Radiant Valley

Wayco Wayne_2

of radiant history. I didn't know this place existed. Over in Landover MD just West of DC, is a neighborhood called Radiant Valley. All of the houses were built with radiant slabs back in 1955. A contractor I know bought this house from a foreclosure. It had been abandoned for a while. The original boiler is still in it. An OA Smith, 196000 Btuh natural gas boiler, with separate pilot control. The boiler room was 8 inches below the rest of the house and 3 zones of steel pipe went into and out of the side of the house slab from this room. The mixing of water was done by splitting the return from a 2 inch pipe into 2 1 inch pipes, one going through the boiler and the other going straight to the circulator. I will post some pics.

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Wayco Wayne_2

A little bit

of radiant history. I didn't know this place existed. Over in Landover MD just West of DC, is a neighborhood called Radiant Valley. All of the houses were built with radiant slabs back in 1955. A contractor I know bought this house from a foreclosure. It had been abandoned for a while. The original boiler is still in it. An OA Smith, 196000 Btuh natural gas boiler, with separate pilot control. The boiler room was 8 inches below the rest of the house and 3 zones of steel pipe went into and out of the side of the house slab from this room. The mixing of water was done by splitting the return from a 2 inch pipe into 2- 1 inch pipes, one going through the boiler and the other going straight to the circulator. I will post some pics.

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DanHolohan

Good stuff.

Thanks for sharing that, Wayne.

kevin coppinger_4

Neat stuff...

Do I sence another munchkin install...Was there any insulation? kpc

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Jamie_6

Hey Wayne!

Neat stuff! It looks a lot like a job we just did. On the one we retrofitted the boiler was piped as a secondary circuit through two monoflow tees located before and after the circulator. It was an extremely primitive injection system! Is that how this one works? I can not tell by the pictures, if you get some time would you draw it out and show me? I really like messing around with this old stuff!

Jamie

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Wayco Wayne_2

No insulation

That's why the boiler was 196,000 btu's for such a tiny little house. Did they have syrofoam in 1955? The pipes held pressure. The General contractor's not sure if he wants to try a new boiler on the old system. For all we know the 2 inch pipes could be filled with enough corrosion to make them 1/2 diameter pipe. Kinda like aterio sclerosous.

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Wayco Wayne_2

Monoflo

tees would be more fancy than this. The last 2 pictures show the return pipe above the boiler and the circulator below. The last pipe and the next to the last pipe on the return are, to the circ, and to the boiler. If you look at the circ picture you'll see a balancing valve that can throttle the return to re-route more water through the boiler. I wouldn't want to try and adjust it now, after 49 years. I'd need a very big wrench and a cheater bar, (and a younger stronger version of me).

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