Combined radiant and forced air Geothermal Retrofit - need advice and opinions

[frumper15]

I initially started this as a reply to another thread here:
http://hvac-talk.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=953342
but thought it best to start my own so as not to threadjack too badly.

I was just at a customer's home this morning. The house is 7 years old with a 93% 2-stage bryant propane furnace and a 3.5 ton single stage AC currently serving their HVAC needs. When the house was built, the HO put radiant tube in the entire basement as well as the rooms on the upper floors with hard surface flooring. It's a total of 4 zones (5 if the garage is included - served by a hot water heater with radiant floor currently) of hydronic and the forced air is also zoned for the main and upper floors.

I'm thinking a water to water unit makes sense, but I'm trying to balance things out. The entire house isn't going to be able to be heated by radiant so I'll need to have a lot of space heating by the forced air unit and the higher temperatures required by a water coil on top of the furnace compared to the lower temps of the radiant floor adds a bit of a wrinkle to everything.

I have a perfectly serviceable furnace to use for backup, otherwise I very much like the use of a boiler as both auxiliary and DHW production. I'll offer that as an option, but I don't known that it's a necessary expense at this point for the HO. I'm looking into the Waterfurnace Synergy3D as a potential option - it seems like it might be a good fit, but that would be doing away with the furnace and then we're probably looking at electric as auxiliary backup, which really isn't a big deal I suppose as the current furnace doesn't have a VS blower either.

I'm pretty sure I can do it a number of ways - I'm trying to minimize the amount of equipment that will need to be purchased while maximizing the efficiency of the system.
I think the biggest decision I need to make, or at least one of the options, is whether or not I want to keep the furnace in the equation. If I keep if, auxilliary heat is taken care of, but it saddles me with a non-variable speed motor (could be swapped for a retrofit, but that's not the same) and a split geo unit (which I think excludes the Synergy). That makes the forced air side of things pretty simple, but leave the hydronic problem unsolved.
For the Hydronic I'm considering (1) Synergy3D or equivalent dual capable unit (2) Water to Water Geothermal (3) condensing wall hung boiler (4) High efficiency water heater.
I suspect something like the Triangle Tube smart multi energy tank might place a key role in allowing a tie-in between domestic hot water production and space heating.
The controls side becomes a whole 'nother problem to solve. There will be 2 forced air zones which have overlap on the 4 hydronic heat only zones. I certainly see where two pieces of equipment greatly simplify that equation, but again, trying to be cost effective as well. I would probably prioritize forced air heating as that covers the entire home and radiant floor would be for comfort rather than actual heating.
Still very much in the planning stages but really appreciate the assistance and any guidance or advice.

[SkyHeating]

I dont' know if this would work but if you use a Synergy rather than sizing with a 4 ton unit maybe you could do a 5 or 6 because 1st stage will be 60-70% of units total capacity putting you about 3.5 tons(assuming the AC is currently sized properly) yet will give you more capacity for heat so that your radiant system is not running 100% of the time on a cold day or so that your forced air will have a chance to shut down on a cold day and warm the radiant tank back up.

For a situation like this though I would typically do the two system option with a dedicated water to water unit (sized for that load only) and then a hybrid system with a refrigerant not water coil for the ducted heating and cooling(also sized to the load). I am just not a fan of chilling a ton of water and not having the option of the radiant during ducted cooling. In my climate we need heating in the morning and cooling in the afternoon and it is a huge energy waste to switch from one to the other with a water system and 50-80 gallon storage tank.

[frumper15]

The synergy system is interesting as is your suggestion of dedicated water-to-water. In theory, if the synergy system is sized to the heat load of the house, the combined radiant and forced air need shouldn't exceed the available capacity of the unit, even if it does switch between the two. I do worry that using a single piece of equipment to provide both forced air space heating and radiant floor may allow for a situation where floors get cold or rooms not covered by radiant do, neither of which is an attractive proposition in what will not be an inexpensive system no matter which direction we take.
At this moment I'm trying to figure out in my head how to combine domestic hot water production and radiant floor heat using a Geo w2w unit AND the built-in desuperheater of a forced air Geo. If I use something like the TT Smart Tank, I'll end up with one big tank of 120 degree water - which is great for radiant and DHW, but doesn't allow for much buffer for the desuperheater to take advantage of and doesn't give me an auxilliary option to make sure domestic production is at 120 degrees when it comes out of the taps. I think I might need 3 water tanks which seems excessive to me...

