Radiant floor heat

In the basement we are installing hydronic radiant floor heat.  Handy's Heating in Mount Vernon is the supplier, and designer of our HVAC needs for the new house.   Yesterday Don came out and gave me a quick tutorial on how to install it.

To heat the basement we have 7 zones ( bathroom, bedroom1, bedroom2, rec room loop 1, rec room loop 2, garage loop 1, and garage loop 2).  Each zone consists of about 250 feet of tubing.  The tubing is 1/2 inch pex that connects to a manifold in the utility room.   A combi boiler from Intellihot will supply domestic hot water and hot water for space heating.  The space heating part of the combi boiler connects to the manifold and supplies the hot water.

The key to laying out the loops is not to run them under any walls and not to cross them.  Here is a diagram of the layout.




To install you start by marking all the wall and door locations on the foam, and I cut a piece of leftover foam to use for spacing.   After everything is marked we connected the first loop to the manifold and started uncoiling the pex.  The pex is stapled to the foam about every 2 feet and at the corners.  When a loop is complete it connects to the return side of the manifold.  Here are some pics of the process.

What it looks like when it's done.

Uncoiler for the pex roll.  This roll started out at 1200 feet.

Finished product.  Ready for some concrete.

Master Pex stapler with his trusty foam stapler

Once finished you need to pressure test it to 100 PSI.  This took a bit of time with my baby compressor, but it's holding.   I'll check it again in the morning and call the inspector for Monday.

The guage on the manifold.  Reads 100 PSI

I had a couple of visitors helping me out while I waited for the compressor to recharge.