i am looking at zone manifolds for my system and notice quite a difference in price
watts,uponor/wirsbo, caleffi seem to be twice the money as mr pex, etc.
so? the $?
are they worth the premium? or is this just marketing
not trying to be cheap but also not trying to get hosed
thanks for your advice

Not exactly sure what you mean by "marketing". I got introduced to the Wirsbo line of TruFLOW brass manifolds by my current HVAC installer. He said "We can use any type, but I just thought you'd like these to start." Big grin.

He's right - They are beautiful pieces of equipment that look like they will do hard service for decades.

They were so fine, I had an urge to run down and install one in my boat, just because.

Will they work "better" than the cheaper alternatives?

Got no idea whatsoever. :-)

In all seriousness, if you are going to install a simple, straight forward system and forget it, seems like you could go with a simple manifold. I plan to play around with my system as much as I can and the high-end manifolds look like they can tolerate my hands-on attention better....

I don't like the truflow's lack of integral flow meters. but they are built robustly for sure.

we only use manifolds with loop flow meters for balancing purposes. allows much more freedom in pump specifications and flow balancing tricks.

Mine all seem to be coming with flow meters. More things to play with. :-)

i was just curious if the big name brass ,bronze manifold were better then the stainless units as i want this to be proper.
what i'm working with here is there are 5 zones in the new house with the first 4 being single loops but zone 5 is the big room and has 9 loops so flow metering will be needed to balance it
i'm tempted to run zone 5 on a separate manifold for balancing and use a zone valve to actuate it for temp control because it is so large,any thoughts?

i'm all ears
thanks

kotero,
I would stay away from the Chinese knock offs. what are the heat loads on the individual zones? I would think a 4 loop true flow and a 9 loop plain copper if the loops are app same length.

FWIW I would never advocate for plain copper. that ignores systemwide flow rate management and even if the loops are similar in length... which is really not a great design method considering how important other factors are like room isolation... it is very poor for control.

Use dedicated manifolds for large zones, actuated manifolds for small zones. in our product line the breakeven point is 3-4 loops... any more than that, separate the manifold unless you have very long feed lines.

I like the brass modular system Zurn makes, that I used in my system.

-Rosalinda

I understood that 1 room had 9 loops as well as a zone valve controlling flow to the manifold. Used a fair amount of Sioux Chief valved copper manifolds as well as quite a few Wirsbo r32 modular manifolds on large shops, garages. great rooms etc. I try to keep it as simple as possible.

understood, but how do you control flow to the whole manifold if you do copper?

unless you're doing zone by pump, which I really hope no one is still doing, you have 9 uncontrolled loops in the system. they may balance to each other, but that doesn't mean they will balance to allow the flow needed to the rest of the system.

you can partially crank ball valves or the like... but that's not exactly a bulletproof design decision

thanks for all the input guys and gal
ilgeo, zone 5's loops range from 175 to 270 ft so they will have to be flow controlled and icfhybrid's hands on concerns fit myself as well so the manifold has to be rugged and reliable

from nrt.rob
"Use dedicated manifolds for large zones, actuated manifolds for small zones. in our product line the breakeven point is 3-4 loops... any more than that, separate the manifold unless you have very long feed lines."

i was thinking this^^^^ was my best option so it's good to read your opinion

at this point i have obtained a lochinvar knight wb050 boiler and a caleffi 2+2 hydrolink and just finishing installing 2700 sq ft of warmboard so no sense going cheap now

thanks for your input folks

It depends. I like the per loop isolation and integral flow meters of most of the manifolds available now, brass, copper, stainless steel, the tubing really doesn't care. For single zone commercial buildings with balanced loops the copper makes sense, but most of the fancy multi-zone residential radiant jobs get a SS with flow controls, Uponor relay and 24v actuators with loop isolation every time.

Manifold flow control would be the same as any other hydronic HX and use a circuit setter such as http://www.precisionbalancing.com/PDFs/Balancing%20Valves/Bell%20and%20Gossett/Bell%20&%20Gossett%20RF%20Circuit%20Setter.pdf Or you could get one of the many control valves on the market with a flow control device built in. The only ball valves that should be used for balancing are characterized and respond in a more linear fashion. And there are applications when it is appropriate to use a pump for 1 zone and zone valves for the others. Each application needs to be evaluated .

there are no applications in a residential setting where zone by pump makes sense.

and by the time you add all those balancing valves you might as well have just bought the prebuilt manifold, that's kind of the point.

Again the are applications...say you are using 3/8 tube on a large great room retrofit and you need to keep a 10* delta, its 1500 sq ft of a house that is 6000 sq ft, that zone has a heat loss of 45,000 btu, 9 gpm at 7 or 8' head, gee a 15-58 looks pretty good. How about a 1200 sq ft garage? I like to design with as few pumps and valves as needed but not going to design so it takes a 1/6 hp pump to cycle every time a zone calls. I realize you can heat a 4000sq ft house w/ 4 car garage with 2 15-58s if designed properly.
A 3/4 balancing valve that doubles as a purge valve is about $30. A Sioux Chief is a prebuilt without balancing valves but has isolation valves if you would like.

If you need a 10 degree delta on a 30 BTU/sq ft load, shorten your loops. If you don't need 10 delta (like in a garage) widen it. there is no GOOD reason to zone by pump in a residential setting. Ever.

by the time you add copper, isolation valves (must have), adapters and proper balancing, you can only say you saved money going copper by ignoring your time completely. Copper manifolds are 20 years out of date, in my very humble opinion, for any looped application in standard residential sizes. Not to say it's a prediction of catastrophic failure in all such cases, but I don't see many where it really makes any sense.

Rob is right, more brains less pump (circulator to be accurate).

I'm not saying to zone a house with pumps but if I have a zone that is large and I am already within 20% of pump curve capacity I will use a second pump instead of up sizing pump adding a zone valve then addressing velocity issues with dpov or smart circulator. Of course the program you use to design the system may not tell you how to do this and you would then need to use that brain thing. I always try to designing with the least amount of pumping energy required, which in the real world is not always best served by 1 pump. Dont treat a 6000 sq ft house with a 3000 sq ft garage the same as a 2000 sq ft house.

Upsizing pumps? who does that? If you break the curve on one pump, add a second, fine, but they should probably always be ECM circs these days (average 75% less energy on multizone from what we're seeing). You can't really say you're "designing for the least amount of pumping energy" if you aren't using ECM pumps.

is a second pump the worst thing in the world? of course not. but a little nudging is all that most homes require to hit that one pump ECM target. the Alpha can spit out 14 GPM at 6 ft of head. we're just wrapping up our third 7000sqft+ house in the last month using just one alpha for the whole distribution system on that very beautiful setting. I don't think we'll ever need more than one pump under 100kBTU/hr peak load again, frankly... other than dedicated boiler circs when the pressure drop through the HE is too high to go primary only.

least amount of pumping energy required, which in the real world is not always best served by 1 pump

I agree. All pumps are most energy efficient at a single point. One pump for a wide range of flows is a compromise.