# Very interesting radiant heating job



## futz (Sep 17, 2009)

I was digging through some old pics and found this job I did a couple or three years ago. The upper floor radiant is pretty unique, so I'm posting a few pics here for you guys' amusement. *Note:* This is a EXTREMELY odd way to do radiant heating. It's the first time I ever did it this way, and will probably be the last.









The contractor had me explain exactly what I needed for heating loops. Also I gave him a copy of the heat loss calc sheet for it so he would know how much pipe I needed for each loop. Then one of his best guys went in there for a week and built this *amazing* negative pattern for my loops. There's lots more, but these three pics of the living room are pretty representative of the whole upper floor.









The guy did such a good job that I only had to cut the pattern in a couple places. He thought it out well. They nailed the hardwood down over this and didn't nail a single pipe. It worked out good.

They wanted Kitec, which I had never used and have never used since. I bought a $300 crimper for the job and crimped a grand total of 11 crimps with it. Then it went back in the box and less than a year later Kitec ended. Anyone wanna buy a useless brand new crimper?









Here's the boiler room that goes with it.


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## user2091 (Sep 27, 2009)

nice


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## trick1 (Sep 18, 2008)

That is awesome work!!!

I love the Grundfoss circs...they seem to hit all of the places on the pump curve that the Taco's can't seem to do.

Are those Honeywell 4 wire zone valves??? I like those, too.

What are you using to ramp down the supply temps to the radiant zones? 


Awesome job!!:thumbup:


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## Protech (Sep 22, 2008)

no pan for the heater?


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## futz (Sep 17, 2009)

trick1 said:


> I love the Grundfoss circs...they seem to hit all of the places on the pump curve that the Taco's can't seem to do.


I love Grundfos too. A lot of that is because when I was newer to hydronics Taco shipped a huge run of defective #007 pumps. Soured me on Taco for a LONG time. These days I use the one that ships with the Burnham boilers for the boiler loop, but all other circulators are Grundfos.



> Are those Honeywell 4 wire zone valves??? I like those, too.


Yup. We can get Erie, but if you need parts NOW, or a replacement valve, forget about it in this town. Honeywell is everywhere. Common as dirt.










> What are you using to ramp down the supply temps to the radiant zones?


That system has a nice Oventrop mixer with non-electric control. Expensive, but very good. These days I've mostly switched to the much cheaper Conbraco 3-ways (34H Series) with internal sensor. Good little valves, and about 1/3 of the cost of the Oventrop.


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## futz (Sep 17, 2009)

Protech said:


> no pan for the heater?


Same as that other boiler room I posted, the whole mech room floor has been dropped an inch. The entire room is a pan. I do that quite a lot.

New code here says we don't require pans, but I still put them in everywhere. Sometimes the code is STUPID!


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## LEAD INGOT (Jul 15, 2009)

Only thing I would have done differant, would be add 1 more zone and relay board and 86'd the water heater and went with a water maker off the boiler. Nice job.:thumbsup:


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## bigdaddyrob (May 14, 2009)

In between your work and the carpenter, that's one spoiled Ho. I love seeing great work like this. It's motivation to always work harder and try improve my own work. 
Thanks for sharing it!


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## RealLivePlumber (Jun 22, 2008)

Nice job. I hope that customer knows how good they got it, and does not mind paying for 1st class work. 

I recently saw a picture somewhere, some radiant magazine, where the installer put up a piece of aluminum diamond plate, 4'x8', and mounted everything to that. He hid all of the control wiring behind it. It was sweet. I'll see if I can find it.


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## futz (Sep 17, 2009)

RealLivePlumber said:


> I recently saw a picture somewhere, some radiant magazine, where the installer put up a piece of aluminum diamond plate, 4'x8', and mounted everything to that. He hid all of the control wiring behind it.


Sounds like a service nightmare.  It's bad enough trying to trace wiring when you can get at it easily.


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## futz (Sep 17, 2009)

LEAD INGOT said:


> Only thing I would have done different, would be add 1 more zone and relay board and 86'd the water heater and went with a water maker off the boiler.