[SkyHeating]

I think on the domestic water side if they have propane its time to use the KISS philosophy, Keep It Simple Stupid :cheers:

Personally I would not worry about trying to take advantage of all hot water production because you will have a marginal benefit from it. If your propane, hookup a Rinnai, those are already about half the cost of a conventional water heater as far as yearly usage, put in a 50 gallon desuperheater storage tank for the Rinnai to pull from and be done with it. Saves space and gets the job done for about the same yearly cost as the complicated controls you were thinking of but probaly will cost less upfront and be easier to work on too.
Otherwise there is one last option for water, run a dedicated NSW018 unit, they are INCREDIBLY inexpensive IMHO compared to some of the water to water units and after tax credit can sometimes be done for the price of upgrading to a tankless after tax credits, this is certainly not going to work in all situations but could be simpler than trying to make the radiant floor W2W unit work to do water heating as well and would save you some money on not having to purchase the desuperheater addition for the other two units.

Is this going to be vertical or horizontal loop?

What is the Manual J calc for this house? Radiant portion and forced air.

[frumper15]

Well, unfortunately for the HO, they're on Propane. They've currently got a 73gallon natural draft propane water heater, so while geo hw production might be marginal, it is still far better than their current situation. They have a $5k a year propane bill so I'm pretty sure as long as I can show the savings and they can afford the system they'll probably go for it.

I'm a huge believer in KISS and you're convincing me that keeping hydronic and forced air separate will contribute to that in a large way. Now the question become whether or not the hydronic side is a W2W geo unit or something like a Rinnai or condensing boiler.

[SkyHeating]

If you look at the video in the link below it is a similar story, customer was spending up to $5K per year in propane, he had a 5 year payback on the system in the video including new top of the line marathon water heaters, and two zone system costs lol.
http://www.youtube.com/user/skyheating1#p/u/3/egt5n_j93L4
Sadly the water heating was an afterthought, I brought it up and they didn't want to change the water heater too. Middle of the install we put in the new marathon and he is amazed how good it looks and that maybe he should just convert to all electric and have 0 propane usage, well at this point equipment was ordered and loop was installed so we couldn't go dedicated geo water but he is now between $900-$1,200 a year in total water heating and space heating/cooling costs. The system was installed in November and has so far only cost about$600 in additional electric costs while having no propane costs, we are a very light cooling load here so I doubt he will spend much more in this years heating/cooling cycle and his loop temps have been consistant at a 38-40EWT.

[frumper15]

I actually watched that video earlier today. it looks like a nice installation, although it doesn't have a hydronic radiant application that I can see. Are you using one of the marathon tanks as a buffer or both full temp?

[SkyHeating]

I actually watched that video earlier today. it looks like a nice installation, although it doesn't have a hydronic radiant application that I can see. Are you using one of the marathon tanks as a buffer or both full temp?

There is no radiant on it, just similar cause the customer converted from popane to geo and added water heating lol and its a waterfurnace.
One marathon is a desuperheater storage tank(no electric hooked up) and the other is the actual water heater with a 4500 watt element in it.

[ChrisJ RI]

"because if Radiant has priority over forced air it will just run all day long trying to satisfy the radiant load".

The Hydron Module combo unit can be configured with shared priorty.

"Shared priority: In shared priority mode, the
unit operates in the hot water priority mode
and in forced air priority mode in an alternating
sequence. There is a field selectable timer,
which will allow settings of 20, 30, or 40 minutes
for switch over time. The unit will always start
in hot water priority mode at the first call for
hot water (aqua-stat input). Then, based upon
the timer setting, the unit will switch to forced
air priority for the selected amount of time. For
example, if the timer is set for 20 minutes, and
the unit has a simultaneous call for hot water
and thermostat, after 20 minutes of hot water
operation, the control will switch over to forced
air priority for 20 minutes, and then switch back
to hot water priority for 20 minutes, and so
on. If the aqua-stat call is satisfied, forced air
operation is allowed at any time; likewise if the
thermostat is satisfied, hot water operation is
allowed at any time. There is a five-minute antishort
cycle timer between modes."


