Forum Archive

Following a recent post on solar water and electric, it seems a lot of people are interested in pursuing solar energy options and are having a hard time finding reliable information and real-life experience. Anyway, that’s been my impression as I’ve been doing research on installing a solar hot water system coupled with radiant floor heating throughout a 3 story brownstone.

Here’s what I found: even though solar hot water would SEEM to be the ideal match for a radiant floor heating system, the engineers my architects have retained are adamantly opposed to pursuing this. The rationale is that, ironically, in summer you end up producing way too much hot water, and if you don’t have a way of dumping it into a pool or hot tub, for instance, you just have to dump thousands of gallons of hot water down the drain. Instead, we have scaled back the hot water system to produce enough water for domestic use only, and will install a high efficiency condensing boiler (whatever the hell that is) to heat water for the radiant floor system.

As for a PV installation, I have been advised on many fronts that now is not the time for that (despite the on-again off-again federal and state incentives). In the near future, rapid technical progress on PV panels may alter that calculation. So we are preparing for an eventual PV installation by reinforcing the roof and putting in an electrical junction box (or something like that).

Anyway, that has been my experience to date in the world of solar solutions. I am curious if anyone else has attempted or actually installed a solar hot water and radiant floor system.