Cohousing-L Mailing List: ability to heat upstairs W/O installing heat upstairs

[alfred hardman (hardman.alfred]

Hi all     I'm on the building committee of Fordyce Street Coho in Ashland 
Oregon. We're in the last part of our design phase and we're hitting up against 
some financial pressures. We need to cut some costs ( surprise ). One of the 
things we're looking at is not installing heating on the second floor of our 
homes. The catch is we're using in slab radiant heat on the first floor. If we 
were using forced air heat we could expect the heat to rise to the second 
floor, but with radiant the air temperature will be much lower, and wouldn't be 
expected to rise as much. We live in a moderate climate west of the Cascades 
where the average winter temperature is 35 to 40 degrees. Our buildings will be 
well insulated. They are duplex style, sharing a common wall between two 
buildings. Additionally we're designing passive solar into the homes, which 
should provide 25% of the needed heat load. So far we have been told that not 
installing heat upstairs will not work, that it will work, and t
 hat at
 worst we would have to plug in electric heaters for supplemental heat for the 
upstars rooms. We'll be asking local professionals about this, but we all 
thought that some of you may have had some experience with this issue . We'd 
appreciate any help. Thanks. Alfred.
                
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