My first radiant install...

The Wire Nut

but here are some pictures of my on-going bathroom renovation.

After perusing around The Wall, firing off a few posts of questions, and digging around the internet, I finally came up with the design.

I ran heat loss calcs using the Slant-Fin and Wirsbo programs, and they were 100% apart in the calculations. To be fair to both, I have a unique situation, in that the house is a stone shell with a lath and plaster building on the inside. And I'm using Icynene foam insulation which doesn't really translate well into "R" values. Plus there were an number of other odd construction issues...

The house is heated with steam, recently reinstalled by yours truly, with lots of kind help and encouragement from a number of you on The Wall. But I wanted to get my hands wet (pun?) by supplimenting the bathroom with some nice tootsie warming floors and a towel warmer...

I have a great supply house and they carry Wirsbo among the mix, but they were, alas, out of stock on Quik-Trak, so I decided to build my own...

The sub-floor is 1/2 B/C ply and on top of that I laid 7" wide strips of 1/2 ply with a 1/2 gap. Under the strips I placed aluminum roof flashing. The loops I measured with some 3/8 copper tubing (my original tubing of choice) and cut with a jig-saw.

The tubing covers the bathroom floor area and under the cast-iron tub...

The hePex went in quickly and it's held in place with silicone sealer.

This weekend I'll pressure test it, then we'll cover it with 3/4 Ash flooring (against a lot of sound advice, but we are pressed for time as we need this done prior to the stork's arrival sometime this month) and the heat is supplimental, not primary...

Final connections won't be for awhile, but I am planning a Munckin (hi Jeff and Chuck!) with an indirect for DHW...

Weezbo

that sure is one pinner zone

the smallest loop i ever installed was like 125 ' long and another super zippy zone with its own pump that had all of 6 ' of baseboard on it:))) basically a bypass it sure Looks like it is going to help

Constantin

Hey Alex, Double Congrats!

First, for building a good-looking, home-made quick-Trak system, secondly for being about to become a father... You do have to much spare time, don't you? If the house didn't then the kid will now see for an end to that... :-)

Depending on the the thickness of the Icynene, I would be surprised if the towel warmer + floor combo wouldn't keep the room warm enough except on the coldest of nights... I would explore a TRV on the steam radiator (from your description, I assume one is there) then see how often it actually activates...

If there is one thing I wonder about, it's how the floor is sealed. We're putting in stone floors in our bathrooms (along with floor drains) because I don't want to deal with leaks destroying the rest of the house. A rubber membrane under the regular floor, a double one in the shower should see to most water going to where it is supposed to go.

In a wood-floored bathroom, I wonder how the water can be kept from penetrating down, unless you're using a laminate floor system. I suppose a constant curculation system combined with a repeated application of polyurethane may work well enough... is this how you're going to prevent the ash from working too much?

Ernie

Ash Flooring

If time allows coat the bottom side,edges and ends with a alkyd based polyurethane, you won't be sorry. Will help with movement and keep out water that is sure to eventually stain as ash has large open grain. You might want to check if uncured poly will have any effect on pex if it is not completely dry.

The Wire Nut

Time, who has time?

Between the house, the apartment, my (grrr) clients, and half a dozen other things, the kid should be a piece of cake. Sleep, cry, eat, defecate, urinate, sleep.... which is probably what I'm going to be doing...

We pulled the radiator out of the bathroom, as we needed every square inch. As it is, it's under 50 sq feet... The room, though, stays warm from the surrounding space, which has too much radiation (STEAM!)... Even with the Icynene in the floor, the room stays comfortable. So the radiant is just icing on the feet, as it were...

Sealing the floor is an interesting issue. We are going to have it sanded, stained and sealed, and sealed, and sealed... The old downstairs bathroom (from the early '60s)has raw hemlock floors (from 1841), not even tongue and groove... It seems to have survived the water fairly well...

We were going to do tile, but since my saintly (mostly, it seems, because she puts up with me, right Ken and Dan?)Layla was going to do the work, and as she was getting more and more pregnant as the project dragged on, we went back to wood...

But, in discussions tonight, we kind of figured that we won't get this done before the out biker-wethead appears, so maybe we'll go back to tile...

Learn to plan, and plan to learn!

The Wire Nut

Good suggestion...

It makes sense to seal it as much as possible... We were going to put rosin paper between the sub-floor and the ash. I wonder if that's enough protection for the Pex?

Thanks for the great suggestion...