Choice of heater for hydronic baseboards.
I have a house in San Diego on which I added a new bathroom and extended 2 of the bedrooms. The original house is heated by a gas wall heater. The new bath and 2 bedrooms in the back have hydronic baseboard radiators. I have been heating them with a Takagi tankless that also supplies the heat for the hot water in the bathroom. It has been working10 years but with some problems. The shower gets a slug of cold water occasionally and the heaters take some tweaking to get started in the fall. I want to seperate the two systems and add a new heater. I could leave the Takagi for the baseboards and get a 30 gallon tank type for the shower and lav. Or the other way around. The baseboards are: one 6′, and two 4′ made with 1/2″ copper pipes with fins. I have a thermostat and a Taco recirculating pump. Since the two systems are combined, I have a mixing valve to add cold water to the domestic hot water and run the Takagi at 175 degrees. When I seperate them I could get rid of that. Any ideas about which way to do it and what kind of heater (or boiler) to use?
Replies
am pretty green with the hydronics systems being used around here, but if you cant find a good hvac guy in your area to help you should check out john siegenthaler's book. very good, detailed and has tons of troubleshooting help.
New tact
Okay. Now, I think I'll disconnect the Takagi from the shower and lav and just use it for the hydronic system. I will put in a new 30 gallon tank-type water heater for the shower and lav. If the Takagi still acts up, I will put in a second tank-type heater for the hydronic system. Question: how big a tank do I need for 3 baseboard heaters? One is 6' long and two are 4' long with 1/2" tubing.
The size of the tank is irrelevant for a baseboard system. It's the wattage of the heater that's important. (And remember that, in double-element tanks, the design is usually such that only one element runs at a time.)
Just had my Takagi die on me after 9 years. When they go, they go quickly. I put it in for radiant heat and domestic on the advice of a radiant co. in Vermont . Poor choice as its extremely inefficient. Is electricity so expensive in Ca as to rule it out for such a small amount of baseboard heat? I'd think that the ease of installation and the cost savings over a water heater or boiler would make electric attractive, especially given your short heating season. FWIW, I had a new boiler and water tank installed and isolated radiant from domestic. Painful, cost wise, but I'm so glad to be rid of the Takagi .