Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: In-floor hot water heat

This is topic In-floor hot water heat in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by John Hegel (Member # 628) on 07-03-2002, 02:19 AM:

We are in the process of getting bids for building our "new auditorium" and one idea that we had was using in-floor heat.

Have any of you tried it, if so what do you think of it?

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 07-03-2002, 03:43 AM:

Probably be almost cost-prohibitive, and very inefficient.

The owner of the orginal Skagit Drive-in Theatre, who was a MIT graduate, came up with the idea of using underground pipes to pipe warm air into the cars during winter operations.

Although the idea was good, it didn't work very well. By time the hot air got to the extreme ends of the field, the air was cold.

Water heated floor? Well, if the idea didn't work very well with air in the drive-in attempt, I would presume the same basic idea would not work very well with a water heated floor, either.

Our new theatre has a problem similar in the restroom. The hot water tank is so far from the bathroom, the hot water is luke-warm before it gets there.

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 07-03-2002, 09:29 AM:

Radiant Heat. It does work well in certain applications. The Hot Air idea that Paul Mentioned... I could see how that wouldn't have worked, but a circulating loop of hot water integrally poured in the concrete slab does work well (in some situations). Some of the more expensive homes in the affluent neighborhoods in Nashville ($600k & up) have a radiating loop installed under the tile floors in the bathrooms. Ir really keeps you from freezing your toes off during those mid-winter trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The house I grew up in had radiant heat in the ceilings. It was a series of electrial wires above the ceiling, and was susposed to radiate the heat down into the rooms. As we all know, HEAT RISES!! The result was a warm ceiling and a frigid floor.
If I were intalling a new air handling system in a theatre setting, I personally would opt for gas heat in the winter and electric A/C in the warmer months. Nothing heats like gas, and it's more economical than electricity when used for heating.

Paul,
Your hot water problem can be easily solved by putting a recirculating pump on your hot water system. All of the medical facilities our firm designs have a "hot water recirculating loop".

In essence, the hot water line from the water heater makes it's way from the tank to all of the fixtures in the building. At the further-most fixture from the tank, the line is then extended all the way back to the "cold water" supply side of the water heater. The "return line" is tee'd into the cold water supply feeding the tank, and a one-way check valve is installed on the cold water supply to the tank (that way no hot water can travel back into the cold water supply to the rest of the building). On the main hot water line coming out of the hot water heater, install an "in-line pump", which can either be controled by a timer or a switch. Once the pump is turned on, it will circulate the hot water throughout the building, delivering instantaneous hot water to each fixture.

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Barry Floyd
Floyd Entertainment Group
Lebanon, Tennessee

Stardust Drive-In Theatre
Watertown, Tennessee

Posted by Kyle Caudill (Member # 1252) on 07-03-2002, 11:06 AM:

A local high school here uses geo-thermic hear to heat up its high school. It is very costly at first, but over time they are saving money.

Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 07-03-2002, 01:22 PM:

The only negative thing I've heard is that if somehow one of the pipes should develope a crack or leak you'd be SOL. Also it would seem that you would have to keep the floor constantly warm as I'm guessing the warm up time for that amount of mass might be lengthy

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Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut
http://www.muellersatomics.com/

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 07-03-2002, 01:31 PM:

Barry, that is an excellent suggestion on recirculating pumps. In our case, that should have been done when the building was built.

Our only option now is small hot water tanks inder the restroom sinks.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 07-03-2002, 01:33 PM:

Greg, I was thinking of the same problem. Some cracks in the concrete can be quite nasty.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 07-03-2002, 01:38 PM:

They used to use excess hot water from Kodak Park's coal-fired electric generating plant to heat the sidewalks in front of our building to keep them ice free. Every few years they seemed to be digging up a section of cement to replace the leaking pipes. Now they just shovel and salt.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 07-03-2002, 02:06 PM:

Coal! For shame, for shame, for shame

. Is a conversion plan to natural gas or No.6 fuel-oil in the works?

Around here, our cogeneration plant has plenty of extra steam, some of which even gets sold to local steam-using businesses, but no steam-based exterior ground warming... (though the roof of our tallest building does have 480V heating cables that snake around underneath it to melt the snow--this works quite well).

--jhawk

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 07-03-2002, 03:15 PM:

There's lots of coal left in the world, and in the USA.

IMHO, oil, gas, and nuke have their disadvantages too.

Solar Power? : The sun doesn't shine much in Rochester.

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/environment/index.shtml
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/environment/01CorpEnviroRpt/goals.jhtml