Corporation Residential Dehumidification Systems Research for Hot-Humid Climates Building America Report - 0505 Feb-2005 Armin Rudd, Joseph Lstiburek, P.Eng., and Kohta Ueno...See Morebaymee
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