Grafting radiant to hot water baseboard

OneHungLow

Hi, I am building an addition (12x16 over a full basement) to my kitchen....my original plans were for adding 22 linear ft of slant fin baseboard element to my existing hwbb system to handle the load for the existing kitchen ( losing 8 ft of hwbb when wall is removed) and the addition....quick and simple. I am planning to revise my plans to heat this area with staple up radiant pex and heat transfer plates spaced 8". My existing system is a Wiel McLain cg-4-pidn and a taco 007 pumping to 3 parallel fin tube loops. The addition is exposed on 3 1/4 walls, with a calculated heat load of 5254 Btuh from 172 s.f of available floor area. The kitchen is an 8x15 galley with available floor area of 52 s.f due to cabinets and fridge. This means I am trying to get 30.5 Btuh/ft in the addition and 40.2 Btuh/ft in the kitchen. I have read that the kitchen cabinets can have pex run under them w/out the transfer plates but to still avoid the fridge. Is this btu per ft realistic?

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

R-Value

It depends on the R-value of your floor.  Look at this graph:



http://www.radiantengineering.com/ThermoFin/ThermofinOutput.png



It doesn't look promising unless you add a towel warmer or BB as supplemental heating.  Check out this thread for more information:



http://www.heatinghelp.com/forum-thread/134704/heat-for-master-bath



OK to run bare tube under cabinets and refrigerator.

OneHungLow

Radiant options

The floors are going to be tile but I knew I was asking for too much, 40.5 btus/ft.....I am looking at the Ultra Fin system, I have heard from a few pros here that had successful installs. The only system I am aware of that can operate at 180 degrees and deliver up to about 46 btus/ft.

I'm well under this systems claims of capability.

It's a step away from the contact plate conductive systems in the way the tubing is suspended...I really have to look hard at the calculations and this addition has a cantilever that changes the direction of framing for a tricky tube layout. Are you at all familiar with Ultra Fins product? Thanks Bill

OneHungLow

Followed that thread

By the way the thread took my mind away for a good half hour...always some thing to be learned here and the pros are greatly appreciated. They spoke of, and have me looking at, Roth Mini Shunts...what a nice, clean looking solution to an Install similar to mine. Thanks for the heads up...Bill