homemade Quicktrac

Mike East

I concede that not "every imaginable" system was tested in this study but nearly all of them were. See for your self....

Fred Rappuhn

homemade Quicktrac

I have a very small floor warming in a bathroom that is 35 sq ft. The main heat source is from a panel rad, this is just a floor warming for tile. What are the best suggetions for make my own quicktrac type flooring. I only have access to the top of the floor & I an 1 3/4" to make up to be flush with the hallway.

I thought of laying down a 1/4" cement board for a transfer material then the cut and grooved plywood to hold the tube.

Will this work??

heatboy_2

Like .....

..... this?

jp_2

this is what I did

3/8 tubing, 1/2 plywood, deck mud in between, thin set, 1/2 durrock, ditra and tile.

Fred Rappuhn

Yea! Along that Idea. You used joist trac there, correct?

Not that I am too cheap for the quick trac , but I have to work around a toilet and vanity in that 35 sq ft. A lot of cutting and fitting to start with, might as well go you type of route.
any othe ideas? Thanks

Fred Rappuhn

JP,
what do you mean "deck mud" A mud bed for tile?

hot_rod

Here is another method

this was in a 3/4" mudset, then tile for about a 1-1/4" total. It matched the wood floor over Roth panel in the next room.

The 3/8 tube is stapled to the tilesetters mesh. He floated over it, then thinset the tile to the mud bed.

really no need for strips if you can float a level floor.

hr

jp_2

yep

i made the mud a little wetter though.

Gordy

Or This

Ted_9

Radiant

Are you keeping the panel rad in?

Have you thought of using electric for the tile warming?

Fred Rappuhn

Lots of great idea here!! Thanks.

I'll still look at more, maybe I can take the best of all and develop my own style.

I plan to take the pex down to the boiler and have a contractor tie it in. I'm just the grunt homeowner.
Even tho my dad was a plumber, "I'm just the plumber's son"

Fred Rappuhn

That all depends if the floor can carry the heat load. My first thought was to keep the panel rad and just warm the floor. The rad will mount just under the towel bar and might hope for double duty as a towel warmer.

I have gave very little thought to elec. I plan on a new master shower in the ajoining room. Would like to at heat to the shower & floor down the road.

My boiler is a straight shot down from these 2nd story rooms so getting to the boiler is no problem.

I might be getting the cart befor the horse, I haven't done my math yet as to if the floor can keep up. I plan on worrying about that when I tie it in the system, with temps.

Now DW is pushin g to get the bathroom done, I have to move on to my outside chore soon.

Rich L.

Sandwich method

Not my work, I believe Tom Tesmar gave me these drawings. I haven't had a chance to try this but it looks like it would work well.

Unknown

if you're going to do it, do it right, not like quik trak. use PEX-AL-PEX

Unknown

isn't 3/4" a bit thin for mudset?

I'd certainly keep the tubing to 6" o.c. for striping there, but what about the "1 inch of cement over the tube" rule? doesn't apply to mudset?

Fred Rappuhn

Rob,
Is that 1/2 pex-al-pex ? I have to install some panel rad also, would be nice not to purchase 2-3 types of tube and lot of left over ends. What type of staple up plates are those and the thickness of the ply?

Thanks

Unknown

3/4" ply, 1/2" pex-al-pex, lightweight plates with "omega" groove. can trade up to Thermofin "U" if you need more output. we do 9" o.c. lightweight and 7" o.c. with the thinner but heavier thermofin "U" to minimize ply waste and striping issues.

Brian_18

My Vote

I vote for self-leveling concrete poured over the tubes, then Ditra, and finally thinset tile job. The size of a bath can easily be bucket mix & pour to a depth that will have everything match up to the other elevation perfectly. The extra thermal mass is a bonus.

Mike East

The answer

Use our RAUPANEL system. It is only 5/8" thick,lightweight, easy to install, and has the highest BTU output of any system available. It will most likely take care of the bathroom heat without the need for a panel rad. Yet, you must remember, with any in-floor radiant heat system, the floor is only warm when the t-stat is calling and fluid is moving through the system. So, if this is a bathroom and you just want a warm tile floor every time you get out of the shower, and space heat is provided by a panel rad. Then an electric tile warming system, controled by a floorstat with a timer, is the best option for you. See attachment.

ALH_4

Electric

I'm not sure I buy the "highest output of any radiant system available" claim, but electric radiant could be a decent option depending on how the floor is intended to be used. Don't get me wrong, Raupanel is as good as anything out there.

