Copper ceiling radiant

Jeff Perry_3

Looking at a renovation of a 40's to 50's mansion with copper ceiling radiant in plaster. They are removing 2 ceilings for the renovation and want me to go back with what was there. So they want me to install new copper and they will plaster again.

Has anyone done this? My main concern is if they don't know what they are doing with the plaster and something isn't right with the copper install we could case cracks from expansion and contraction.

Any thoughts?

Interesting side note.... we have the original prints for the house and there is a scribbled note on one of the mechanical pages that says "Total copper used 14,732 feet". Sure wouldn't want to purchase that today. Or install that much copper. But I have to admit it would gaurantee work for a while.

icesailor

Copper radiant:

Where I work, there a number of homes that have the type of radiant that you are describing. It works very well. It is all 1/2" OD tube and stapled to 3/8" gypsum Rock Lath. It was plastered over with standard US Gypsum "Structo-Lite" plaster, two coats, scratched and finished with a white hard hydrated lime hard finish plaster. They have lasted well.

A house I take care of, has these ceilings. I took care of it way back, and was gone for 20 or so years. I'm back now. The previous "heater" replaced the HB Smith boiler with a W-McL WGO7 and eliminated the blending valve. All the ceilings were supposed to crack but they haven't.

It is a standard procedure for the plastering. The Structo-Lite is somewhat soft and maybe allowed for some movement. The biggest danger is carpenters with nail guns and handymen with chisels looking to cut holes in the plaster to find a leak from a bathroom above. 99.99999% of the time, it is leaking around the tub and not a water pipe leaking. But they are not deterred. They chisel away and finally cut a hole in a pipe. THAT is hard to fix.

If you want to become a hero, the connections are always in a closet/space on the floor above. If you carefully figure out what was done, you can install zone valves and get better control of the heat in the house. I used Honeywell "Red Hat" wireless thermostats and a Taco ZV controller. It was a brick 1800 Century mansion. You can have fun with the system if you try. And make some ca$h while at it.

Where are you located? If you are in Southern New England, many of the systems were designed by the same engineer who did the design and sold the systems. Whose name is on the mechanical drawing?

Paul Pollets

Copper Ceiling Radiant

Copper radiant ceilings tend to fail when the original installer tied the tubing to the metal lathe with steel wire. I've fixed several leaks in Seattle where electrolysis caused the leak between the tubing and the steel wire tie. I guess you'll see how well it was done when exposed. I'd consider a pex install, if you see corrosion on the tubing where it touched the wire tie. It's only a matter of time before a pinhole. I've also done a ceiling radiant by laying plates and tubing in the attic side of the ceiling...if there's room to work.

Steve Whitbeck

copper

I replaced one of these cielings with a PEX tubing lay out on top of the new drywall cieling, I used heat spreader plates as much as I could. Worked great.

Gordy

Exactly what I have

I have about 5000' of copper in my ceilings, nice savings account.



Mine is celotex plaster board with metal lath nailed to that. been there since 52 no leaks. Really do not know how tubing is fastened. I  had areas exposed, but they happened to be areas where there were no fasteners, soffits, and such. Electrolysis is a three part equation to happen. So the fastening wire being dissimilar metal alone will not cause electrolysis. Brown coat to level of tubing with skim coat. 





 Copper, and plaster have all most identical coefficients of linear expansion rates.I'm not aware in any of my research of special types of plaster used. All though rooms of larger sizes need to have perimeter expansion  which is usually concealed by crown molding. My living / dining room is 15'x35' it has crown molding, but have not verified to see if it is concealing a perimeter expansion. My guess would be yes since it is the only room in the house of that size with crown molding.



Some literature in Dans library on this from the era. Good reading I still have the Chase copper, and Brass literature that came with the house.



I really think that pex, and plates would be a different performance level than what I have. I just think embedded tubing is second to none, esspecially copper over plastic.



Wonderful stuff.



As to Ice's comment yeah I was gutting the shower today being well aware what may lurk in the walls. Gee it only lasted 60 years a little disappointed. When  Behold copper return for the ceiling radiant. I would hate to think what could happen to someone hacking away at the plaster with a sawzall, and cut the line not knowing where to begin to shut it down what it was for etc. This may prove to be a handy spot for the return may tap in some copper floor in the mud bed of the shower stall.



Gordy

Jeff Perry_3

The performance issue

is why they want to go back original. The concern is the PEX will not perform the same. Or expand and contract the same. We have 60+ years with this. Don't argue with success. I will be interested to see exactly how it is attached. The construction of the house is metal trusses with concrete on all 3 floors. And since they are only renovating the 2 rooms we are not going to change anything else like zoning. One thing I will be able to potentially do is rebuild the boiler piping. The old original Sarcotherm mixing valve is still there. God only knows if it's still working. Probably not. And around here, for some reason, the old contractors used the old square head gascocks as valves and 99% of the time you couldn't turn them if you had to.

Here's a relatively bad pic of the boiler piping. No light and a phone camera.

Jeff Perry_3

The performance issue

is why they want to go back original. The concern is the PEX will not perform the same. Or expand and contract the same. We have 60+ years with this. Don't argue with success. I will be interested to see exactly how it is attached. The construction of the house is metal trusses with concrete on all 3 floors. And since they are only renovating the 2 rooms we are not going to change anything else like zoning. One thing I will be able to potentially do is rebuild the boiler piping. The old original Sarcotherm mixing valve is still there. God only knows if it's still working. Probably not. And around here, for some reason, the old contractors used the old square head gascocks as valves and 99% of the time you couldn't turn them if you had to.

