Hydronic heating options in Melbourne

We are building a two storey house in Melbourne and have been looking at hydronic heating. The two basic approaches we have been given are 1. all radiators and 2. slab ground floor and radiators upper floor. The cost difference is negligible (all radiators slightly cheaper).

We have been leaning towards option 2 mainly because we don't know where to put the radiators on the ground floor especially (lots of windows going almost to floor) and to be honest we don't really like the look of the standard radiators . We also like the idea of a warm floor (we usually don't wear shoes indoors). On the other hand we are worried about the long latency of slab - particularly given Melbourne's changeable weather esp in Autumn and Spring. We will have a gas log fire on the ground floor and had hoped that might tide us over as the on demand heater during spring and autumn.

I would appreciate the opinions and especially the experiences of people who have put in hydronic heating in Melbourne. Have they regretted putting in slab and how do they handle spring and autumn. Do they find themselves getting too hot and having to open doors and windows. If they did put in radiators have they gotten used to them or found some way to minimise the visual impact. Has anyone used any of the designer radiators, many of which appear to be aluminium.

Hey petrous

If you have a look through my main thread you will see we have done pretty much option 2 albeit on a single level house. Reason being we were doing an extension/renno so wen with the panels in the remaining house and slab heating in the new.

Your concerns about latency were on our mind when we were in your shoes too. But having had our first autumn winter spring I can tell you defiantly go with the slab heating. The thermal mass in the floor acts as massive temperature regulator. The floor stays at a nearly constant temperature while the Melbourne weather does its craziest. So if tomorrow is 40 the floor remains at around 21 and feels cool to touch. Cold front comes through and the floor warms just a couple of degrees and you can feel its warmth underfoot. We have a split ac in our main living space but didn’t use it once over winter. If we had the thermostat would have turned the floor off and felt cold underfoot, the systems would fight each other. I mention that because if you plan on having a fire, your slab heating might tend to fight it if the thermostat is in the same room.

We have also double glazed all new rooms, but due to the poor quality of installation have quite a few air gap issues that we will have to sort out before next winter. But if you can definitely go with double glazing and good insulation. Very important to is design, in particular orientation. Our heating almost never came on during the day due to lots of north facing glass.
Most important no matter what system you go with get a condensing boiler. They are a little more expensive (shop around) but will pay for themselves in no time.

Any other questions let me know

Thanks screen7

Did you go with the standard slab insulation or the somewhat more expensive in screed insulation. Would you mind saying who did your installation. Did you go with two boilers or one boiler and a partage unit (we've had both quoted). We have three quotes - two are very similar and cheaper (ca 19000) and had one boiler; the other (ca 25000) has two boilers. All three use Sime boilers/Delonghi radiators, rehau piping. DId you have your slab insulated (and how does that work with termite protection). Finally given that you have rooms with slab and rooms with radiator heating how do the two compare qualitatively - are they equally nice, do you prefer one or the other.

Have a look through our thread most of the info you are after is there. We had the coils laid in essentially a screed layer, but our reason for this was we were having a polished concrete floor in the main part of the house. We have a baxi lumina boiler feeding a partition unit. No we didnt have insulation laid and wish we had, however as the coils are laid on top of a very thick (p class soil) structual slab, theres a lot of thermal mass there. We used melbourne hydronic heating, their quote was the best and had them refered to us. Not the friendliest service but the system has worked well for its 1st winter.

I have panels at my place and regarding the unsightly radiators, you can get covers for them.
http://rlay1.blogspot.com.au/2010/05/hy ... ating.html