Bathrooms are a little tough, because it is *probably* the only room you spend a lot of time in naked year round. Rather than firing up the heating system to warm the bathroom floor in the morning during the summer, the electric floor could be controlled by a timer.

Unknown

I'm not able to see your attachments, but if this is that study that claims that quik trak beats warmboard, you would do well to never show it to anyone ever again. That's one of the most ridiculous studies I've ever seen and its findings are directly contradicted by many, many projects currently operating in the field.

You have a top-shelf product in raupanel. Don't pollute your message with marketing BS.

jp_2

6 \" vs 12\"

i can see where raupanel can easily out perform warmboards at one half the spacing.

its all about spacing anyway, well for the most part.

Mike East

Review the entire study but,

you might find pages 75-78 most interesting.

jp_2

read it

i briefly looked at it, looks interesting but its 100 pages.

will read it when I have more time.

Unknown

not even close to true. it's all about average conductivity. Raupanel has an edge there, but it's not that much of an advantage at that level of conductivity. In other words, at the water temps you can operate at with either one, differences are small.

Unknown

yes, that's where the ridiculous claims are made. If I'd ever seen a job in operation that confirmed any of those relative standings, I'd find it more interesting. As is, I find it absurd.

jp_2

what??????????

spacing makes no difference?

Mike East

I will not argue,

The performance of the product speaks for it self. I am not sure we are talking about the same study anyway. If you could see the attachment you would see that the results on pages 75-78 show warmboard out performing quik trak as you mentioned you have observed, while RAUPANNEL out performs them all, and on 8" spacing. I am only wanting to expose the homeowner to a fine product, not stirring up a debate.

Unknown

spacing allows for more average conductivity, pipe to floor surface, over the average floor surface area.

Another way to achieve that is to use a highly conductive surface from the pipe across the floor. Both warmboard and raupanel do this with aluminum, which is highly conductive.

Another method, in concrete, you'll find that doubling your tubing (halving your on center) only drops your required water temperatures under steady state conditions about 5 degrees if the tubing if lifted. It helps, but not that much. it helps more on initial startup to raise the mass's temp faster, but once you're under "cruise conditions" it's not that helpful.

aluminum is more conductive than concrete: reducing tubing spacing has less benefit in full thickness aluminum systems.

The only other question is total load, temperature drop across the loop, and flow restriction. you couldn't do raupanel at 12" o.c. because in high load rooms you'd have something like a 30 degree drop across the 3/8" loop or you'd need very short loops.

Unknown

it does speak for itself. so please stop bringing out that study to speak for it; it's deeply, deeply flawed.

It was thermalboard, not quik trak (which it has nearly equal to warmboard), it shows beating warmboard. equally silly, in both cases.

Studies are wonderful. I sure do love them, when they make predictions that hold up in the field. This one does not.

Your product is great though, for sure, no doubt and no argument about that.

Dan Foley

Study

Rob,

Those are pretty strong words ... "adsurd, flawed, ridiculous". This is the first time I have seen this report and I just glanced through it. I will have to review it over the weekend. On what do you base your opinion? Where is this study flawed? - DF

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Unknown

I have several quik trak jobs and many warmboard jobs.

They do not operate at similar water temperatures.

This study indicates that they should, along with thermalboard (a thermodynamically inferior product), and joist heating with plates.

I would believe the results except for that I expect and see both Warmboard and Roth panel also performing better than the other methods this study shows as near equal.

Thus, I can only conclude that the study is flawed. If it is not flawed, it describes some situation I have not yet seen in the field, which makes it useless.

BC_5

Rob is right, it is deeply flawed.

I agree, this study is virtually worthless in terms of the output results presented. It is a good start, and to his credit the author points out most of the flaws himself and indicates ways to correct them. The overall methodology is sound, but problems with the instrumentation and controls abound. I don't believe he ever intended the output results of the various systems to be taken as gospel.

EDIT: I don't want to seem like I'm dumping on the student that did this testing - I think there's a lot of good owrk here. Reading the intro more carefully, his focus was more on developing a methodology than determining absolute results, and I think he accomplished what he set out to do given his probable time and money limitations. He tried it, determined what didn't work, and recommended corrective actions.

