Pex Radiant Heating

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ahud

Plecostomus
MFK Member
Aug 15, 2009
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Has anyone seen fish rooms heated with in floor radiant heat? Breaking ground on my outbuilding in Nov/Dec and this is one item I need more information on.

Fish room is somewhere around 20x20. Still playing with dimensions so I dont loose too much shop space.
 
no I haven't but we had it in our house, it ruptured in the kitchen costing a ton of money. personally i'd stay away.
 
Strange. I could have swore I heard of somebody using it, but cant find it. I had it in my “fish room notes” that I have kept for years.

The reason I am intrigued is that apparently radiant heat warms objects and not the air. So I could possibly heat my tanks to mid 70’s without the room feeling uncomfortable to be in.
 
There is a guy on this forum that used it I can’t remember he has a massive system
 
I’ll open up the floor to other ideas as well. Any type of heat that does not make the room feel like a hot swamp?

Im guessing the size of the room has a big inpact. A dehumidifier will help with the humid feel in a smaller room. I hate that swamp feel of some rooms.

I keep cichlids. So tanks need to be 75. I can use a heater or two for tanks I want to run hotter.
 
If you do not have the tanks yet you could consider making them more insulated and then centralizing the heating system as a way to reduce heat lose from differing temperatures between the air and water. Some things that comes to mind plywood tank with foam insulation in the walls, double panel viewing with air between to act as insulation, reducing the amount of lid space and possibly clamping the lid down with a gasket to prevent evaporation.The sump should like wise be insulated as well as the lines that run between.
 
I don't see how the source of heat will change the humidity levels in the air.

I have radiant heat throughout my entire house in the winter, not necessarily by specific choice we just happened to buy an old house that had it. Some new houses are going radiant heat because it can be more comfortable, there tend to be fewer hot and cold spots and heated floors everywhere are a pretty sweet luxury (we don't have that, we have the wall baseboard things).

Anyhow, I have thought about hooking up my aquarium to the boiler. Basically I would put a little heat exchanger in my sump (probably a "wort chiller" since they are cheap and would work well) and then plumb it in as if it were another zone in my system (my house is already split into 3 zones for water flow, so adding a 4th wouldn't change much).

But my reasons would be financial, not comfort. At least where I live (Minnesota) natural gas works out to be about 1/3 the price per unit energy as electricity. So if I'm heating 300 Watts around the clock that works out to be around $330 / year with my electricity rates, but with a 90% efficient boiler that same heating would only be about $100 of natural gas.

I haven't done it yet because all of the little things would make it a fairly expensive / complicated project (actuated valves, zone controller, heat exchanger, plumbing) and I don't plan on being here forever so didn't seem worth it. But if you are in your place for the long haul, and you are looking at more like 2,000 W of heating then yes it would certainly pay to have the area heated by natural gas instead of electricity. However that natural gas could be water recirculation or just a forced air standard heater mounted to the side wall somewhere. To solve the high humidity what you really need is air flow, dehumidification, and tanks sealed as well as possible to limit evaporation (or better yet, nearly perfectly sealed but with bubbles for air turn over and venting the exhaust out of the room).
 
VL Design used PEX tubing nad his water heater to create a radiant heater for his 2600 gallon tank build.

Build thread:



Specifics on his radiant heater can be found here on page 51:
 
MonsterFishKeepers.com