Heating a passive-ish house solely with ducted A2A? No UFH 🤔

[fatgus]

17 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

admirable /scary.

 

Or stupid 

 

I love the aesthetic and feel of earthen floors.

 

Our site is predominantly clay and we'll be excavating a fair few tonnes. It will mostly be distributed around a field, but the possibility of actually using some in the house seems to good to miss  

 

There have certainly been a few raised eyebrows when it's been mentioned. Thankfully my wife is wonderfully understanding and will entertain these ideas. She also knows that unless we arrive at a robust solution it won't be going in the house.

 

One of the downsides of a traditional earthen floor is the curing time, so we're essentially eliminating the linseed oil and replacing it with a much faster alternative. It's not rocket science, we design resin systems daily and have access to some useful test equipment (abrasion, tensile, impact, UV exposure). There's very little worth watching on telly, so it's a good way to spend an evening

 

 

 

 

 

 

[fatgus]

11 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

You may want ufh to help it set hard, have this picture of someone walking through wet sludge if it all goes wrong.  Maybe ok for a mud hut, not sure I would bother for a house. At least you can dig your way out of it - literally

 

That would make me popular  I can see why that would make sense, but with the system we're using the heat would be problematic during the cure.

[saveasteading]

As I didn't know that a traditional floor had linseed oil in it, you'll gather I now nothing.

I had a house with clay paviors straight on earth, probably clay. There were worms.

[fatgus]

3 hours ago, Square Feet said:

I'm also planning to build a passive-level house and had the same questions re A2A.  Last night I costed up the pipes, clips, manifold and connectors for UFH and if I've done it correctly it seems to be less than £1k all-in.  So I will be putting it into mine I think as it seems worthwhile running the pipes at least. That doesn't help with your earth floor issue though.

 

We did the same and you're absolutely right, it probably makes sense to put the pipes in regardless as a backup... we'll only get the one chance to do it.

[fatgus]

3 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

As I didn't know that a traditional floor had linseed oil in it, you'll gather I now nothing.

I had a house with clay paviors straight on earth, probably clay. There were worms.

 

I knew nothing about it until quite recently! Worms would be an interesting addition...

[SteamyTea]

By putting in UFH pipework, you can always run it off a Willis heater for very low capital cost.

That way you can bake the clay floor.

(I put earth flooring in the same category as lime concretes, we have improved alternatives now)

[fatgus]

31 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

you can always run it off a Willis heater for very low capital cost

 

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