Here's one problem that jumps right out at me:

On pgs 50-59 the surface temps of each system are plotted. These completely contradict the output numbers shown in the plots on pgs 60-62 (the ones often quoted by Rehau)! For example, at 100F, the surface temperature of the Warmboard setup is about 75deg, which is higher than the surface temp of any other product. The Raupanel and Roth come close and the others do much worse, as you'd expect. At 130F water temps, the Raupanel 6" is best, with the wider raupanels and Warmboard very close behind. These results are much closer to what I'd expect.

The output numbers that show Warmboard being worse than thermalboard are calcualted using water flow rate and deltaT. There are several major sources of error here:
-instrumentation error
-non-steady state conditions (the author was controlling water temp by hand with a manual mixing valve)
-downward losses
-air temperature and movement in the test box ( I think this might be the biggest problem since the author acknowledges difficulties in maintaining desired temps).

If you’re going to look at any of these results, I’d trust the surface temps before the heat transfer calculation. They confirm Rob and others’ experience, namely that Warmboard, Roth, and Rehau all have excellent output at low temps, and the underfloor configurations require significantly higher temps for the same output.

Disclaimer: I don't have any connection with or preference for any of these systems - I believe they are all excellent products and each has advantages and disadvantages for particular applications.

BC_5

Check out these outputs

I calculated these based on the average floor temps in the report assuming a constant 70F room temp and the standard 2btu/ft2/degF coefficient for radiant floor. It changes the picture a bit.

This method is flawed as well since it assumes a constant "room" temp and a typical convection coefficient. In reality, the air temps varied quite a bit (see airtemp.jpg) - this explains the fact that some of the underfloor methods come out negative and also why the Roth and Raupanel 6" are outliers at 130F (the "room" temp was 82deg in both cases).


I think it points out some of the problems with the reported outputs, though. Like I said it is a good start, but the test needs to be re-run correcting the various problems.

Mike East

Your attachments

Are just comming up as bar graphs. There is no data attached. I am interested to see what you have done here but the attachments are not displaying anything

BC_5

oops

Let's try that again...

Again, I don't claim that these are more "correct" than the heat transfer based calcs. There are things that are clearly not right with this method as well (such as 8in spacing outperforming 6in spacing at 100F).

jp_2

ifrst statement

really does not make sense to me?

spacing helps to average out conductivity?

what siggy shows with concrete and hot rods FLIR pictures confirms spacing has true meaning. yearly BTU difference, I do not know.

Unknown

JP.

The only thing that governs output is average surface temperature.

The more conductive your system is horizontally, the more even your average surface temperature at a given water temperature, provided the conductor is of sufficient thickness to carry the heat that needs to be conducted.

Concrete isn't bad. As you tighten up beyond 9" o.c. in a residential slab with the tubing lifted to the midpoint, you don't gain much in the way of average surface temps. 12" to 9" gives a better benefit than 9" to 6" does, for instance, because you're already close to maxing out your temperature gradients at 9" o.c.. As tubing drops lower in the slab (further from the surface), it means a little more. Response time is better if you have an oversized heat source too. That's it.

Aluminum is even better. It means even less if you have continuous full thickness aluminum. That is, if warmboard doubled its tubing on center, the average surface temperature of the floor would not increase much, because it's already spreading that heat in sufficient quantity, quite effectively.

Same with raupanel. the only reason there is any real difference in 6" or 8" o.c. with raupanel is because you're adding two inches of wood in the 8" configuration. If it were 6" or 8" wide aluminum panels, output would be practically identical between the two.

All this assumes responsive water temperature control and smooth on cycles. If you design "bang bang", striping is more prevalent and output is less.

Now if you have a less conductive system; say, a routed block of wood, which has greater resistance. Then, spacing will make a much bigger difference, because your surface temperature will drop off much more quickly as you move away from the pipes. More pipes there, better average surface temperature.

Hope it helps..

[Deleted User]

nrt.rob

up until here, 'it describes some situation I have not yet seen in the field, which makes it useless', i was with you

i don't understand all the details, but if you have the time, why not contact mr khanna, go over the details and report back to us/invite him here?

Unknown

it appears other posters here have a much stronger handle on it than I. I was presenting two options; either it was flawed, or I'm not seeing the situation that would make it NOT flawed in my projects.

Another poster in this thread has shown that it is in fact flawed, and that mr. khanna knows it. as a predictive study on the relative outputs of those methods, it is a useless study. As a study of how to do testing methodology, mr. khanna learned quite a lot and i'm sure it was a success on that front.

hot_rod

depends on the product, Rob

This tile installer was using a product made for thin applications, not the typical sand and portland site mix.

hot rod