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The only other thing about my house that is different is that under my concrete floor, I have 400 tons of rock for added thermal mass isolated from ground temperatures by insulation.

That is going to start a debate!

Kevin

KLook wrote:

The only other thing about my house that is different is that under my concrete floor, I have 400 tons of rock for added thermal mass isolated from ground temperatures by insulation.

That is going to start a debate!

Kevin

I have 6,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000 kilograms of rock and soil under me.

Dave, you addin in the Marcellus shale formation????

It doesn't take much on this forum that is for sure.

We ran into a lot of water and needed to get the slab poured, but under good footing. That required rock. 400 tons sounds like a lot, but it is only 12 triaxle loads so its really not as bad as it sounds.

Either way, I think it worked because my heating costs were reasonable. The figures are hard to calculate though because my home is not completely heated with radiant floor heat, only 1120 square feet of it. The other portion is either unheated, or uses forced hot air. It has been two years though since I used this system to heat my home all winter long. Last year I used wood/coal for my primary heating, and this year I will do the same.

Ultimately my goal is to make my entire home heated via radiant floor heat and this heating system. That is when I plan to get a coal/wood boiler and go with radiant floor heat and get rid of my pot bellied stove. It takes time though, and I can't pour any more concrete this year because the gravel pit of ours is now frozen, and my cement mixer is now pregnant. (Wife)

I am in no hurry though, I have been building this house since 1994!

freetown fred wrote:Dave, you addin in the Marcellus shale formation????

The weight of the planet.

Ohhhh, would that still include Marcellus shale?

freetown fred wrote:Ohhhh, would that still include Marcellus shale?

I guess they tell me we have some of that down there. Never seen it so I will just have to take their word.

One thing that that's not needed is wind chill because it only

affects human skin. Wind is the only factor needed for comp-

ensating for air movement.

Someone earlier mentioned a supplemental heated air source

like a few fan coils to even out the daily swings would be a

lot simpler, the slab will stay at a steady temperature for the

main heat supply.

BigBarney