adding a kickspace heater

Gregg Massard

I want to add a kickspace heater to an existing forced HW system. I have 3 separate 3/4 inch zones feeding baseboard and would like to just add the kickspace heater to one of the zones - but the heater is 1/2 inch. I could run another zone just for that, but couldn't I also just plumb it in parallel and use valves to balance it? Is there a better way?

David Sutton_3

Mono flow tees

just add mono flow tees and pipe it off the kitchen zone so it all works together, just watch your spacing between the tees,

Unknown

Yep , we use 2 monoflow tees

If you have the room , try to get a valve between the tees , to force water through the kick heater if it gets air bound . But to tell you the truth , we never neeeded a valve there yet - they always purge fine without it , so far .

Steamhead

I usually do this

Since the combined flow in two 1/2-inch pipes roughly equals the flow in a single 3/4-inch pipe, I split the flow in the 3/4-inch loop with a pair of 3/4 x 1/2 x 1/2 tees. Half the flow goes thru the kicker and the other half bypasses it. This maintains the proper flow in the loop and also makes some more heat available to baseboards or other heat transmitters located beyond the kicker. You could do the same thing with a pair of Monoflo tees but this way is a bit simpler.

With this setup, the kicker does not usually need an air vent on it if you're Pumping Away.

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Unknown

It depends on which kickspace heater.

Some fan coils in these are piped with the tubes in series, with U-bends at the ends of the coil tubes. These have quite a bit of pressure drop through them, and need to be piped as has been described above.

Some have manifolds at the ends of these tubes, with ALL of the tubes flowing in parallel, together. There is VERY LITTLE pressure drop through these type heaters. There is more loss through some 3/4" valves.


You can pipe these in series with your baseboard loop. You need to watch water temperature with EITHER method, as the water at the beginning of a zone is a wee bit hotter than it is at the far end of the zone. Too cool water, or too slow a flow rate, can cycle the fan off and on and blow cool air.

http://www.slantfin.com/prod-kicker.html

Noel