Manifolds below tubing?

Paulypfunk

I am doing a small house radiant project with quick trak upstairs and wall rads downstairs. It would be nice to place all my manifolds on the boiler wall in the basement. Is there a functional difference in doing it this way vs doing a remote manifold upstairs? I'm going to put in uponor manifolds and isolation valves for purging and power flushing near my boiler. Will I have trouble with trapped air forming in the tubing down the road? I could talk to the homeowners about putting a manifold into one of the closets but space is at a premium and I don't want to do the extra work if there is no real difference.

Mark Eatherton

Shouldn't matter...

But home running is a LOT more expensive labor wise than running a long running main with individual branches to sub field located manifolds.



You said "I don't want to do the extra work if there is no real difference."



Labor is my most expensive commodity. It should be yours as well if you evaluate your time correctly...



ME

4Johnpipe

Remote Manifolds

I think it would be better all around to run leaders to a second floor manifold and keep your loop lengths under control and within limits. Have the carpenter make one wall in the closet a 2"x6" wall and keep the manifolds in the wall covered with an access panel.Keep the manifolds up high and supply and return in separate beam space.

Paulypfunk

Aye, there's the rub

Yes, which would be less work?  Running home runs would involve drilling about 20 more holes across the petrified true dimensional 2x4's, or I get to make the maniflold station by carving it out of the lathe and plaster closet, which is tiny by the way.  The best candidate, the "master bedroom' has a closet of about 2'x4' with built in shelving, which I will need to remove/adapt to build in a wall box.  No carpenters around and no 2x6' walls on this one.  We are getting near the upper limit for the loop limits, but within perameters if we do home runs which is why I was asking about the trapped air, it might be the deciding factor on which way to approach this job.

zacmobile

enclosure

If you use a pre-fabbed steel manifold enclosure you could mount it anywhere, I am putting one right in the middle of a living room wall right now because there was no where else to put it.