This past week Marie and I finally got the radiant floor system up and working! Yeah - just in time for the cold weather too! It has been a long, slow uphill battle to install the right parts of the system and have them work together. As it is a closed system, and is not directly connected to our domestic water source, we can add antifreeze to the water that continually circulates to avoid any freezing problems should we be away in the winter and the system, for whatever reason, shuts down. Phil had come up in October to help us solder the copper pipes together and arrange everything on a wall in the mechanical room and since then we have connected the pumps and in-floor sensors, re soldered a few leaks we found after pressurizing the system and purged all the air from each circuit of the three separate zones. We ran 140 F hot water from the Tagaki heater through the heat exchanger and adjusted that to 125 F with the thermostatic mixing valve before it makes it way through the 3 pumps and to each zone (aka floor). At this time, as we are still adjusting, our floor temperature setting is at 70 F in the mezzanine, and at 72 F in the other 2 floors. Here the floor sensors come in, prompting the pumps to turn on to circulate more hot water when the thermal mass of each floor cools 3 degrees below the set temperature. Next step will be to fill the system (2000 plus feet of PEX tubing with 10 gallons of the anti freeze (propylene glycol). It certainly makes a big difference to the overall house temperature and for the last few days I haven't even bothered to make a fire! What a nice feeling to walk around on bare feet and not feel that cold concrete underfoot! And until we finish tiling and laying the engineered wood floors that is exactly what we have to endure. We have a nice rug in front of the fireplace though and this makes it all cozy for those cold winter nights that are just around the corner. gws
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| Marie purging air bubbles from the system |
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| Grundfos Alpha pumps, one for each floor ( 3 zones) |
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| Thermostatic mixing valve - adjusts water temp |
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| Heat exchanger and Grundfos Alpha SS pump circulate domestic hot water to increase closed radiant floor loop temperature |
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| Temperature and pressure gauges on the domestic hot water side |
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| Floor sensors (running in a piece of PEX 10 feet into cement) and thermostats on each floor |
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| and the heart of the heating system - our Takagi On-Demand Tankless Water heater! It may be tankless..but we're not! |
