Hydronic Heating/Cooling System Experience for Single Family PH.

[Benjamin Wolk-Weiss]

I wanted to reach out to the group and see if what people's experiences were with using air to water heat pumps to hydronically heat and cool a large single family passive house. I have a project with a rather spread out layout and rather than running refrigerant lines around or installing multiple air-to-air heat pump units, my plan was to use a air-to-water heat pump like a Chiltrix ( https://www.chiltrix.com/ ) unit with a number of small fan coil units spread around the house to provide the required conditioning. This seemed like a very efficient and cost effective system for this project, however I wanted to hear some feedback from people who have used this system or a similar system on their projects and what the pros and cons were of the system. Long term experience would be great as well.

[Edward Louie]

Hello Ben,

I have had experience with HPWHs providing heat for a hydronic radiant floor setup. In that setup, the cooled air the HPWHs exhausted went to a garage. I would have liked the design to have the option of ducting the conditioned air into the conditioned space during the summer. The house was built with ICF. The system worked ok but I didn't like the long lag time between when heat was desired to when heat made it out of the slab to warm the building occupants. That system also wasn't zoned, and I didn't like the idea of heating the entire building. I like being able to turn down the setpoint temperature of rooms that aren't being used. I haven't used the Chiltrix unit. 

I have also lived in another home with multiple ductless mini-split heads connected to multiple outdoor units. I really liked that system. It is zoned, able to provide AC and Heat, and quick to respond to heating and cooling requests. After I moved out, I heard that the house now had a Rheem HPWH to replace the electric WH in the garage and the building occupants are very happy with the energy savings the Rheem HPWH provides especially since the house has solar and a Tesla power wall. 

Best

Edward Louie

On Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 12:48 PM Benjamin Wolk-Weiss <be...@zoeticarchitecture.com> wrote:

I wanted to reach out to the group and see if what people's experiences were with using air to water heat pumps to hydronically heat and cool a large single family passive house. I have a project with a rather spread out layout and rather than running refrigerant lines around or installing multiple air-to-air heat pump units, my plan was to use a air-to-water heat pump like a Chiltrix ( https://www.chiltrix.com/ ) unit with a number of small fan coil units spread around the house to provide the required conditioning. This seemed like a very efficient and cost effective system for this project, however I wanted to hear some feedback from people who have used this system or a similar system on their projects and what the pros and cons were of the system. Long term experience would be great as well.

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[Adam Cohen]

Ben unfortunately i do not know of an Air source HP that will do heating cooling and dehumidification (Water furnace or other geothermal would)  If you find one that is air to water that does cooling too, the way i would do it is run your distribution lines to small fan coil units to eliminate ducting.  It may be a bit of a McGyver, although I did something similar with a ground source HP about 8 years ago that worked very well.

On Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 3:48 PM Benjamin Wolk-Weiss <be...@zoeticarchitecture.com> wrote:

I wanted to reach out to the group and see if what people's experiences were with using air to water heat pumps to hydronically heat and cool a large single family passive house. I have a project with a rather spread out layout and rather than running refrigerant lines around or installing multiple air-to-air heat pump units, my plan was to use a air-to-water heat pump like a Chiltrix ( https://www.chiltrix.com/ ) unit with a number of small fan coil units spread around the house to provide the required conditioning. This seemed like a very efficient and cost effective system for this project, however I wanted to hear some feedback from people who have used this system or a similar system on their projects and what the pros and cons were of the system. Long term experience would be great as well.

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Adam Cohen

Certified Passivhaus Consultant - North America and Europe

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