I have a Hydro-Temp combo system, it can heat air and water at the same time.

ChrisJ RI

[JCT]

I do alot of retros just like this w to w the best way to go. get a hydronic coil to put on top of the gas furnace. size storage tank for 6 to 10 galon per ton get a B&D tank, and do everything with one geo unit and keep it simple. the worst thing with combo units is that your heat load is way more than your cooling load and your way oversized then you have problems.

[frumper15]

How do you handle domestic hot water in that situation? Do you use the Desuperheater with a buffer tank and then another powered (propane or electric) unit for production? I see the benefit for having a buffer tank on the unit itself and for the radiant and air coil, it makes a lot of sense to pull from that tank. However, in the summer months, that tank is going to be cold water, so you can't really integrate the domestic and radiant water because that doesn't work for half of the year. Also, how are you handling the differing water temperature requirements of radiant floor and an air coil on top of a furnace? Are you storing the water at 150 degrees and using a mixing control for the floors?
Thanks

[JCT]

How do you handle domestic hot water in that situation? Do you use the Desuperheater with a buffer tank and then another powered (propane or electric) unit for production? I see the benefit for having a buffer tank on the unit itself and for the radiant and air coil, it makes a lot of sense to pull from that tank. However, in the summer months, that tank is going to be cold water, so you can't really integrate the domestic and radiant water because that doesn't work for half of the year. Also, how are you handling the differing water temperature requirements of radiant floor and an air coil on top of a furnace? Are you storing the water at 150 degrees and using a mixing control for the floors?
Thanks

Couple of things, your not going to get 150 water out of a geo unit, you will run 115 to 120 and that is good for floors and coil, if you want less for floors just put in a mixing valve. If you go water to water you have to have a buffer tank. Means domestic hot water seems to be such a big issue just use desuperheater. the only way you can integrate domestic and radiant together is with a double wall heat exchanger. I don't know what electric rates are but electric water heater and desuper. if you need alot of hot water you could also get a small w to w and make it just for domestic, a little more expensive but works great, i have a school where we have to 5 ton water to water just for domestic hw

[frumper15]

A couple of things - thanks for the heads up on water temps - I have done a w2w geo yet so I wasn't sure what to expect. I do plan on using the desuperheater with a buffer tank for the domestic - has always been a nice "freebie" on the other forced air systems we've done.
You're not the first person to suggest using a dedicated w2w unit for the domestic and radiant. I guess the question I have is around the configuration - you say a little more expensive, I'm thinking dedicated loop field, pumps, etc. Should I not be thinking that? Is it as simple as plumbing it inline with the water to air unit and sizing the loop field to be large enough for both? Is that how people are doing multiple units in a single home?
I do think I've figured out how to do everything well with a single water to water unit - I'm working on a design and would like to share it, but I don't know if this thread should maybe be moved to the pro side - what's the criteria for what can be shared over here?

[SkyHeating]

Yes single loop field with two units. Usually we use an 18 or 25K BTU w2w geo unit for domestic so as long as your loop isn't to big you should be fine adding the dedicated hot water. If you were to do two 6 ton units then your loop may have to much head pressure to be able to be properly flushed. If you think about it the average electric water heater is 4500 watts X 3.413 BTU's per watt is 15,358 BTU's of the average electric water heater so using a 18K BTU dedicated domestic water unit should be about equivalent or using the 25K BTU unit will do more than enough water even at low EWT's, plus the other benefit of dedicated hot water is that while the house is rejecting heat during cooling the domestic unit will be taking the heat from the loop so they work in combination.

[frumper15]

So as I'm continuing to research this I discovered that water to water units aren't 2-stage which sort of makes my ideas for how to apply a single larger unit for all my purposes a bit harder or just completely impractical. I would have to use a second buffer tank for chilled water or the cooling side would be way oversized and then I wonder how the unit would perform with regard to dehumidification. How does one even achieve staging with a chilled water unit?
So, I think I'm going to be looking at what Sky had recommended in his first post in this thread, which is a split 2-stage air unit wiith a dedicated (optional) water 2 water for the radiant and domestic production. Or, the waterfurnace Synergy 3D still appears to meet the needs as well - I'll have to get more information on that too.

