Supply/return in ICF walls

Gene Davis_2

We've decided to heat our little new construction project with steel panel radiators in the larger rooms, and baseboard units in the smaller rooms.

Our dilemma is routing the supply and return lines to the radiators in the lower level rooms. Exterior wall construction in those rooms is ICF, with 2-3/4" of EPS foam thickness before the concrete core is reached.

Our thought about routing is to not go through the floor slab to the radiator locations, but to go up into the floor frame (I-joists) above, run to the wall above where the radiator will go, and run the lines vertically in the EPS skin of the wall, elbowing through near the floor.

Is that an OK thing to do? Our terminations in the wall will have enough flexibility to be able to make up the piping to the radiators, whereas if we went through the slab, our terminations would be literally cast in stone.

Another benefit of going down and out the wall, is that simple excutcheons at the line penetrations will trim out over our wall finish, an easier task than dealing with floor penetrations.

kevin coppinger_4

It will be ok...

but don't get caught into just doing them on outside walls. You can run the rads near outside walls just run piping in stud wals to make it easier. I use pex-al-pex to make it easier to work w/ and transtion to copper out of the wall... I doubt you will get a freeze up in there...kpc

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hr

nail protection

would be my biggest concern. Maybe use a steel pipe drop or a sleeve around the pex would add some error room.

1/2" pex fits nicely inside 3/4" electrical EMT pipe.

hot rod

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