Heating system for new house construction in Colorado

Yeah, the trick with induction is that you can’t go cheap.

The technology works great, but the American market has been plagued with crappy induction ranges meant to hit a price point. Too many with crappy controls and undersized coils that have given them a bad reputation. This has hurt adoption which has prevented prices from coming down on the good ones.

I’d love to switch my new house to induction but the previous owners put in a pretty nice electric range within the past year…hard to justify replacing a brand new stove that has seen just enough use that it probably has no resale value.

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Originally Posted by Hopeless Sinner

in 2020 upgraded the kitchen in the next house and added the Thermador w the "french top" w no distinct burners.

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Got any monacle recommendations? ;)

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Originally Posted by ::: :::

not so sure about that
seems like same thing occurs w/ gas stoves: the pan support frame on a gas stove is carrying not just latent heat from pan contact but also direct heat from the flame. So when you turn the heat down, those materials are lagging just the same

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The frame on a gas range doesn't contact most of the pan, but it does get hotter than the induction glass so maybe it evens out.

Our good friend who’s one of the best home chefs I know got a nice induction stove and initially hated it but now loves it. Her take was that initially it feels like it’s less controllable, but it’s actually that if both stoves go from one to ten, the gas stoves one to ten is the equivalent of the inductions two to six. Once she got used to two to three being a significant difference she liked it.


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Originally Posted by neufox47

Our good friend who’s one of the best home chefs I know got a nice induction stove and initially hated it but now loves it. Her take was that initially it feels like it’s less controllable, but it’s actually that if both stoves go from one to ten, the gas stoves one to ten is the equivalent of the inductions two to six. Once she got used to two to three being a significant difference she liked it.


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Yep - we have a Café induction range and the micro-control (it has knobs) is fantastic.

That’s what she has. One of the higher end cafe’.


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If using a heat pump I would go with a system like this. Not really into a bunch of mini splits all stirring the air with inherent fan noise. Radiant is just more comfortable and even heat.

www.arcticheatpumps.com

Modern building science calls for a home to be airtight and well insulated. You still need to bring in fresh air via an ERV or HRV so you'll end up with some ducting to move air around. That also means you can add some level of air filtration to keep the dust and smoke out.

I like redundancy so would use a gas furnace or boiler plus central air or heat pump. The gas unit can be powered with a generator when the power goes out in the colder months.

You should also plan for backup power by putting critical electrical circuits in a separate panel with a transfer switch. (I have a '70s era house but put my boiler on a plug and put together a power pack with a couple of RV batteries and an inverter. It can run the boiler for more than 24 hours if needed.)

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Originally Posted by singlesline

Yeah, the trick with induction is that you can’t go cheap.
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I don't know, we got a low end Frigidaire and we have zero complaints.

All of these questions would be a lot easier if Tele til your Smelly was building in CB where gas is no longer even an option anyway.

No an option due to Energy Code Reasons on Xcel is out of capacity?

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Originally Posted by goldenboy

I don't know, we got a low end Frigidaire and we have zero complaints.

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Ditto, we got the cheapest induction at HD and it's great. I have noticed that the "big" burner isn't as big as suggested by the graphics on the cooktop, which messes up certain things like scrambled eggs, but easily addressed by using a smaller pan that's the same size as the actual burner.

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Originally Posted by Foggy_Goggles

No an option due to Energy Code Reasons on Xcel is out of capacity?

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New construction can't be gas in the town of Crested Butte- for heat, the stove, water heater, anything. Town council decision.

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Originally Posted by goldenboy

New construction can't be gas in the town of Crested Butte- for heat, the stove, water heater, anything. Town council decision.

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Interesting. And CB gets their electricity from Tri State which is primarily natural gas and coal power plants. Any consideration to upgrading the grid capacity?

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Originally Posted by Foggy_Goggles

Interesting. And CB gets their electricity from Tri State which is primarily natural gas and coal power plants. Any consideration to upgrading the grid capacity?

