Heating a townhouse : ducted minisplit system vs radiators

We are gut renovating our townhouse and am wondering if we should replace our radiators with the ducted minisplit system. We re using such a system for cool air and are now considering it for heating. The engineers initial analysis was that it wasn’t powerful enough. He now suggests we get a larger system ducted shame. We are curious about costs, prices, effeciencies and more importantly effectiveness. Please help!

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in General Discussion 8 years and 8 months ago

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workisfun | 8 years and 8 months ago

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Anyone familiar with spray-in fiberglass? It doesn’t off-gas like the foam, but does form-fit, unlike batting or rigid.

stickerhappy | 8 years and 8 months ago

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WT, Who did your spray foam?

nykidden | 8 years and 8 months ago

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i should add we used a spray foam insulation which is well worth the money.

nykidden | 8 years and 8 months ago

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we just did a gut reno and decided against radiant heat due to cost but if you have the money you should go for it. we retrofitted our steam boiler (this and the basement were not fully gut renovated but the rest of the house was) which was relatively new to hot water and have a hot water radiator system which I like much more than steam. new radiators were smaller and semi or fully recessed. I also have the minisplits for ac but I did not want to fully rely on them for heat although they would have done just fine given that we are attached on both sides and put a new roof and spray insulation in.

stickerhappy | 8 years and 8 months ago

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Yes very helpful, thanks for sharing

Lurker | 8 years and 8 months ago

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stickerhappy—a guy I would never recommend who, after hiring him, has since been flagged on this site for his sloppiness and inattention to detail and mistake-prone work.

I would try the website heatinghelp and go to the forums and ask about someone in NY (or actually start with the very knowledgeable guys who post here like eman134, gennady and masterplumber in particular, whom I don’t know but are always generous with their opinions and expertise).

As an idea of what to expect: You want someone who will do a proper analysis of your home’s heat loss and will actually engineer a system that is based on math and not just back of hand guesses, which is what my plumber did (and most do, as math takes time=money).

Since you almost certainly will be insulating your exterior and party walls and roof, and maybe even replacing windows, your current boiler will now almost certainly be many times too powerful for what you will end up needing.

If you go the route we did, the boiler modulates how much heat it produces based on the outdoor temperature, so it’s not running ful l blast when your home only needs sips of heat. If you add an indirect water heater, you don’t have a constant flame heating up water, it’s really just a storage tank that uses the same water that heats your home and so is radically more efficient (and safe, as there’s no pilot light).

The heating system is separated into zones, usually with thermostats for each zone, so that instead of heating the whole house at once you only heat the places that need it. They all start and finish at a manifold, which is a central distribution system, where you can fine tune them as needed individually.

For the radiant floors there’s a popular product called warm board, which is basically plywood with a layer of metal sandwiched in, and with channels cut out that become your subfloor; flexible PEX tubes that have hot water running them are tucked into the channels. Then your floor goes over top. It’s pricey but probably the best option. If you’re keeping your existing subfloor, another option, which is what we did, is to get extruded aluminum plates that are screwed underneath your floor and the PEX tubes are inserted into them and run in loops. It sounds labor intensive but it’s really not–a few guys can bang out the install of the plates and the tubing in a few days, especially if you’re doing a gut. You then insulate them and put a ceiling below and presto, you’ve got even warmth all over your home.

There’ s a huge range pricing wise for a system like this. Between permits and expediting and materials you would expect to pay several 10s of thousands. But putting in any brand new heating system will cost a couple 10s of thousands, especially if you need a new chimney liner and emitters, so the added cost might be worth it.

Sorry for the brain dump–it’s stuff I wish I knew before I got started. Hope it’s helpful.

eman134 | 8 years and 8 months ago

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BTW if you want a consultation from a “boiler guy” feel free to contact me at errol832000@hotmail.com

workisfun | 8 years and 8 months ago

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Email Rich Mcgrath. You can’t do better. dmcgrath40@comcast.net

We just set up radiant-in-slab for our lower level. It’s amazing and takes up no wall space – a precious commodity for a family in Brooklyn.

stickerhappy | 8 years and 8 months ago

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Lurker, who did your radiant floor install?

Lurker | 8 years and 8 months ago

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I can’t recommend enough underfloor radiant (for us, we have it with a mod-con hot water system and indirect water heater). It’s perfectly cozy with no drafts, no noise, it’s extremely efficient and cheap to run–our gas bill is 30 bucks in summer and 120-150 in winter to heat 3 stories to 75 degrees. You have no radiators in the way collecting dust, burning children, and pinging and hissing and overheating till you cook. Coming from a steam home for 20 years it’s been so satisfying.

It’s an investment, but doesn’t have to be crazy pricey if you’re already gutting and installing a new heating system. Just make sure you hire someone who knows what they’re doing in order to get the calculations and systems right and to get it tweaked just so for maximum performance.

NeoGrec | 8 years and 8 months ago

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It’s a bit subjective, but personally I find there’s nothing nicer than hot water (or steam) radiators in a New York winter. Mini ducts have the advantage of being quick but I always find any kind of convection-only system to be either too drafty or too dry. And if I want to crank the thermostat, the heat rises fast enough in our rads to keep me happy.

slopefarm | 8 years and 8 months ago

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I am a homeowner, not a “boiler-oriented heating guy,” but we heat our oversized semi-attached frame (lots of extra exterior walls) the old fashioned way with a single pipe steam system using a gas boiler. I can’t compare it to using mini-duct system, but I am pretty happy with how the house heats. Except for the occasional knock or hiss, it is quiet, heats the house nicely, and maintenance needs are sporadic. It is a good system — if it works well in your home, don’t mess with it.

I should add that, while the radiators do take up space, we had covers made for them a while back which not only provide additional surfaces (lamps, photos etc) but also (counterintuitively) improved our heating by directing more of the heat horizontally into the room rather than having some of the heat radiate straight up to the ceiling.

eman134 | 8 years and 8 months ago

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this topic was parsed endlessly on the former brownstoner site. Sadly the archives on the new site are fairly useless for tracking down information. You can get some limited information by googling topics like this
http://www.brownstoner.com/forums/topic/does-mini-split-work-at-primary-heat/
as I remember the end result was that the boiler oriented heating guys such as myself on the site felt that you should have some form of radiation to heat a brownstone whether it be radiant or radiators unless you were hyperinsulating the house. Others claimed that the mitsubishi city/multi system could possibly work alone without generating the huge electric bills that usually occur with a heat pump system when temperatures drop to extremes