I did suggest it, but they had a budget to stick to.

I don't zone valve my indirect tanks anymore. Instead I just take them off a pair of close-spaced tees on the boiler loop and just turn on the tank pump (the relay prioritizes DHW) when the tank calls for heat. The pumps have check valves in them which kills any tendency to gravity heat the tank. The close spaced tees keep the boiler loop from affecting the tank loop too.

The top set of tees is for the radiant house heating and the bottom set of tees is for the indirect tank.








Instead of a relay board I use a pull box with my relays and all the wiring in it.


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## Scott K (Oct 12, 2008)

Futz,

Is that 5/8" kitec? We used to have 1/2", 5/8", 3/4" and 1" Kitec crimpers but after this big Kitec job we did we lost the 1/2" and 5/8" somewhere, where I don't know. Oddly enough about a year later we got an odd service call where someone had a leak in some 5/8" kitec in their radiant sy stem and we thought we still had the crimpers but that is where we learned we didn't have them anymore and at the time it wasn't worth spending the $$$ to buy another set due to the fact we don't work with the crap nor will we ever probably work with it again.

The nice thing about that system you installed is you'll have much faster response because you don't have a big thermal (concrete) mass to heat up, and subsequently you shouldn't need very high water temps either due to the very low R-value of flooring above it. This is a true low mass radiant system. This type of job would be perfect for a condensing boiler where you'd probably see 97-98% efficiencies all year due to the low temps required. The only thing worth noting is if you had some aluminum transfer plates underneath it, or some thin aluminum sheets under the Kitec it would help performance a bit as far as radiating more heat upwards.


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## futz (Sep 17, 2009)

Scott K said:


> we lost the 1/2" and 5/8" somewhere, where I don't know.


They're on top of that wall in the back bathroom there.  Hehehe! Never put your tools on top of walls. I once found a nice expensive flashlight on top of a wall in a renovation. Some plumber or other tradesman left it there and it got boarded in.



Scott K said:


> Is that 5/8" kitec? We used to have 1/2", 5/8"


They made 5/8" pipe??? How strange! I'm pretty sure that's 1/2".



> The nice thing about that system you installed is you'll have much faster response because you don't have a big thermal (concrete) mass to heat up,


True, though 1-1/2" of concrete only lags by about an hour and a half or maybe a bit more. I bet the hardwood lags by at least a half hour or more (never checked it - just turned on the heat and it worked  ).



> This type of job would be perfect for a condensing boiler where you'd probably see 97-98% efficiencies all year due to the low temps required.


Yes. It's a natural for a condensing boiler.

I have one customer who always wants condensing boilers and then wants baseboard in the top floor (NO! Please do radiant!).  So we (Sheret's heating guys and me) stretch all the baseboard lengths to try to get those return temps down and make it at least a little more efficient.



> The only thing worth noting is if you had some aluminum transfer plates underneath it, or some thin aluminum sheets under the Kitec it would help performance a bit as far as radiating more heat upwards.


You're probably right, but it heats great as is. I was a bit worried that they might complain about noise from pipe expansion in the floor, but I've heard not a peep from them (the house is about a block from where I live).


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## Scott K (Oct 12, 2008)

Yeah the other thing I learned about Kitec, as we used some of their plumbing pipe Kitec was that there is a special reeming tool for Kitec that also bevels the inside edge a little bit which makes putting fittings in 10 times easier. After doing most of the job, the Ipex rep we dealth with brought us some of these tools and I wish I had had them all along. There was nothing more painful then cutting the pipe, and then trying to ram the fitting into it, potentially ruining the little O-rings on them. And then don't even think about kinking the stuff - it's DONE! I think there is good reason why IPEX got out of the heating market, and this stuff is one of them. Plus the potential class action lawsuits and all that. 

And yeah, like you said, they're probably in a wall somewhere, although I recall looking in some of the walls.


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## mselkee (Aug 13, 2009)

Very nice work. 

You take pride in your installs. Our trade either progresses or regresses you are a vote for progress!

Thanks for the good work!


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