Noob

Bobbito

Hello All and thanks in advance for your help!



I'm 100% new to hydronic heating, I grew up with forced air but the house I bought is set up for hot water. I also hear its MUCH more efficient. With that, I'm installing an all new system because I'm here in Detroit, MI and copper thieves practically picked the house clean before I bought it. I view this as a positive and negative, its positive in that I get to put in an all new, highly efficient system. Its negative because its so expensive. That said, I've done some homework and here is what I'm going to be using:



Navien CH-210-NG Boiler

Slant/Fin Multi Pak 80 Baseboard Heaters

Beacon Morris K84 Kickspace Heater (kitchen, and other places)

Taco 007 Pumps

Taco SR503-3 Switching Relay



I'm installing a single pipe system with air valves at the start of each loop. So that's 3 zones (1 per floor), 2 loops per zone, for a total of 6 loops = 6 air vents. There is also, of course, the expansion tank, air separator, manifolds, etc.



My question starts here:



Every diagram I've seen of a single pipe system has a main line and the radiators fed off branch lines that come off of that main line. What would happen if the radiators were fed directly off the main line?



I also read in some places that for single pipe systems the radiator should be tilted toward the supply line. In what few baseboards I have left and in every other baseboard system I've seen, I've NEVER seen the baseboards titled, so this concerns me.



Also, please, offer any advice given the system I've described. Any little "industry secrets" that will help make this an easier installation or work more efficiently for me will be greatly appreciated.

Gordy

Step one

Heat loss calculation for the dwelling room by room. With out it you have no idea how many feet of base board, or type. Water temps to supply them, and the flow rate needed to off set the heat loss of each room, or zone. This information will also decide the size of the boiler needed.



With out that everything is shooting from the hip. You run the risk of over sizing the boiler, or under radiating rooms, or the opposite of both.



You don't know of what was existing was sized correctly so do your own calcs.

CMadatMe

Also Going to Need

To replace the standard aquastat the comes with those kicks to low temp aquaststs. Beacon has them available for those kicks.

Tex

keep it simple

Sounds like the pipping your trying is a monoflow system, which requires special T's and are difficult to bleed. If your zones are 3/4" and less than 70' just run in and out of all the fin tube on each floor and you will have no issues. Also no need to slant the registers that is something doe for steam systems just make them level. Good Luck



Josh

Heating Alaska

Bobbito

Getting More Comfortable

Thanks everyone for the responses!



@Gordy, I've already performed the heat loss calculation and know the minimum length of baseboard I need at 1 GPM.



@Chris, I cant really use aquastats on my system, you'll see why...



@Tex, thanks for that, I hadn't heard of Monoflow system before and in searching it out I found this site that I ask you all to visit:



All the system layouts I had seen before looked like the "Monoflow" layout, although before I had only ever seen this design called a "single pipe system." If you take a look at the Series Loop layout, that is exactly what my question was referencing: What would happen if the baseboards were fed off the main line directly and not a branch line. This pretty much answers my question, so I'll have a single-pipe series loop system!



Again, thanks everyone!

CMadatMe

The Kick Heaters

Have aqua stats built into them. You will have to change them.

SWEI

single pipe series loop

remember to account for the drop in water temp -- baseboard will need to get longer and longer as you move down the line.

Bobbito

Aquastat

Thanks! I hadn't thought of that. In this Series-Loop configuration, that aquastat would keep that loop from circulating, it'd never get hot. I just need the unit to turn on immediately when it senses water flowing. They are made to continue operating even after water has stopped flowing to make use of the still-hot water. I wonder if I can preserve that functionality even if I remove the aquastat.

Bobbito

Aquastats

I forgot to include that the boiler will be set to put out 180 degree water. Also the heating loops aren't all that long. The longest will be 38' of heating element. The loop the kitchen will be on will have 11' of heating element + the kickspace heater. One of the bedroom loops will have ~20' + kickspace heater #2. So I'm not expecting much temperature drop, the house is well insulated and given these short lengths of heating loops I'm really not anticipating more than a 40-degree drop, so with probably 175-180 degree water @ 3gpm it should heat up pretty quickly!