[SkyHeating]

Some brands have multi stage water to water units, Waterfurnace does but only in the 8 ton and larger size. The chilled water will not dehumidify as well as a refrigerant coil because the water will not get to as low of a temperature as refrigerant. I know a lot of people in my area do the reversible water to water units because they can be less costly than an all in one but you also lose performance IMO.

[JCT]

your cooling side wouldn't be oversized because your cooling the water in the buffer tank and pulling out of that to your properly sized hydronic coil on furnace. If you do 2 heat pumps use 1 well field B&D Qt flowcenter.

[frumper15]

If I'm thinking of this the right way, JCT, I would need to have two buffer tanks for conditioned water - one for the hydronic side that would stay hot year round that could serve the floor and domestic water needs, and another that would serve the forced air side and would be heated in the winter and cooled in the summer. Add to those a buffer tank for the desuperheater to temper and a final domestic hot water tank and I've got 4 tanks standing around.
What do you guys think of this - if I end up using either a Synergy3D or a dedicated water to water unit to heat both for radiant floors and domestic hot water, am I really gaining anything using the desuperheater? In the winter, I am simply stealing some of the units heating capacity to temper hot water, and in the summer I am grabbing the heat before it makes it to the loop field, but if I ultimately get the heat from the field to put into the hot water, do I really need a buffer tank and the desuperheater? That would at least eliminate one of the tanks needed with a single Water-to-water geo unit.
JCT - what temperature are you trying to keep the cooling water in a buffer tank to be used for cooling? 50*? 40*?
Thanks guys - very helpful to be able to think out loud about this.

[JCT]

You only need 1 buffer tank for your heating and cooling, all your radiant and hydronic coil will pump out of that 1 tank it will be either a hot tank or a cold tank depending on the season. you can't run your domestic and radiant together. Your desuperheater can get piped into your water heater or you can get another water heater and desuper into that and from that to you water heater
check this out
http://www.bdmfginc.com/BDPdfs/HSS.pdf

[SkyHeating]

You only need 1 buffer tank for your heating and cooling, all your radiant and hydronic coil will pump out of that 1 tank it will be either a hot tank or a cold tank depending on the season. you can't run your domestic and radiant together. Your desuperheater can get piped into your water heater or you can get another water heater and desuper into that and from that to you water heater
check this out
http://www.bdmfginc.com/BDPdfs/HSS.pdf

I don't quite understand this wording on page 2.
"(Tank is not designed to be hot/chilled water storage device)" yet the next line says "Hydronic pump relay standard sensor for one stage heat, two stage heat or heating and cooling built in."

How can it not be a chilled water storage device yet have relays for cooling built in?

[JCT]

That is a good question typo or maybe they are saying it has to be hot or cold not both at the same time? They are for both though. I have put about 100 of these in and they work great along with their ground loop pump pack

[frumper15]

I've used the QT non-pressurized flow center for all my installs and love it - I'm going to be trying out their prefabbed pvc manifold with the mechanical fittings for my next one - should save a bit of time making it on the jobsite. Definitely going to consider using that HSS Buffer tank for one of the options on this job. Thanks guys.

[frumper15]

Question for you guys. I would like to offer the HO the option of generating all their Domestic hot water via Geothermal (with some kind of electric or propane backup). They currently have a 75 gallon natural draft propane water heater. It's rated for 75,000BTUhr and 130 gallons first hour rating. I somewhat doubt they require that amount of hot water at any given time, but I also don't want to be the guy that undersizes it and they hate their system in the future.

I have two trains of thought here - provide a reasonable amount of preheated hot water in a storage tank - at least 50 gallons. Use the geo desuperheater with a buffer tank so I'm not trying to heat 50 degree well water, but hopefully 90+ degree buffer water.

Beyond that, how much capacity should I be adding or what size dedicated W2W should I be looking at to meet this need? The smaller WF w2w units are only 1.5 or 2 tons that seem to be for just domestic production.

Should I just use a larger storage tank (75-100 gallons?) and let the Geo do its thing over time? The other thought is to have my auxilliary be something like a boiler/domestic combo unit made by navien or Triangle tube that could make up for any need instantly - but that's an awefully expensive backup solution. Looking for some guidance.

