If you can't stand the heat...

One of the crises we passed through this past two months was what we are going to do about heat. We have a long term plan, which is that our main heat source will be our masonry heater. That won't be built for at least another year or two, which leaves us with the question of how we will heat our house until then. We need a system that will heat the whole house on its own until we get the masonry heater built. That means it will also be usable as a backup heating system, or the primary eventually, when we get to a point where we don't want mess with wood. Having the extra heating system will also be an asset if we ever decide to sell it, since no everyone is into wood heat.

That leaves the question of what type of system we should use. We ruled out furnaces as a whole, since we don't want to use oil for heat, and running (and hiding) all sorts of ductwork and vents for a system which will be a backup for the majority of the life of the house seems too involved. We looked into ground source heat pumps (geothermal), which could also need ductwork, but can do heat and cooling with about %300 efficiency, which is a big draw. That ended up being too expensive too. Another type of wood heating appliance to be used temporarily until the masonry heater can be built was also considered, but many of the reasons we want a masonry heater are the same reasons we wouldn't want any other type of wood stove in our house. Electric is right out, as it isn't a very efficient source of heat by my understanding, especially in a colder climate.

Eventually, we came back to the original idea we had, which was radiant hydronic heat. Someone had suggested it wasn't advisable to have a system that takes a while to heat up as a backup to another system that takes a while to heat up, but after doing all the analysis, it seems to be the best option we have. We will need a water heater anyway, and if we go with the open system, we can use just one. It also allows us to convert the water heating system at a later date to be solar or geothermal based if we want. By having two zones, we can heat the basement separately, which was a consideration since the masonry heater will be located on the first floor and won't heat the basement all that well. We have a couple of quotes now from DIY hydronic radiant places which hover around the $3,000 mark for the pieces, sans hot water heater. Now we just need to decide between our bids.