Thermostatic radiator valves?

scottPW

I have a friend who had an addition put on his house: a kitchen, a basement rec room below that, and a laundry room beside the kitchen. The contractor told him he could do the heating. Well it turns out he didnt know what he was doing, and now all 3 new rooms are cold and its now my job to make it right. lucky me. he has fha heat in house now but since rooms are all finished i thought the least messy way to do this would be to use hydronics. I have a total heat load of only 16,000 btu/h, so i came out with a 5' run of baseboard in laundry, a 10' run in basement and 2 small kickspace heaters in kit. I could run this with tstats and zone valves, or i thought i might try thermostatic rad valves with 1 loop of piping to all 4 convectors with bypass piping. If i pipe the kickspace heaters with diverter tees (they have 1/2" connections) will this work? Do they make a thermostatic valve with a remote sensor to be mounted say on the kickplate near units? If i use standard ones the valve would be under the cabinet and not sense temp in room very well. My reason for doing this is to avoid tstats on walls due to lack of space (most covered w/ cabinets). Are there any better ways to control the temp in that kitchen? Also, any ideas on the boiler because this is such a small load the smallest boilers make 3x that output, not that it will make a huge cost diff. any help would be appreciated greatly! thanks