Thanks guys.

[SkyHeating]

I would put in at least an 80 gallon storage tank with an NSW040 dedicated water unit and then run a desuperheater off the other unit to a 50 gallon preheat tank. That should give you enough heat for most applications unless they are filling up 100+ gallon jacuzzi tubs. I have noticed a lot of houses on wells have 80 gallon tanks. This could be because the well can't keep up with a 50 gallon so they use the 80 so there is no buffer tank from the well. So the current 75K btu unit may not be needed at all. I would just ask about their water usage and take look at their tubs/showers

[frumper15]

Here's a question I should probably already know the answer to - if you use a dedicated water-to-water unit for the domestic hot water, do you need some kind of heat exchanger between the domestic water and the unit, or can you run the domestic directly throught the unit (like the desuperheater)? I know the desuperheaters on the units I've used have double wall vented heat exchangers so they're safe for potable water, but what about the primary on a W2W unit?

[JCT]

most units you can run right through i think. I know the northern heat pumps i put in you can they are rated for domestic.

[frumper15]

I'm in the home stretch of designing this project (yes, I'm a little slow on it). I have 4 distinct designs that I've settled on (that will find use beyond just this project).

My "best" design is the waterfurnace Synergy3D (actually branded as american standard) unit to provide both the forced air and hydronic side of the equation. The place I'm getting hung up is the domestic hot water production (still). When I'm supplying the hydronic side of things I'm also including the garage floor heat (currently supplied by a separate water heater). That bring my heat pump size up to 4 ton from 3 tons. Air conditioning is still OK, my first stage cooling doesn't exceed the calculated load, but I can't go any higher than 4 tons.

That being said, I would still really like to offer Geo-heated domestic as an option, but it's looking like I would either be on electric backup heat (if setting the hydronic side to priority) or won't be able to keep up with the domestic load (if leaving the air side as priority).

The plan is to use a Triangle Tube SME Multi Energy tank that has 100 gallons of primary boiler/hydronic water surrounding a 60 gallon inner tank of domestic hot water. The Geo unit would be tasked with keeping the water in the inner tank at 120 degrees so the outside water should be also at 120 degrees when everything is said and done. Radiant floors would draw from the 100 gallons of primary water and the desuperheater would also temper a preheat buffer tank (mostly for summer benefit as the Geo will be supplying the heat in cold months anyways.).

Am I making this too difficult? Am I chasing that last dollar of savings but adding a lot of cost and potential disappointment? Should I just KISS and put in an instantaneous Hot water heater behind a buffer tank and call it a day? I'm looking for a sanity check here and hoping you guys can set me straight.

[frumper15]

This has me looking at things again and I thought I would add this wrinkle: if I use the existing water heater as the buffer tank and leave it powered (propane) it could effectively serve as an auxiliary heat source for both the domestic hot water and the hydronic floor application. I will also have the electric strip heat for the air side backup as well, so then it would be a decision of putting the unit in hydronic or air-to-air priority mode.

I would effectively have 160 gallons of 120 degree water when the tank has satisfied and having the Geo in air priority would mean the house would never be without heat and that would leave all the gaps between cycles to work on heating the water back up to temperature (and a large portion of the house heating would be covered by radiant floors as well). I haven't found an effective way to measure how much of my demand would be taken up by domestic hot water production and it really varies depending on usage. I think it's more important for me to use a reasonable assumption and make sure I have a viable backup source of both air and hydronic heat.

[frumper15]

I think I may have stumbled my way into a viable idea on this topic: Rather than use the Geo as the final domestic water heater, I should use it on the preheat tank. Sort of.

Tell me what you think about this: I leave the Geo in Air priority so that I'm certain the house is always kept warm (priority #1). Keep the existing Hot water heater in place and set to a comfortable temperature (120 degrees). Set the SME tank at a temperature slightly higher than the powered water heater (125 degrees) for the Geo to shoot for. No need for a desuperheater as all the heat would be coming from Geo anyways.

