When I realized just how much heat the house loses, and that I can't make it up by the floors alone, I scuttled my plan for radiant floors on both levels. Now I'm aiming to do radiant floors on the main level with rads to makeup the extra when needed, but not doing the whole second level, just to save on the labour of ripping down all the ceilings.
The kitchen ceiling is coming down anyways, so I was thinking of putting in one radiant loop upstairs under the bathroom and bedroom, but I'm unclear on how to zone it all. Originally I had planned 3 zones: 2 radiant floor zones with 3 loops each, and one basement radiator zone. But now it's looking more complicated.
Now I'm wondering about 3 zones:
-basement: rads only
-main floor: radiant floors with two radiators as second stage heat
-upstairs: front two rooms: rads only; back 2 rooms radiant floor with rads as second stage
This is basically what I'm wondering about, but I'm not sure how the different temperatures will work. I'd like to keep the EWT as low as possible, of course.