How Hot Water Heating Systems Work
A hot water heating system, known as a hydronic system, is an energy efficient, quiet, and comfortable way to heat a building. Hydronic systems rely on the natural distribution and convection of heated water. Unlike forced air central heating, the hydronic system uses no ducts and disperses no drafts or dust throughout the system. Several types of hydronic systems are available, some are thousands of years old -- radiators, hot water baseboard, geothermal, and radiant heat floor systems. Does this Spark an idea?
Other People Are Reading
-
History
-
The Romans are accredited for inventing the hydronics system. They heated up water in a furnace, and piped this water through large, underground lead pipes. This system supplied plenty of hot water for the famous Roman baths and saunas.
Basic Construction
-
At its simplest, a hot water heating system uses a boiler to create a large amount and constant supply of hot water. The water is distributed through a system of pipes to the various rooms in a building.
The method of water distribution may vary. In some systems, such as the forced circulation system, a pump installed in conjunction with the boiler will forcibly pump the hot water through the pipes to circulate throughout the system. In the gravity heating system, cold water is more dense than hot water, and thus the cold is fed into the top of the supply line, only to fall with gravity where capillary action causes the heated water to follow.
-
Radiators
-
The radiator heating system is largely outdated today, but it was once a very common method of heating homes. Hot water from a boiler circulated through pipes into radiators -- large, cast iron heat exchangers -- that emitted, or radiated, heat. Radiators are large and bulky, and were replaced with smaller, less obtrusive systems.
Hot Water Baseboards
-
With the baseboard system, hot water is directed through a series of pipes through baseboard units installed in rooms, usually along exterior walls. The baseboards are rectangular, metal units with metal fins. The fins increase the amount of radiation and heat distribution. Baseboards are sometimes slow to heat, and are sometimes noisy as the thin metal fins expand and contract with the temperature changes.
Geothermal
-
This type of heating system is limited to regions with geothermal activity, but it is incredibly energy efficient. This system relies on a heat pump that collects heat from a geothermal location and distributes it into a building.
A geothermal heating system may collect heat from the earth or from heated ground water below the surface of the earth. The heat from the natural source is absorbed by water-filled loops. The water is circulated throughout the building until it is too cool to use, where it is then deposited into a drainage field or underground well. Geothermal heating provides heat for 95 percent of the buildings in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Radiant Heat Floors
-
The radiant heating system relies on a networked system of plastic pipes embedded in building material (such as concrete) as a subfloor to provide heat. The building material acts as thermal mass, retaining and slowly radiating heat without drafts or the cluttering cast iron devices of other systems. The pipes are installed into a subfloor system and are connected to manifolds that are connected to the main boiler; hot water is pumped and circulated constantly, warming the concrete and the finished floor above it. Radiant heat is expensive to install since it usually installed below the subfloors of every floor of a building, and is therefore not as common as the less expensive hydronics systems.
-
References
- Photo Credit Roman colloseum image by Minx from Fotolia.com