The way I picture things going is this: Geo will not have trouble 90% of the time keeping the SME tank at 125 degrees so the powered water heater will do nothing but serve as another holding tank, and hopefully standby losses are low enough that it won't even need to fire as the entering water will be hotter than its setpoint. If it does get to point the Geo can't keep the SME tank at 125, the hot water heater will kick in (only after it has used up its heated water) and even then it will only need to heat water that should still be above 100 degrees. The lower water temperature water for the radiant shouldn't be a problem as it is for comfort not heating (with the garage being the exception, but that is kept at 50 degrees anyways.)

[arc8]

My "best" design is the waterfurnace Synergy3D (actually branded as american standard) unit to provide both the forced air and hydronic side of the equation. The place I'm getting hung up is the domestic hot water production (still). When I'm supplying the hydronic side of things I'm also including the garage floor heat (currently supplied by a separate water heater). That bring my heat pump size up to 4 ton from 3 tons. Air conditioning is still OK, my first stage cooling doesn't exceed the calculated load, but I can't go any higher than 4 tons.

With a 4 ton Synergy3d unit, is there enough capacity from the hydronic side to take care of the load? Can this Radiant heat meet the need for the whole project? If not, the "AIR" side is the priority!

You can use any means of supplementing the Radiant heat as you wish.



The plan is to use a Triangle Tube SME Multi Energy tank that has 100 gallons of primary boiler/hydronic water surrounding a 60 gallon inner tank of domestic hot water. The Geo unit would be tasked with keeping the water in the inner tank at 120 degrees so the outside water should be also at 120 degrees when everything is said and done. Radiant floors would draw from the 100 gallons of primary water and the desuperheater would also temper a preheat buffer tank (mostly for summer benefit as the Geo will be supplying the heat in cold months anyways.).

I would use the desuperheater (water assist) to heat a pre-tank before any DHW device/equipment.



Am I making this too difficult? Am I chasing that last dollar of savings but adding a lot of cost and potential disappointment? Should I just KISS and put in an instantaneous Hot water heater behind a buffer tank and call it a day? I'm looking for a sanity check here and hoping you guys can set me straight.

You can. You do want it simple and less costly and maintenance free, don't you. What would your warranty be after everything is installed??

[CraziFuzzy]

I don't think multi-stage chillers are out there in small loads because it really doesn't matter that much. The fact that you are using a chilled water system already gains you a lot of the advantages of multistage (being able to scale the system to the load). With a properly sized buffer tank, it doesn't matter that the compressor itself cycles - the cooling can continue just as much as needed.

[SolarMike]

If you are chasing that last dollar of savings, I would suggest to remember that your biggest annual load is heating and your best efficiency is when you can drop that down as much as possible in temp.

I don't know what percentage of the house is floor heated but if possible Treat your floor as the primary heating system. Put all your heat into a 120 gal tank and heat it to 40C (104F). Use a 3 way mixing valve with an outdoor reset (Taco has a stand alone unit) on the floor heat which i assume is in a gypsum cement (please). (you can increase the tank temp to 50C (120F) setpoint when the outdoor temp is below freezing. Depending on the tubing layout, your return water temp to the tank can determine when the fan coil comes on.

As propane is the current energy source and, in most places, there is not much difference between propane and straight electricity, for DHW just use electric elements to boost the incoming to 50C (120F). This, of course, assumes the DHW load is not huge, as mentioned earlier.

Use a second tank (50gal) for a chilled water buffer and take it down to (4C) 38F. The system would use 2 pumps, one for the heating tank and one for the cooling tank. of course the HP has to have a reversing valve. A normal fancoil will distribute the cooling.

This is probably the simplest way to really do it.

[Oldsolarguy]

I use to do retro fits with my old company. With radiant and geo, the w2w dedicated is the easiest way control wise to go. Install a buffer tank(size according to load) and then distribute with either a central pumping method and zone valves or use a primary loop with injection pumping to the zones. As far as keeping the gas as backup and installing a water coil, I think that would be a good idea to promote for the customer having a 5k propane bill. As for another idea, water furnace makes a dedicated w2w with a tank for domestic hot water use. You can do multi units on one loop, just size the loop for the total tonnage load, and then pipe to each unit as normal with flow centers. Overlapping controls could be done with a dedicated radiant stat, either wireless or hard wired as allowed.