Do-it-yourself heating of a private house

In our country, it is unlikely to survive without heating – the winters are too severe. If the owners of apartments do not have to choose – what they have is what they warm themselves with, then the heating system of a private house is a personal matter of its owner. Choose the option that suits you best.

Types of heating systems

In a private house, you can implement almost any heating system, as well as their combinations. To choose the right type of heating, you need to know all their features, advantages and disadvantages.

Stove heating

A century ago, this is how most of the houses, large and not so, were heated. This is just a furnace without any additional elements. One or more – depended on the size of the house and the capabilities of the owners. In the huts there was usually a large Russian stove, in the houses of the intelligentsia and the nobility – more refined Dutch or Swedish women.

There is stove heating even now, but mostly already in summer cottages, as a temporary solution to raise the temperature in the room or as an alternative source of heat. You can find stove heating in village houses, but already a rarity.

Stove heating is losing popularity, it is so cyclical: flooded – hot, burned out – cold. It is very uncomfortable. The second serious minus is the inability to regulate the temperature. The intensity of burning can be changed within certain limits with the help of views, but not drastically: if the firewood burns, then it releases a certain amount of heat. Its selection can be “stretched” a little by restricting the flow of air, but only a little.

The third drawback is the uneven distribution of heat. Those rooms are heated into which the sides of the stove go, and even then, the floor remains cold. In addition, even in heated rooms near the stove it is warm, at the far end of the room it can even be cold. The fourth drawback is the need for constant maintenance – you won’t leave it for a long time. You have to constantly (or almost) be near the stove: keep burning, clean and flood it in a new way. All these reasons have led to the fact that the stove in a private house usually appears as one of the possible sources of heat and is rarely the main one.

water

The most common heating system in our country is water heating, and if they say that they want to do the heating of a private house with their own hands, 98% mean just such a system. And this despite the fact that it is expensive to set up. This is perhaps the most expensive system to install. But it has a decent amount of advantages, which is the reason for its popularity.

It consists of a hot water boiler, a pipeline and heating devices – heating radiators – through which the coolant circulates. Most often it is water, but there may also be a special non-freezing liquid. All the difficulty in creating this very system of pipelines – it is necessary to ensure the transfer of heat in the required amount.

The first positive point is that the system can operate both in cyclic and continuous mode. It depends on the choice of the boiler. If the heat source for such a system is a conventional solid fuel boiler (wood or coal), then cyclicity is present. In order to practically nullify it, a heat accumulator is added to the system – a large reservoir with a coolant in which heat accumulates during a period of intense heating. And at night, when the boiler burns out, the accumulated heat maintains a comfortable temperature in the house.

If there is any other boiler in the system – gas, liquid fuel, pellet – there is no cyclicity. After the system has reached operating temperature, it is maintained with a fairly small difference (with the correct calculation of capacities and design).

The second positive point: most modern heating boilers are equipped with automation that manages their work and monitors safety. Such systems can work for quite a long time without human intervention (except for solid fuel systems). The third plus is that rare maintenance is required.

Therefore, in most cases, heating in a private house is done with water. Sometimes owners do not even think about the possibility of building some other system.

air

The center of the air heating system is also a heat source, and usually it is a boiler, but it does not heat water, as in a water system, but air. The heat source can be a powerful convector running on gas, electricity or liquid fuel.

In order for the heated air to enter other rooms, a system of air ducts is led from the heat source. The movement of air through them can be natural (gravitational systems) and forced (with fans).

Compared to water heating, much less money is required here. In small houses – for one or two rooms (usually these are summer cottages) – in general, one heat generator without air ducts is enough. In this case, warm air through the open doors enters another room, warming it as well.

The disadvantages here are obvious: while the heat generator is working, it is warm, it stopped – it immediately became cold. No thermal inertia, as in a water system (until the water cools down, the house is warm). The second point is drying air. It also dries with other types of heating, but the air heating of a private house is perhaps the leader in this regard.

Electrical

Heating a private house with electricity is one of the easiest to use. Just buy convectors and hang them in key places. It can be under the windows, it can be under the ceiling. Both systems work. The disadvantage of these systems is the significant cost of maintaining a stable temperature.

The system consists of a number of convectors that are able to compensate for heat losses. In this case, there are no difficulties at all, except for the wiring of a suitable section and the allocation of the power required for heating. The convector has a heating element through which air flows. Passing along the heated element, the air warms up, spreading heat around the room.

The movement of air in the convector is organized in two ways: with or without a fan, due to natural processes. More efficient heating with forced air movement. But such power is not always needed (and fans create noise), so many models have two modes of operation – with and without a fan.

This type of heating is quite comfortable – modern convectors can maintain the set temperature with an accuracy of two degrees. Their work is controlled by automation, which turns them on and off as needed. When powered, they require no maintenance.

The disadvantage is that active convection (air movement) carries a large amount of dust. The second minus is overdrying of the air, but this is a disadvantage of all heating systems. If an ordinary spiral is used as a heating element, it burns out the oxygen in the air (heats up to a red glow). But such elements are now used only in the cheapest small floor models. More serious equipment heats the air with ceramic heaters that do not burn oxygen (almost).

There is also such a system as underfloor heating, but this is a separate issue and water heated floors are described here, and electric ones are described in this article.

Which system to choose

Actually, the type of heating of a private house depends on the climate and the mode of use of the premises. In most countries with mild winters, electric or air heating is used. In our country, water heating is used in most of the territories. It makes sense to build such a complex system in houses with permanent residence. Then such material investments are justified.

If you are choosing a heating system for a dacha, where in winter you will only appear on short visits and do not plan to maintain a positive temperature, then the best option is air heating. With or without air ducts – it already depends on the size of the cottage. Why not electric? Because in winter, the supply of electricity in rural areas is extremely unstable. So a Buleryan-type stove is better.

