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Re: Go To Pex Brand For In Floor Radiant
Uponor is always the 'go to' for fittings, and Pex A pipe. Largest I.D. fittings. Most readily available and well supported.
Re: A couple issues with my combi boiler system
this is my poor excuse of a diagram. The guy I bought my house from installed the system himself. I appreciate your expertise, and will be looking into those possible causes this week. Im sharing the drawing because ive also wondered if maybe there is a flaw in the design
Re: Lochinvar WB80 not lighting, many new parts already. SOLVED
Well one question I would have is, did it behave that way with the old control board ? If not, maybe it is a setting, but that seems odd.
What if you (as a test) just disconnect the DHW thermostat from the boiler. What does it do ?
Re: Does having multiple zones in large house in Western Massachusetts save money?
This is by no means a scientific study with accurate measurements of the before and after fuel usage. This is just what happened and how I stopped a fuel oil customer from changing the boiler to gas heat. Of course the oil dealer had mixed emotions because the house went from over 3000 gallons per year to under 2000 gallons per year.
SecondEmpireHouse Said: “If I put thermostatic radiator valves on radiators in the bedrooms, we could control those rooms from getting too hot and make the rooms more comfortable. I wonder if that would save on heating costs?
What if we had thermostatic radiator valves on all 22 radiators in the house? What would be the effect of that on heating costs and comfort?”
Betty L was an older customer of the oil dealer that I used to do service calls for. She wanted to save on her fuel bill in the large home that was broken up into several rooms that were rented out to members of the US Coast Guard stationed in Cape May NJ. There were other renters and some of them were unhappy with overheating radiators in their particular rooms. One renteer happened to live in the only multi room apartment with a full kitchen on the first floor. That was the coldest zone in the building because the renovation included cast iron baseboard for that apartment while all the old gravity heat radiators and large piping were feeding the rest of the rooms.
Betty L wanted me to install new manual radiator valves so she could turn off radiators that were in rooms that were too hot. She has selected 8 radiators out of the 20 radiators in the home to have the valves replaced. After a lot of persuasion, I was able to get her to agree that a thermostatic radiator valve would do what she wanted automatically and no one needed to touch the valves once they were set to the comfortable temperature for that room.
To add to the confusion, on the day I was set to install the valves, she asked me to just put in the lower cost manual valves (that I did not have with me) and I told her that is not the way I do business and said thatI would rather give her money back so she would never call me again. That was not to her liking because I did the oil burner maintenance for the previous 4 years and she never had trouble in the winter unlike the previous service companies So she said to put the 8 automatic TRVs in as agreed .
That winter the fuel usage went from over 3000 gallons to under 2000 gallons. That is because the rooms were no longer overheating and the tenants were not opening the windows in the middle of the winter to get some relief.
So to answer your query about savings using TRVs. You will have some savings. Will it save you as much as Mrs. L? I can't say That depends on how much overheating you are experiencing, and if you open windows in the winter to compensate. All I know is that Betty did not convert to gas heat but the oil dealer was unhappy with the loss of 1000+ gallons that he expected from that customer. But agreed that it was better than losing all those gallons to the gas company.
The next summer Betty purchased 11 more TRVs and moved the sensor to the thermostat to that cold apartment that had the CI baseboard. The cold apartment didn’t have any TRVs so that would allow for constant circulation that I designed using a ∆P circulator and the outdoor reset I included in the price of the 11 new TRVs. The following winter the fuel usage was down to about 1600 gallons.
I though that was enough savings for that customer. I didn't want the fuel dealer to loose too much or we might not be friends anymore.
After 25 years, we are still friends.   
Re: Go To Pex Brand For In Floor Radiant
I'd stick with Uponor or Rehau. I've never used Apollo, but I see that's it's made in the USA. That means a lot.
Re: What do you think the future of our industry looks like?
TO quote PC7060 under SlamDunk above: " I agree. When I was young, my parents REFUSED to let me have a calculator until I was a senior in HS. "You must know how to do the math! What will happen if you rely on a calculatorand the battery dies?" Same argument, different generation."
RESPONSE in kind:
I can appreciate knowing the long hand of mathematics! As a beginning sailor, I learned "dead Reckoning" and used parallel bars with chart to determine a course Before GPS existed. The beauty of that knowledge meant if electronics failed, I had a back up, just sayin. The acronym used as part of the process was : TVMDC to get the heading.
Only a seasoned sailor will know what that acronym means - haha
Regards,
RTW
 RTW
RTW            
                Re: What do you think the future of our industry looks like?
@PC7060 I agree. When I was young, my parents REFUSED to let me have a calculator until I was a senior in HS. "You must know how to do the math! What will happen if you rely on a calculatorand the battery dies?" Same argument, different generation.
 SlamDunk
SlamDunk            
                Re: Go To Pex Brand For In Floor Radiant
Rehau is may be one of the few "A" pex brands that has not had a lot of tube failure issues, or recent lawsuits :)
Although many failures are installation related, or dezinicifaction of the brass fittings.
Hot, chlorinated water constantly circulating in DHW systems has been an issue with some brands, but this is DHW systems specific.
For low temperature radiant in a closed sealed system, any of the Big name "A" pex should be fine.
 hot_rod
hot_rod            
                Re: She canna take any more, Cap'n! She's gonna blow!
Nice installation! I may consider switching to diaphragm tanks in the future, but that will probably only be when I replace the boiler. I have limited space for such tanks and the compression tanks fits nicely between the floor joists. Plus my air management setup is for compression tanks (Integated Air Separator, ATF-12) and is working very well right now.
It was quite inexpensive procuring a second compression tank and an ATF-12.
—Eric
Re: She canna take any more, Cap'n! She's gonna blow!
Eric, I agree with your approach. I kept my ceiling tank until I replaced the boiler. Still have the tank and the Thrush valve sitting around my shop as a space eating homage to the past. 😂
 PC7060
PC7060            
                




