Radiant Heating Calculations

[ShipWreck2]

I have set up my new system which is a 120&40g display with ~160g of sump/fuge in the basement. My house is kept quite cold at around ~60F all winter. As such the tank system suffers from a lot of heat loss. I have already used rigid insulation and covered all possible sides of the tanks that make up the sump and fuge.

As a test I currently have 1600w of heaters in the water and a 1500w baseboard heater beside the sump, both of which have run 24/7 for the last couple of days and the tank temp will not rise above 76F.

I would like to use a Hot water recirc pump to cycle water from the hot water heater through a coil of the plastic infloor heating coil placed in the sump and then back to the hot water tank to provide the main source of heat. I have a controller system that will allow me to control the pump as well as some supplemental standard heaters.

Now what I need help with is determining the size of pump required or flow rate of the water through the pipe and the amount of pipe within the water water to provide sufficient heat transfer.

Thanks in advance for the help.

PS. I know my house is cold. No I can't raise the house temp.

[bertoni]

That's going to be tough to calculate. A lot of the heat loss is evaporative, and that's going to vary depending on a lot of factors. I'd be tempted to monitor the electrical consumption of the heaters, and work from there.