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Unregistered
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Posts:2321
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| 03/09/2006 12:54 PM |
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Hello,
Been reading through the archives here for a few weeks and need to pose some questions.
Bought a 2500 ft2 25 year old Cape. Seems to have been designed with energy efficiency in mind with 6" walls, extra insulation, southerly glass, etc. Also came with a 3 panel solar DHW which even with cloudy weather yesterday was still getting nearly 130 water for us. It's heated with electric though. I've converted one house in the past with a brother-in-law who's a plumber but has no radiant experience.
Planning on baseboard in the basement and upper level and radiant on the main living floor since there's nice open cavities. It will be a joist installed application.
I've been struggling with the heat transfer plate question for some time, but, since I'm planning on expanding the solar panels to 9 and putting in a 1500 gallon storage tank and using this for assist in heating, the lower required water temp the plates seem to allow will be beneficial.
I've done a heat-loss for the radiant floor using Slant-Fin software and came up with approximately 11000 BTU/hr load. The BILs plumbing house, using Wirsbo software came up with 17200 for total load and 15200 for radiant load.
What's the difference between total and radiant load and which one do you design to?
They're suggesting using the Wirsbo Joist Trak plates and 3/8" PEX. Is it necessary to butt these end to end or can I save some money and put a foot maybe two between them? Damn things are expensive.
Some of the reading I've done on installing radiant indicates making header and return pipes out of copper and branching PEX off of this. Is this a good idea or should the PEX go all the way back to the Wirsbo manifolds?
3/4" PEX is cheaper per foot than copper. Is there any reason to not use PEX to supply the baseboards on the basement and upper levels?
Thanks for all help provided.
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NRT.Rob
Registered Users
Posts:384
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| 03/14/2006 1:03 PM |
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total load includes losses not distributed by the radiant. Use it for boiler sizing.
You don't want the plates more than a few inches apart from each other. Unless you enjoy playing "find the plate" by walking around on the floor ;)
In *most* cases, I would recommend using manifolds with balancing valves on each loop. then you can make sure rooms are isolated on their own loops and have some control over the system... even adding zones later if needed. Big Bonus there.
You can use PEX to feed baseboards, but I would use PEX-AL-PEX for a high temp system like that. Bends like PEX (almost), expands like copper, holds its shape at higher temps.
-=Northeast Radiant Technology, LLC=-
www.NRTradiant.com |
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-=Northeast Radiant Technology=-
NRTradiant.com |
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