I installed a radiant baseboard heater in each room upstairs,and disconnected the ductwork. We really like the way these things work,because they are quiet,and the heat is steady. My question is...will radiant floor heat installed under the 1st floor work as well as these baseboard heaters.forced air heat really sucks compared to convection heat. I want to switch over,and just use the furnace as an air handler for the airconditioning.,,,Will a hot water heater,and pex tube between the floor joists in the basement heat the dowstairs like the baseboards heaters heat the upstairs. We want to ditch this lousy forced air heat. It's dirty,dry,and ununiform heat running through filthy ductwork.

Forgive me if this has been covered, I havent found it: I am in the process of replacing the boiler and rezoning my house. The current system is very simple zoning and grossly oversized boiler. My question has to do with total heat load on multi-zoned systems, since I wouldnt mind doing a single room on a couple of the zones (essentially a very low heat load this way, and only the room I would spend the day in such as my back office) If most systems are oversized and thus running below optimal efficiency, would adding too many zones effectively negate any gain in only heating that part of the house? (the boiler would be again grossly oversized for the relative load) The recommendation here is to run a heat loss calc (I am in process of this), and that even these calcs are typically high. Given that most days of the year are not as low as the heat loss design temp, then compound relatively small loads when heating water or if zoning off a single room in the house, and you have even worse conditions to cause short cycling. This would suggest err'ing on the low side, and for the very rare occasion of extreme outdoor temps and the entire house needing heat, simply living with cooler temps inside should be ok?? Thus, I wonder if the sizing calcs shouldnt be twofold - a typical heat load (what rooms/dhw you want used - and here is where zoning could be used to get the total down), and then a worse case total heat load at a lower internal design temp. Does this make any sense at all, or just completely over thinking it?