Here's a relatively bad pic of the boiler piping and another of the mixing valve. Sorry about quality. No light and a phone camera.

Jeff Perry_3

No attic.

Concrete floors on metal trusses above all radiant ceilings. Not opening anything else up except the 2 rooms. No interest, or money, to zone. 4 zones now, one for each floor and new owners are happy with that. As far as anyone is aware, there have been no failures in this system to this point.

Thanks

Jeff

Jeff Perry_3

Can't do that here

Concrete floors on metal trusses above. And definitely metal mesh with plaster going back. No sheetrock.

Gordy

Taco paneltrol

http://www.heatinghelp.com/files/articles/1224/56.pdf what mine has.



Still works like new, Jeff.



Gordy

Mike Kusiak_2

Square head cocks

The square head cocks were typically used as balancing valves for the various zones. They were recommended back then by B&G to control flow, as they were less likely to be messed with by homeowners and uninformed servicemen.



Maybe its good that they don't turn, as someone probably spent a lot of time adjusting them to get even heating throughout the house.

Jeff Perry_3

They're all

wide open.

Mike Kusiak_2

Oh well

I guess there was no guarantee that someone wouldn't mess with them over the last 60 years.



Here is a link to the Wall library 1949 B&G Handbook chapter on hydronic heating. There is a great reference to radiant of the 40's and 50' at the end of the chapter.



http://www.heatinghelp.com/files/articles/955/281.pdf

icesailor

Zoning:

Jeff, maybe it isn't practical to zone. But on the floor above the ceiling, there is usually a place to balance the circuits. The combined circuits were usually a split loop so you could get even flow on two sides, After the manifold with the balancing cocks, where it turned to 1" tube is where I installed the zone valves. It just gave me the ability to have better control over the floor. It was a cheap fix. Cut in a Taco 572 zone valve and some wireless thermostats. It was so easy, it was stupid. And it solved a problem that existed from 1963.

I was just sharing an experience I had. Maybe it won't work for you or your customer. But it might for someone else.

Jeff Perry_3

We looked everywhere

There is nothing on the floor above each radiant ceiling. Every door, access and nook and cranny was looked at. We even looked inside the dumb-waiter chase and there is nothing. Only thing accessible is the purge drains and key vents attached to soft tubing coming thru the ceilings of closets to bleed everthing. And the original mech drawings show no above the floor stuff. There isn't anything else we can do nor that the owner or contractor want done.

Nice thought though.

Gordy

Pics

 Some pics of distribution piping through out would be nice. Was it piped parallel?



Be careful what gets changed in that facet. The only bleeders I have are in the basement on the returns for each loop. In the begining it seemed sort of dumb not to have some type of bleeder at the top, but this method works perfectly because of the way the return mains are piped. The air collects in the return risers which pick up the entrained air, and is easily bled from the return bleeders on the loops. But my house is a ranch, and not a three story.



Gordy

Jeff Perry_3

I'll get good pics

if I get the job. Then I can light up the basement and take some. There are coin vent bleeds in closets where they ran soft 1/8" tubing off the top of the distribution and bent them down so they are below the closet ceilings. Only piping we can even see is the immediate boiler piping as once it leaves the Sarcotherm mixing valve it disappears up into the ceiling. Even the boiler room ceiling in this place is finished.

Probably going to change the boiler piping to give them working isolation valves and a Tekmar outdoor reset control and motorized 4-way valve. And the 4-way will give us boiler protection too, which it doesn't have. And some thermometers.

Jeff

Gordy

Mod/Con

No new mod/con boiler?  Perfect marriage to any ceiling radiant system.



Gordy

Jeff Perry_3

I agree but

no boiler in budget.

icesailor

Radiant:

I hope you get the job.

All the radiant ceiling jobs that were done where I work used an Allen-Bradley analog controller that would control the radiant temperature with ODR and then used a 6006A Honeywell to stop the circulators if the radiant temperature went over 150 degrees.

They used little gas petcocks that had a bulb end that you could stick a rubber hose on. Then, a float vent on the end of the manifold that led to points in the cellar where it could overflow and another with a petcock so you could drain it without going upstairs.

If you are looking to install a 4-way valve, check out Taco's "I" series 4-way. It has either ODR or boiler control. It comes with the sensors. After using one on an old gravity system, I can imagine how you could use one in your application and it would really be nice. I could see how I could use one in MY system but the guy before me, connected the high temperature and blended water together when he removed the Sarco blender and replaced the boiler. The old boiler would heat the house easily. The new one never will. No one lives in it in the winter but the heat is on, set at 50 degrees so no one knows but me and the owner doesn't have to know. She would be outraged if she knew. 

When I get back home to Massachusetts, I'll take some photos if you are interested and can figure out how to post them.

Gordy

Some pics

I was wrong the layering goes

Celotex Plaster board

Metal lath

Copper tubing fastened with copper piping fastening clips

Brown coat to top of tubing

Finish coat.



This pic was of a portion of soffit tin the kitchen I removed. It appears the metal lath runs over top of the tubing, but that is only at the corners where the lap the metal lath.



 So it appears to me the ceiling was done first then the walls as far as the metal lath which laps over the tubing at the ceiling wall intersection by about 6".



 The other pics are of the manifolds that were used in certain locations, and the return riser piping that collects the air. The supply runs the length of the house under the floor joists. The return starts out in the crawl space opposite end of house boiler is on at floor joist elevation, and then goes down in the concrete slab  once it exits the crawl space where basement is full depth all the way back to the boiler where it comes out again.



The other is of the taco paneltrol still chuggin away.



Gordy