Hello, so I am in the process of converting from oil to propane and switching most of my house from fin tube baseboard to forced hot air with an aqua coil (adding a/c later).
A small loop in my finished basement will still be baseboard as there is no feasible way to run duct work down to the basement from the attic. Although I'm also considering just putting some electric baseboard down there as it is such a small space that it may not even be worth hooking the boiler up to it but i'm not sure yet.
Forced hot air sq ft - ~1000
fin tube basement sq ft ~200
My question is, I would like to install a high efficiency condensing lp gas boiler. How well does that work with condensing boilers? What steps must I take to get and maintain that efficiency with an aquacoil?
Also when it comes to boiler sizing... I have a hot water storage tank that I plan to continue using. The house has only 1.5 bathrooms and only 2 people. Not much of a constant hot water load.
I did a heat loss calculation and came out to around 57,000 btu for the entire house based on my region and house. ~1200 sq ft, built in 1958, shoreline Connecticut.
I am also in the process of a complete re-insulation overhaul, ripping out all the insulation in the walls. Dense pack R-15 with 1" polyiso on the outside of the house (R~5.5 in the winter) and re-insulating the attic. I am doing this room-by-room so the whole process won't be complete until sometime next year (if i'm lucky) that being said, I assume that would considerably lower my heat loss calculation.
I know a lot of these new boilers can modulate their btu/h so it really all just comes down to upfront cost, I don't plan on buying a 200k btu/h boiler that can run at any range when I can buy a 60,000 btu/h, right?
tl;dr
How hard is it to operate a condensing boiler with an aquacoil?
What boiler size would be a safe bet on my house?
Any information would be greatly appreciated, thank you!.
I also posted this on the DIY Forums but my thread seemed to run out of gas![:neutral:]( ":neutral:")
The aqua coil I purchased is a HHU-TV-1 along with a 2 ton air handler.
http://www.aquecoil.com/specs/hhuspecs/files/AQUECOIL_HHU_TV-Series.pdf
They were mentioning increasing the size of the aqua coil to constantly run the unit at lower water temperatures. The air handler I bought runs at a maximum 1046 cfm and a minimum of 646. This means at 140 degree entering temperature the most btu/h I could get out of my coil is 39,000. This is not enough to meet my heat loss calculation but also not taking into account me re-insulating the house. Do you think it would be a safer bet to just increase the coil size? The HHU-TV-2 at 1000cfm produces 47,000 btu/h. I imagine that might be ok, it's about 10,000 less than my initial heat loss calculation and it doesn't take into account the added insulation. My initial heat loss also included that small 200 sqft basement which is poorly insulated now (If i remember correctly that was a pretty large source of heat loss).
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, any info would be appreciated. I'm looking to get this all installed before winter sets in here.
A small loop in my finished basement will still be baseboard as there is no feasible way to run duct work down to the basement from the attic. Although I'm also considering just putting some electric baseboard down there as it is such a small space that it may not even be worth hooking the boiler up to it but i'm not sure yet.
Forced hot air sq ft - ~1000
fin tube basement sq ft ~200
My question is, I would like to install a high efficiency condensing lp gas boiler. How well does that work with condensing boilers? What steps must I take to get and maintain that efficiency with an aquacoil?
Also when it comes to boiler sizing... I have a hot water storage tank that I plan to continue using. The house has only 1.5 bathrooms and only 2 people. Not much of a constant hot water load.
I did a heat loss calculation and came out to around 57,000 btu for the entire house based on my region and house. ~1200 sq ft, built in 1958, shoreline Connecticut.
I am also in the process of a complete re-insulation overhaul, ripping out all the insulation in the walls. Dense pack R-15 with 1" polyiso on the outside of the house (R~5.5 in the winter) and re-insulating the attic. I am doing this room-by-room so the whole process won't be complete until sometime next year (if i'm lucky) that being said, I assume that would considerably lower my heat loss calculation.
I know a lot of these new boilers can modulate their btu/h so it really all just comes down to upfront cost, I don't plan on buying a 200k btu/h boiler that can run at any range when I can buy a 60,000 btu/h, right?
tl;dr
How hard is it to operate a condensing boiler with an aquacoil?
What boiler size would be a safe bet on my house?
Any information would be greatly appreciated, thank you!.
I also posted this on the DIY Forums but my thread seemed to run out of gas
The aqua coil I purchased is a HHU-TV-1 along with a 2 ton air handler.
http://www.aquecoil.com/specs/hhuspecs/files/AQUECOIL_HHU_TV-Series.pdf
They were mentioning increasing the size of the aqua coil to constantly run the unit at lower water temperatures. The air handler I bought runs at a maximum 1046 cfm and a minimum of 646. This means at 140 degree entering temperature the most btu/h I could get out of my coil is 39,000. This is not enough to meet my heat loss calculation but also not taking into account me re-insulating the house. Do you think it would be a safer bet to just increase the coil size? The HHU-TV-2 at 1000cfm produces 47,000 btu/h. I imagine that might be ok, it's about 10,000 less than my initial heat loss calculation and it doesn't take into account the added insulation. My initial heat loss also included that small 200 sqft basement which is poorly insulated now (If i remember correctly that was a pretty large source of heat loss).
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, any info would be appreciated. I'm looking to get this all installed before winter sets in here.