Using Pex Radiant Manifold for Cast Iron Baseboard.

DCCoalBurner

I'm in the process of redoing the heating system in my house 2 stories with unfinished basement. It use to have case iron standing radiators. I took them out and I'm installing 9" Cast Iron Baseboard. Before everything was on one loop and one zone. I'm splitting it into 2 zones for each floor and using 3/4 pex to make the connections. Now this is what I'm planning. I am going to have 2 loops on each zone. Meaning two Manifolds one for each zone. http://www.pexuniverse.com/ssm102-steel-radiant-heat-manifold. Now the Pex Radiant Manifolds have a max flow rate of around 1.6 gpm per loop. Is that going to hinder my BTU output for the cast iron baseboard? Is it worth using this manifolds or am I better off making my own using 3/4 tees and ball valves for each loop? I know that the manifolds have flow gauges. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Rich_49

How many feet of baseboard on each loop ? What is the heat loss of the rooms in each zone ? Did you increase footage of baseboard as it gets farther from the manifold ? What type of boiler ? Max water temp ? Question can be answered correctly but more info is needed .
Can it work and will it flow enough ? Maybe !

DCCoalBurner

Here is the footage of baseboard.
Zone 1:
Loop 1 - 21'
Loop 2 - 30'

Zone 2:
Loop 1 - 12'
Loop 2 - 19'

There is a chance that in the future that I might want to add more baseboard to each zone either in a new loop or adding to the loops depending on how the system preforms.

Zone 1: Around 45K
Zone 2: Around 35.6K

These are the totals for zone. Now part of each zone what have heat installed initially as I'm not sure how I am going to heat it. It wasn't heated originally either. So I know that I currently don't have enough baseboard to supply enough heat.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Did you increase the footage of baseboard as farther from the manifold"

I'm going to be using Coal stroker boiler with and oil boiler as a back up. I'm planning setting the water temp to 180 as that seems like the norm but I'm open to advice on that.

Hilly

If you were using manifolds why would you just homerun each heater and have a manifold per zone. It's a pretty good chance none of your heaters would require more than 1/2" pex or pap. You'd be able to balance your system much better and get a greater overall comfort.

Rich_49

What cast iron baseboard will you use ? seems that you may not have enough baseboard for 180 * water . Your heat loss numbers would suggest that for zone 1 you require 882 BTU per lineal foot .

DCCoalBurner

Hilly said:

If you were using manifolds why would you just homerun each heater and have a manifold per zone. It's a pretty good chance none of your heaters would require more than 1/2" pex or pap. You'd be able to balance your system much better and get a greater overall comfort.

In the future I'm thinking about doing that. I'm running out of time cause it's starting to get cold. My concern is that the max flow rate per loop on a manifold is 1.6 gpm. I afraid that will limit the max BTU's I can output.

DCCoalBurner

Rich said:

What cast iron baseboard will you use ? seems that you may not have enough baseboard for 180 * water . Your heat loss numbers would suggest that for zone 1 you require 882 BTU per lineal foot .

Burnham Base-ray.

I know that I am currently don't have enough baseboard to supply enough heat. Part of the area of each zone wont have heat installed initially as I'm not sure how I am going to heat it. It wasn't heated originally either.

hot_rod

Manifolded, homerun systems are an excellent means to spread the energy, they can be especially useful in renovation work.

After you crunch the numbers, here is a link to some unique way to implement manifold distribution.

http://www.caleffi.com/sites/default/files/file/idronics_4.pdf