Hydro Air - help

15 years ago

Hi. My husband and I just bought a 1930s tudor in Northern New Jersey. It currently has hot water radiators and no AC. Our HVAC professional suggested that if we are going to put in central air, we should switch our heating system to a hydro air system.

Does anyone have a hydro air system? We hate the regular forced air heating that we have experienced in other homes(the noise, the dry heat, the rooms don't get evenly heated). Does hydro air have the same problems?

We have had difficulty finding people who have hydro air to whom we can ask our questions.

Any information would be helpful.

Thank you!

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Comments (5)

paul52446m
15 years ago
You can't beat a good hot water system. but a well lad out hot air system is also good and not noisy if done right. As far as dry heat, it does not make any difference if the air is being heated going across a hot fin tube or through a coil or through a furnace. When you heat air or cool air you dry it out, so forced hot air is no more dry as hot water. If you think all hot air systems are noisy then you have never gad a good hot air system. I think the things you need to look at is how old is your system, boiler. I don't know how much heating you have to do, but if your boiler is not eff. and your are going to buy a blower coil unit, it would not cost you that much more to use a 95% furnace with air on it. Most units you get 10 years on all parts. Paul
aoldis
13 years ago
Hi - I currently have baseboard heating & hate it - it's ugly & noisy. I am trying to find out how your experience is with the water heated air - do you have any advice? pros cons etc...
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jackfre
13 years ago
Keep your current system and get a mini-split heat pump. It will do most of your heating, while providing excellent dehu and cooling. I would stick withthe major brands, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi and Daikin. Fujitsu is a neighbor being in Fairfield, NJ.

You have lived in homes where the original system was warm air. You say you were not comfortable. On a retrofit basis, what makes you think it would be any better? Adding duct work to a home on a retrofit basis is very difficult, costly and very difficult to do in a way that balances air flow as well as operates quietly. One of the chief benefits of mshp's is their very quiet operation. Check them out.
mike_home
13 years ago
Baseboard heating ranks as the the quietest and most comfortable way of heating a house. If yours is noisy then it should be fixed. If it is ugly then baseboard sections can be replaced with some nicer looking models.

Does your current boiler use fuel oil or natural gas? If it is fuel oil do you have access to natural gas?

"I am trying to find out how your experience is with the water heated air..."

As the previous poster explained, it does not matter what method you use to heat the air in a forced air system. The main reason houses are dry in the winter is due to outside air infiltration.

My suggestion would be to evaluate whether the current baseboard heating system can be improved. If it can then adding mini-splits for AC may work for your house. It would depend on size and layout.

If you set on scraping the baseboard heat. Then a variable speed furnace and AC condenser would be my choice. A properly designed and installed forced air system can be very quiet and comfortable. The issue is how to install duct work in a 1930s Tudor house. I would want it installed in the basement and not the attic.
ionized_gw
13 years ago
"The main reason houses are dry in the winter is due to outside air infiltration."

Imbalanced forced air can become a sort of random power-venting system in a leaky home due to room-to room pressure differentials. Yes, hydro-air can do the same thing depending on how it is set-up. Try to keep your ducts inside the envelope of the house (meaning not in the attic).

I assume that hydro-air heating devices come in many sizes and shapes that will enable you to heat one, two, or several rooms with them. You might even be able to keep your radiators in some places. That might help eliminate pressure differentials.

I will second the motion that there are bad heating systems of both flavors. My perception is that is is easier to mess up forced air and easier to make small adjustments to hydronic of some types (close the radiators).

If It were my Tudor, I'd think carefully about demolishing a perfectly-nice radiator system and installing forced-air. It stands to reason that adding an cooling system to it will enable a much better design for both heating and cooling. I like my mini-splits, but it will be probably be equipment-expensive to put the in every room if you have a lot of rooms. Advantages include highest efficiency and perfect zoning. The fact that the inverter-driven compressors spool up very gently and run at partial speed very efficiently enable them to run on emergency generators very well. Talk to a number of installers about them. Get installers information from Mitsubishi, Panasonic (Sanyo) and Toshiba web sites. Look for installers with their highest level of training.