>>What type of heat do you have? With all the tile and no registers, I'm asuming radiant floor heat?
There actually are registers; they're just an icky dark brown that, I have to admit, does blend into the tile pretty well. Primary heating is a dual-stage 100K BTU forced air gas (propane) furnace. I can live without A/C but not all of my friends and family can (plus there is resale to consider) so I had to run ducts anyways. Once I was committed to ducts, forced air gas was the obvious $$ choice.
Secondary heat (primary when I'm around a lot) is a wood-fired masonry heater aka heat storage fireplace -- that big stone thing in the middle of the house. The idea is that you burn one or two big fires a day, then the heat is stored in the masonry mass and radiated out for 24 hours or so.
From some impromptu calculations last night, I figure the masonry heater should be able to provide about 50% of the heating requirements for the house. The masonry heater will store between 250,000 and 500,000 BTU and radiate at about 30,000 BTU/hour diminishing to ~15,000/hr over 24 hours.
With a 15F outside temperature and 68F inside temperature the furnace ran on low heat almost continuously, say 80% of the time -- 65K BTU/hr input x >90% efficiency x 80% of the time = about 50K BTU/hr average.
More alarmingly, the propane tank which cost $1000 to fill up to the 80% mark in mid-November is already down to 50% with the thermostat set to 60F most of the time. I was kind of thinking a tank that big would only have to be filled once a year or so
>>Very very nice John. Looks like my dream house.
Thanks !
The design strategy was essentially :
- look through log home magazines at all the multi-million $$ homes I could never have a hope of affording
- realize that if I owned one of those houses I would only live in a couple of the rooms anyways
- identify those "couple of rooms" and stick them together into some kind of coherent floor plan, leaving out all the other rooms I couldn't afford to pay for anyways
