Primary Piping (East Coast vs. West Coast)

Alan(CaliforniaRadiant)Forbes

of pictures of the way you guys pipe your zones; beautiful boiler rooms, lots of circulators and lots of boiler room piping. Each zone has a dedicated supply and return to and from the boiler room.

Here on the west coast, I see more piping with a single primary loop and then branches throughout the house to manifolds. These manifolds have zone valves on the piping or manifold actuators and are used for radiant or radiators.

To me, this is a huge cost savings in pumps, piping and labor. One of the drawbacks, though, is that we can't use most of the Danfoss zone control panels; they are set up with zone valves at the panels and you need to have piped all the zones separately.

Any comments?


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zeb_3

I guess it

goes back to the old sayin'(which I hate) "we've always done it that way". I guess (1) I like to do as much work in one area as possible "set up shop" (2) if ya gotta go back you are not trotting across the white carpet.

heatboy

So............

when are you moving East? ;-)

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heatboy

In your picture.........

I noticed the zone valve on the 3 loop. What is controlling the 8 loop, Alan. I think having zone valves and circulators all over the house would drive me nuts, let alone the added service costs to the owner for having to diagnose and troubleshoot from several points in the structure. I use quite a few telestats, but that's really the only thing I like seeing outside the mechanical area. On the East Coast, we have loads of basements (I will never build with a basement), so keeping mechanicals somewhat centralized is much easier.

hb

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Alan(CaliforniaRadiant)Forbes

That 8-loop

manifold will have manifold actuators (telestats). As far as troubleshooting, yeah, I agree, it's awfully nice to have everything in the boiler room. But I work in an area where labor costs are high and if I can save myself a couple of bucks and still have a good system, I'll pipe it that way. But I'm sure it's not as competitive here as with you guys back east. Not that many contractors out here install hydronic heating and it's still a niche market.

Besides, what can possibly go wrong with zone valves? :>)

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hot_rod

Another thought

on the 5 zone ZCP. I removed the supply manifold in the box and piped 1" to all my remote manifolds. I also installed a T&P gauge in this line, outside the box. This saved running, and insulating 5 supplies and 5 returns through the crawl area. My remote manifolds have the same Dahl mini ball valves for minor loop adjustments.

PAP would speed up the piping to the remote manifolds also. Roll it out and make two connections. Easy to slide un slit insulation over as you install it also, since there is no soldering involved.

hot rod