Hi, I could use a second opinion, first the background:
1600 sg ft Cape Cod House, 2 story with a small heated porch/mud room. Western New York (real winter)
Buderus boiler with 5 zones, downstairs, upstairs, porch, basement, hot water heater.
Upstairs, downstairs, basement are baseboard radiators, back porch is a panel radiator.
The question is the basement heat. The previous owner had "finished" the basement with 2x2 walls and fiberglass insulation, which has gotten soggy due to water seepage issues. I am now addressing the water issue, and have ripped out all of the old walls revealing the poured concrete foundation.
What is left right now is 20' of baseboard just sitting on the floor. One choice would be to just eliminate the zone. The other choice...
The basement will not be a living space, rather it's storage and my workshop and well as the mechanical room. I rarely ever turn the basement heat on, as it remains above 60 F most of the time, and that is comfortable for me when I am working down there. I think the basement gets much of it's "heat" from the copper piping (1") that runs overhead for the other zones.
But, when it gets really cold, say <20F for a prolonged time, which it does, the temp can drop to, say 55F. Normally I would turn on the basement heat during this period.
I really want to keep things off the floor. My thought is to add a panel radiator to the middle of one of the walls in the basement. I used an online BTU calendar, inputed 30x24x7' high, and a desired temperature rise of 10 degrees (say 55->65). The result was about 6,000-7,000 BTU. I was thinking of using, say a 8,000 BTU+ panel radiator, or, even 2 5,000 BTU heaters spaced apart.
Does this seam reasonable? Am I missing something? I really like the panel radiator that I used in the back porch, it does a nice job "supplementing" the main house heat (porch is always open to the house).
One other question would be the copper piping, is it ok to run it strapped to the concrete wall (maybe protect it?), or should I run along the upper floor joists and drop down to the radiator(s)?
Thanks for any thoughts.
Jim
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