snow melt question

[Deleted User]

We use 3/4" real rubber insulation on our in the hole big bore tubing, and it works great. Consider this. Once you have the system up and running, maintenance btu's on the distribution system will be nil because the ground surrounding the mains will also rise in temperature.

It only hurts on initial start up. Once you have it up and running, it's negligible.

ME

pat_3

snow melt question

I am doing a large residential snow melt job and two of the manifolds will be about 100ft away from the boiler room.I am concerned with excessive heat loss from my supply & return lines to and from the manifolds.I have priced out pre-insulated 1 1/4 pex, but it is not within the budget given.I'm thinking of running regular 1 1/4 pex in a 3 foot deep trench and somehow sandwich the pex in extruded polystyrene.I've worked with 1 1/4 pex before,not fun.Any helpful responses are appreciated.

wopotoket

opt

If you really dont care about the people an want it to really work use a veri pump with a bypass valve at the manifold with a vfd and verusa to bring the pump up and down in speed and have it enabled with the snow melt sensor i just put in a 84000 feet of pex in a drive way in Greenwich CT that was a fun month

Rod Kotiga

I like the first answer. Always insulate. Keep it simple. If you were worried about losing heat to the ground that you didn't want to heat then think about how a Snow sensor fires up the system when only a sciff of snow falls. Waste. I only like sensors in emergency type places. The rest can turn a crank timer on from 0 to 12 hrs. Unless there Rich !!

Rod