Types of water heating systems

Since water heating of a private house is installed in most cases, consider what types it is. There are some pretty significant differences.

According to the method of circulation of the coolant

There are two types of water heating: with natural and forced circulation. Natural circulation systems use a well-known physical phenomenon: warmer fluids rise to the top, colder fluids sink to the bottom. Since the system is closed, a cycle is formed.

The advantage of such a system is that it is non-volatile, that is, it does not require electricity to operate. This is important in many rural areas where power outages are the norm rather than the exception in winter.

More minuses:

• Pipes must be used with a larger diameter – the speed of movement of the coolant is low, therefore, to transfer a sufficient amount of heat, a larger volume of coolant is required. they must be laid with a constant rather large slope (about 3%), which does not add aesthetics to the room.
• During natural circulation, the pipes are located or at a height of about a meter, which does not paint the room. The second option is an accelerating loop, which is also not very attractive. The situation is better with two-story houses. In them, the second floor is a kind of accelerating loop.
• The boiler is also required to be non-volatile, and this is solid fuel on wood or coal. All others require a power supply.
• The middle of the radiators must be higher than the middle of the boiler (to ensure circulation). If the house does not have a basement, you have to either lift up the radiators or make a recess for the boiler. Not the most fun either.
• The inability to regulate the speed of movement of the coolant and the thermal regime in the room.

In systems with forced circulation, a circulation pump is integrated. It does not create excess pressure, it simply drives water through pipes at a given speed. Such a pump can be built into the boiler (gas heating units) or installed separately on the return pipeline before entering the boiler.

The advantages of this solution:

• Pipes are laid down – on the floor or under the floor.
• The speed of movement of the coolant can be adjusted (multi-speed pump), thereby regulating the temperature in the room.
• The pipe diameter is small. For a medium-sized private house, this is usually 20 mm or so.
• The boiler can be installed any, with any automation. Automation provides a higher level of comfort and the ability to accurately maintain the desired temperature.

The disadvantage is the need for electricity. And it’s not that a lot of it is required, quite the opposite, the system consumes 100-250 W / h like a regular light bulb. The fact is that without electricity, it is inoperable. For rare cases of shutdown, a power stabilizer with a battery is suitable, and if the power still turns off often, a backup source is needed – a generator.

By type of wiring

There are two types of systems:

• single tube;
• two-pipe.

One-pipe systems

In single-pipe, a pipe comes out of the boiler, sequentially runs around all the heating radiators, and from the outlet of the latter enters the boiler inlet. The main advantage is the minimum number of pipes. There are more disadvantages of such a heating device for a private house:

• The radiators closest to the boiler outlet are always hot, the ones farther away are almost cold. And it is impossible to solve the problem by regulation. It is possible only for distant ones to increase heat transfer by increasing the number of sections, for nearby ones, respectively, to reduce it.
• A single-pipe system in its pure form (without bypasses) does not allow the radiators to be removed without shutting down and draining the system.
  

Better in this regard, an improved system – Leningradka. In it, each radiator has a bypass – a pipe segment connected in parallel to the heater. In this version, ball valves can be installed at the inlet and outlet of the radiators, with which you can turn off the radiators. The coolant in this case will move along the bypass.

Two-pipe wiring

In this system, there are two pipes to which heating radiators are connected in parallel. Hot coolant is supplied through one pipe, cooled coolant is discharged through the other.

Cons – a large consumption of pipes, but water of the same temperature is supplied to the inlet of each radiator, it is possible to install a regulator on each of their heating devices, so that the system can be balanced (set the required heat transfer for each radiator).

There are several types of two-pipe heating systems:

• Dead end. Its device requires the smallest number of pipes, but its drawback is that with a long circuit, the last radiators are located far from the boiler, which complicates balancing (they can heat up worse). Therefore, heating a private house according to this scheme is done if the circuit is of small length – up to 6-7 radiators.
  

• With passing traffic or Tichelman. A large number of pipes are required, which are not very pleasing to the eye, but the circuit is easily balanced. For long circuits, it is better to use this type of wiring.
• Beam or collector. It requires the most pipes, and even a separate collector, which makes it the most expensive. Each device has a separate supply and return line. A good system is that you can independently set the heat output of each radiator, not paying attention to those that are nearby.
  

How to choose polypropylene pipes read here. 

According to the method of supplying the coolant

There are systems with upper and lower coolant supply. All schemes above are with lower distribution. Top feed systems are rare. They are mainly implemented in two (or more) storey buildings for a more economical construction of the system.

By type of system: open and closed

Since the temperature of the coolant in the system changes, its volume also changes. In order to have a place to put the surplus, expansion tanks are installed in the system. These tanks are open (normal tank) and closed (membrane). Accordingly, the systems are called open and closed.

An open expansion tank is usually placed in the attic of a private house. It is, of course, cheap, but in such a system there is a gradual evaporation of the coolant. Therefore, the amount of liquid must be monitored or an automatic device should be made that will respond to a decrease in the level. Usually this is a float mechanism (like in a toilet) that opens / closes the water supply. The system is simple and fairly reliable, but only water can circulate in it. It is impossible to fill anti-freezes, since a change in their concentration is not allowed (and this happens during evaporation). In addition, most antifreezes are toxic and their vapors are also not curative.

Where such tanks can be used is in systems with natural circulation – a membrane one simply will not work with such a small pressure.

The expansion tank of the closed type is divided into two halves by an elastic membrane. With a lack of coolant, it displaces it from the tank, with an excess (pressure rises), the coolant stretches the membrane, occupying a larger volume.

These systems work well with forced circulation, maintaining a stable pressure.