Joe the Toe, overloaded!

Harvey Ramer

Tomorrow I go look at a radiant floor system that has 180°F water running through it.   

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Rich_49

NICE

let me guess . It also has a mod con in an attempt to be efficient .  Please let us know what you find Harvey .

icesailor

Efficient:

And an electric water heater too?

Harvey Ramer

Turns out...

It is a log home. The tubing is stapled to the subfloor with those tin foil excuses of plates. Even at 180° the floor could not keep up so they added baseboard as well.



You are correct Rich. They have an HTP mod con. Very nice plumbing job but the contractor obviously had not a clue how to set up the boiler controls and associated wiring. After an episode of chronic short cycling he installed an outdoor sensor and the homeowner swears that it fixed the problem,,,,, but now he doesn't have hot water when it gets warm outside. Ya know the DHW is a zone after all and only needs to be wired to the green Taco box, no need to wire it to the boiler, especially if you don't know where to connect it ;-)



Also, no heat load was done. In short, it was done by a plumber who is not a Hydronics Professional.



I have work to do. Aside from properly setting up the controls, my main goal here is to reduce the water temp as much as possible. I need to make the system compatible with an Econoburn and storage tank setup that we will be putting in for him.  Extruded plates aren't happening according to the home owner, so that is that. I'm thinking of switching the baseboard to Heating Edge controlled by thermostats or TRV's . The radiant floors I may put on constant circulation and ODR curve. I would simply chop the top of the curve off (if the HTP control allows) and set the boiler high temp to the max temp I want in the system. Not sure how flexible this control is with ODR.  



Lot of things to consider.



Harvey

Gordy

Full log home?

If so and chinking is not maintained an ever changing envelope. Many different styles of connection in the log stacking detail. Poor maintenance equals submarine with screen doors.



Good Luck I know the out come will be better with your knowledge.... Even better with out owner constraints.

Harvey Ramer

Gordy

It is a full log home. About 6-7" logs. They are keyed top and bottom so somewhat interlocking. Also a piece of sticky foam in the interlock instead of chinking. The logs are about 20 years old now and have quite a bit of shrinkage here and there. Insects and bugs like packing mud, grass, twigs and such in every little crack and crevice.  I wonder what the possibilities would be to program their little beetle brain to chink a log home ;-)



First thing on the list is a Blower door test. I just need to find someone local who has one and knows how to use it. I'm looking in the Energy Auditor field, but struck out thus far.



Harvey

Weezbo

Well if you test it tomorrow...

you may get lucky and it melt over night. don't let it get you down Harvey You can dial a log cabin in with som Rads maybe and make it very skookem.



The blower door test is a great way to get some accurate information before trying to do much of anything other than a recon mission in your superman shirt .. you will probably need it on that job no matter what the heat loss numbers are.



Weezbo.



*`//: )

bill_105

skookum

I wonder how many people recognize that word. We were just in Carmack.