garage heat.

[2011laramie]

Hello there,

Just found this forum and have been searching alot.

I am in the process of building a 24x28 garage in Alberta. I want to have the slab heated and maybe also use a reznor 60000 FA unit for quick recovery.

now here we are,

1) In Alberta I believe that a domestic HWT cannot be used soley for the purpose of slab heat (which ***** cause I have a spare tank). So my options are trench a gas line over and a water line over and use the HWT to heat the water along with a heat exchanger and a closed glycol loop in the floor. and also use the tank to provide hot water to a faucet (I think that will make it legit)

2)Im thinking about running insulated pex from the proposed garage to the house which is about 20 feet away and using the House HWT which is a hi efficient tank and doing the glycol exchanger in the mechanical room and just pumping it to the garage.

3)just trench the gasline over and install a unit heater(lame i know).

 

[dave67fd]

Do you have Propane as an option?

 

[Jackfre]

1: Alberta gets it! That said, if you choose to put in the Reznor first and do your radiant plant later, then who is to know? Depends upon whether you agree with the first sentence. Alberta does get it!

2: Insulated pex is inadequate. You need waterproof insulated pex. Rehau makes a good product for this. I think it is a bad idea.

3: We have a winner! If you intend to heat the garage all the time and be there all the time then perhaps the radiant is worth the expense. I would look into my favorite product for that size garage, a Rinnai EX38. I have represented them for over 20 years. I heat my house with them.

 

[BadgerBoilerMN]

If you had radiant floor heat, you would not be without it. A proper heat load is the first step. Your home water heater may very well cover the additional load or you could upgrade the water heater and easily do both.

PEX pipe between house and garage is SOP in Minneapolis. Glycol is optional.

 

[2011laramie]

im having a tough time finding someone to help me with the heat loss calc(i know more heat is required with the air exchanges for the humidity).
Glycol will be mandatory. And I was planning on using the waterproof insulated pex if that was the route I went, that way I would have a little more room in the garage with just the manifold in the garage.

 

[BadgerBoilerMN]

We do heat loss calculations for clients all over N. America, and we speak Canadian!

 

[2011laramie]

digging up my old thread.

So garage is almost complete, I decided to hang a 45000 btu modine forced air unit which heats the garage really well. Now I just want to hook up the slab heat more for just finishing it up than actually using it. If I do use it I will keep the garage at a low temp like 5C, than just using the modine to heat to a workable temp.

The attacehd pic is an idea that ive dreamed up. The basement has 3 loops roughed in and I plan on hooking them up basically for a resale value. The clowns that built the house never run insulation under the basement floor , so I personally cant see myself using the floor heat in an unfinished basement.

Im unsure as to how to wire the thermostats for the pumps. Originally we roughed in 110v power from the garage to the basement mechanical room and were going to have a 110v thermostat turn on pump 2 and pump 1. But now that i want to hook up the basement on a zone, how to I wire it so that pump 3 turns on and so does pump 1.

Can you have to sources of power to pump 1? what happens if both zones call for heat? will it send twice the current to pump 1???