Heating Help

Laing EHR 2

The laing 2KW is cute and works great for one room applications. It has a built in circulator and cycles the element on and off as needed.

Choices

That Laing is a sweet unit. Be sure to have a good air elimination device along side. Doesn't take much or an air bubble to fry the element. The Electro MN is nice if you need an ASME listed vessel. Outdoor reset and a zoning panel are available. I have used a number of 6 gallon electric tanks. With that tank you can install elements from 1000W all the way to 5500W to customize the output. Nice to have some buffer room that the tank type heater provide, if the system is multi zoned. hr

Floor warming

I used an Aristan 4 gal water heater with a Laing 303 circ with a built in aquastat for 372 sqft. For floor warming in kitchen, and dinning tiled floor. It takes a little tweaking because of the differentials in the water heater aquastat, and the pump aquastat, but it works well. The aristan water heater aquastat tends to go wild every once in a while. Gordy

look at all your options

i price out the small or mini boilers and the tank and the x block, make sure your size right and let the customer decide which they want to pay for. I bet they pick the less expensive x-block or seperate hotwater heater for the price. I put a small tank and pump under a kitchen sink once. Also an x block under the sink once.

just do it

I have a buddy in Oregon where the electric is cheap. He always uses an electric water heater. For the 225 sq ft you have to deal with, a very small (4-gallon?) 115 volt wh will do the job. Stanb by losses are very small--if you're concerned, throw on a wh blanket or two. Control by on-off of circulator. Spend more for a boiler if you want, but the result will be the same, the electric bill will be the same or very near, and this is way simpler. Bill

Look at the Taco X-block. Add a few parts and some tube and heat away.

Thermolec

I have used a Thermolec electric boiler for this same type of install. You can get a 5Kw (17,060Btu), it requires (1) 30A breaker and has outdoor reset if you can use it for your application (probably do not need it). Stainless steel exchanger, pump relay, high limit, built in breaker...I have had great luck with all sizes. http://www.thermolec.com/boilers.htm Peace To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

Radiant heat

I have a customer without a fuel source in the home. ( all electric heat) They would like to radiant floor heat a 15 x15 kitchen area with an electric hot water heater as the source of heat. Has anyone ever done this? can it work properly? They are not interested in electric heating mats

Way better options out there....

Instead of using a HWT for this application, you are better off using an electric boiler. There are boilers out there perfect for the application such as the "Mini-Boilers" by electroindustries. Try this link: http://www.electromn.com/gen/emb.htm Note they have a 1 Kw 120 V model, and a 4.5 KW 240 V model. Another one worth noting is Thermolec makes a 240 V 5 KW Electric Boiler that comes with outdoor reset built in. These things are purpose built for your exact application, and if installed properly will do a better job and will last longer than a HWT.

laing makes an "EHT" which is basically a small electric heater and pump assembly in one. great for tiny setups like this.

electric boiler

done it, but a real nuisance to make it do what you want, at it's simplest you could just set the onboard aquastat and just cycle a circ on and off but now you're heating up this extra volume that you don't really need, they could try and remember to shut the breaker off in the summer too but who's gonna always remember that? you could add a contactor to turn the elements on and off with a heat demand but why not just get a nice little electric boiler w/staged elements? they're quite inexpensive and have a built-in circ output and many even come with on board outdoor reset, just connect a stat & sensor and you're done, simple. not to mention they take up very little space compared to a water heater. unless you mean doing it off of their existing water heater, you would need a plate heat exchanger and 2 circs, never done one of these systems but have seen them done and for small areas like you have would work fine.