How To Heat Both My Floor And Separate Domestic Water

The same water that ends up in your hot shower or dishwasher for example has passed through the floor first.

How to heat both my floor and separate domestic water.

Explanation of high efficiency condensing boiler use for both hot water radiant floor heat and domestic hot water. Above the air handler is a smaller box containing the cooling coil. The open system uses one heat source your domestic water heater to provide both floor heating and domestic hot water. A dual purpose system relies on only one water heater to supply both the hot water requirements for the home and the warm water needed for the radiant floor heat.

There are two common options for using a home s boiler for water heating. The most common is referred to as a tankless coil. This space heating system is a hydro air system using a rheem tankless water heater seen on the left. Domestic hot water heaters do work but can only supply proper water temperatures for small areas.

To implement this properly you will need to install a dual pump heat exchanger see taco pumps which does not allow blending of the fluid in the in floor heating system with the water used for domestic use and potable water. You can also cool your house with radiant flooring. Adding a solar water heater to your house and using your domestic heater to heat the radiant floor in the addition works wonders and it s usually cheaper than adding another small hvac system. One option is to keep domestic hot water completely separate from water that s part of the heating system using a heat exchanger.

Your existing hvac system likely won t have enough capacity to heat an additional room. You can get by with just one burner for both heat and hot water so there s less to maintain or to go wrong and when you re heating the house anyway it doesn t take all that much extra energy to heat water also. The box on the floor lower right is an air handler that includes a copper heat exchange coil. The tankless water heater also provides domestic hot water.

Hot water from the boiler is circulated through radiators or a hydronic heating system to warm the ambient air. The idea here is to prevent domestic water from getting contaminated by stale water that sits uncirculated in the heating system during the off season.