John Siegenthaler: Hydronics Workshop

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One of the benefits of modern hydronic heating is the ability to use multiple types of heat emitters in the same system. 

This was quite a year for me on the home front. On fairly short notice, my wife and I found out that our daughter Heidi and her husband Andy would be building a house about 500 feet down the road from us. 

Because they generate heat intermittently, renewable energy heat sources such as solar thermal collectors and pellet boilers require thermal storage tanks. So do storage-based systems using off-peak electricity, or micro combined heat and power (MCHP) generation.

When water is heated, the space required for each molecule increases. Any attempt to prevent this expansion will be met by tremendous forces.

Over the years, our office has received requests for design assistance for systems involving two hydronic heat sources, each in different buildings, where the expectation is to have either heat source supply heat to either building.

Apartments and condominiums provide homes to families with different comfort preferences and different attitudes on energy use.

Water is the “life-blood” of hydronic systems. Its chemical characteristics can make the difference between a system that lasts for decades versus one that develops expensive corrosion issues within months of commissioning.

The U.S. geothermal heat pump industry was breaking out the champagne on Feb. 9, 2018.  That’s the day President Donald Trump signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, a bill that boosted government spending by hundreds of billions of dollars.