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I worked on a straw bale house that used this idea, the owner had a house that had been added on to a number of times so it had some weird basements, he more less tore the house down to the foundation and started over, one of the basement sections had issues so he insulated the snot out of it, put hydronic heat tubes at the bottom and filled it with 120 yards or so of sand, about a foot from the top he put another set of tubes and then the last foot of sand, he then poured the living room floor over that 7-8 foot deep sand bed, his solar hot water system heated the domestic water then the deep set of coils year round, in colder weather he would heat the upper layer of tubes.
The home owner is an engineer altho I don't think he put any temp sensors in the sand bed, my memory is that he was not impressed with the deep set of tubes altho he needed to fill that part of the basement anyway so it was of little loss, the main reason as I understand the lack of performance is that dry sand insulates, to wet 120 yards of sand you are going to have to dump alot of water in.
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