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Residual heat from boiler and radiator piping

Robert_H
Robert_H Member Posts: 141
in THE MAIN WALL
With the new system I was planning to put an old cast rad in the basement to supplement the heat. But in sizing it I was wondering how much the boiler and piping are going to contribute to the warmth of the basement. This might be a stupid question but, Could I leave the radiator out and the system would respond to the heat loss through the PEX.  As we have always heated with wood in this house I have no feel for how much residual heat a boiler/piping put out. The basement is just for storage and I have a workshop down there.



House 42k

1st floor 19k

2nd floor 9.7k

Basement 13k



The first floor radiators are all piped through the basement (home run) with 1/2inch fostapex.  About 220 ft total.

The boiler is a Vitodens 200 B2HA-19 running continuous on ODR. Radiators are on TRVs.



Is it worth considering or is it  negligible?



I assume it could be calculated but am not sure where to start.



Thanks

Robert

Comments

  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,276
    Yes, it can be calculated... but...

    It's not that hard to calculate, actually.  Half inch pipe is more or less 1/8 square feet of radiation equivalent per foot of pipe.  Give or take.  So your 220 feet would be somewhere around say 25 square feet of radiation, equivalent.  Perhaps, at a reasonable home run temp, around 2500 BTU lost.



    Which is trivial.



    So is the heat lost to the area from a modern boiler -- they are designed, no surprise, to put as much of the heat as possible into the circulating water!



    So my suggestion would be to not worry about it and put a decent sized radiator in there with its own TRV.
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
  • Robert_H
    Robert_H Member Posts: 141
    Thanks

    Thanks Jamie, that makes good sense.

    Robert
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