Here is my dilemma. I live in an off-grid house in Montana. Our power comes from solar, wind and a propane generator. On average, we use about 3500 watt-hours/day when the radiant floor heat isn't being used. We rarely use the radiant floor heat because it is such an energy hog. Luckily, we have a central wood stove that heats the place very efficiently...as long as we're home. So right now we only use the radiant heat when it gets bitterly cold or if we're away. The problem is, we currently have 3 Taco 007 pumps that each use about 85 watts. If they all run for 12 hours, that's 3060 watt-hours. This doubles our energy use when we're not even home. This means the generator will almost certainly need to run. If it's bitterly cold out, the generator may or may not start without some coaxing. If this happens, our batteries may get over discharged and fail. For a while I thought I would just have to live with this setup and cross my fingers, then I started researching variable speed pumps like the Grundfos Alpha:
http://www.grundfos.com/products/find-product/alpha2.html
http://grundfos.oreilly-depalma.com/2010/alpha-circulator.shtml
We have a small (1300sf) home with 2 floor heating zones. Since we mainly use the boiler for backup, I am hoping I can get away with combining the zones and replacing all 3 pumps (one for the boiler and one for each zone) with a single Alpha pump. At some point, I may consider installing zone valves, but I don't think it's necessary at this point.
Here are the specs of my current system:
Here are a few other details that might be pertenent:
My hopes are that I can just replace the boiler pump with a Grundfos Alpha and bypass the 2 circulating pumps. Would I also need to eliminate the boiler return loop or modify it in some way? Any thoughts, suggestions, things I'm not considering?
Thanks, Bill
http://www.grundfos.com/products/find-product/alpha2.html
http://grundfos.oreilly-depalma.com/2010/alpha-circulator.shtml
We have a small (1300sf) home with 2 floor heating zones. Since we mainly use the boiler for backup, I am hoping I can get away with combining the zones and replacing all 3 pumps (one for the boiler and one for each zone) with a single Alpha pump. At some point, I may consider installing zone valves, but I don't think it's necessary at this point.
Here are the specs of my current system:
Here are a few other details that might be pertenent:
- 2 zones
- 7 loops total
- ~200 ft of 1/2" pex per loop
- glycol filled
My hopes are that I can just replace the boiler pump with a Grundfos Alpha and bypass the 2 circulating pumps. Would I also need to eliminate the boiler return loop or modify it in some way? Any thoughts, suggestions, things I'm not considering?
Thanks, Bill