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burned somewhere else at least - (for now) - NIMBY!. Cool thing about electricity is in the future the generation can come from anything in the future, and in the summer it's probably a good amount of solar.

Looked it up though 36% is hydro and wind right now

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Originally Posted by Tele 'til You're Smelly

Heat pump? Property has natural gas so that's the other option. I'd like to do a heat pump for climate change considerations (our electric co-op is on a good path to decarbonization, and I'll have PV panels to the extent that's relevant), but I don't want to be a sucker paying for supplemental standard electric heat if the climate here can't really support a heat pump in the cold months. Don't need A/C.

And yes house will be designed with passive solar as a primary design feature (with big eaves to keep sun out in summer).

Thanks in advance-

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Is this replacing your current house on the same property?

My heat pump water heater is in the same room as my active solar system so benefits (as does my office via a vent) from the ambient heat from the 300 gallon tank and a fan coil unit which kicks on when the panels are heating the water. (Another fan coil directly heats my office to toasty.)

I keep wondering about swapping out our LP boiler for a heat pump (1,000 ft above you) vs sticking with LP on a new instantaneous boiler due to lower efficiency when the temps drop....unless the heat pump could benefit from passive or active solar gains.

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Originally Posted by adrenalated

Last year I had the A/C unit pulled and replaced it with a mid-quality central heat pump (Bosch SEER 20), coinciding with a solar installation. We left the furnace in place to act as the air handler and supplemental heat. The heat pump is rated to produce heat down to -10F ambient. The HVAC contractor recommended setting the changeover point to propane at +10F.

We've overall been very happy. I did find that I needed to bump the changeover point to supplemental up to +15F - our house is drafty enough that if the wind was blowing hard, the heat pump had trouble keeping up. As noted above, the heat pump does not blow as hot as a furnace, even more so the colder it is outside. The combo of solar and heat pump saves us a LOT of money on our monthly utility bills compared to running fully on propane. Granted it's been pretty warm this year but in the last 30 days my aux heat has kicked in for less than 5hr of runtime. We do have a vaulted great room with a very large air volume that's pretty slow to warm up and we eventually want to add a wood burning stove (both for ambience and to help kickstart warming that space).

I think it does depend on what type of overall construction strategy you're going with as well as where specifically the house is. Much colder climate than mine and it might not make as much sense. If you're going for a really airtight, highly insulated construction, forced air might not be ideal. My parents built a ICF, extremely airtight house and went with hot water in floor heat that works great. Definitely some options but I think in the milder areas of Colorado with traditional stick built construction, the heat pump is a great option.

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Interesting about your set point for LP to kick in. It's been in the 20s here and with normal winter temps, the LP would be kicking every night. We're a little higher with generally less exposure to wind than your place.

As a general comment regarding force air (or base boards) vs infloor is that with radiant infloor excels in higher volume spaces because it warms you where you are a lower temps due to the radiant/conductive heat. Forced air needs to warm the whole volume of space for you to feel comfortable. If you do have passive solar gains, you can place your return air duct to pull excess heat and cycle it through the system and into other parts of your house.

We added solar last year. Switched cookstove to induction from gas too. Our excel bill (gas/electric) is like $69 a month now in the cold months. House has tons of passive solar, radiant infloor (staple up w/ insulation), NG gas fireplace, electric baseboard and we use them in that order basically. Boiler is NG which heats the radiant and hot water. House is a log cabin, and sealed up tighter than a duck's butt, tested it via a blower door test a few years ago.

I have considered adding a heat pump, and probably will, but not really in that big of a hurry, because honestly it wouldn't make that big of a difference (see above). I think I would add a few batteries and a charging station first.

Now, if AC was needed, which in Durango it certainly is unless you are like on the N side of a hill or something, I would be looking at a mini split for sure. Hopefully it is a few years out from it getting that hot here at 9k'.


And regarding the induction cooktop, I like it far more than the gas. Look into some of the studies coming out about in-home air quality and it just makes a lot of sense. Takes a little getting used to but whatever.