hydronic register loop length

John Ruhnke

Libjim,

Were these people the low bidder by any chance? Of course the job was done very poorly. I'm sure you have other problems that aren't mentioned.

Smashing the fins reduces the output of the baseboard. It means that you will have to run hotter then usual water through the baseboard to compensate. It will cost you more money in fuel bills to run hotter temps. For every two or three degrees you increase in water temps it will cost you 1% on your fuel bills. I estimate that you will spend about 10% more in fuel bills because of the smashed fins. This is a rough guess of course. What the new output is nobody knows. That is if they can even put out enough at the higher temps. If the rooms are cold in January and Febuary you will have a problem.

Also you can get about 40,000 btu's through a standard 3/4 baseboard pipe at a delta tee of 20. So yes some of the rooms would be cold because you have twice as much as you want to have on one loop.

I also never would have changed out the boiler. The house most likely would have ran better with the old boiler instead of the new boiler. Unless the boiler was old and out of shape. Most boilers are oversized. 105,000 sounds a little big for that sized house. Of course a proper heatloss would have to be done to tell.

I would tell the contractor that you are very unhappy with the results. If you haven't paid the contractor in full, I would demand the job to be done right and all of the baseboard replaced before I paid him. Also tell him to split the loop up into smaller sections.

JR

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libjim

hydronic register loop length

I am hoping that someone can help me! We recently had hydronic baseboard heat installed in a new addition to our home. Our contractor installed ARGO (Mestek brand) panel registers. He spray painted them and during installation the paint chipped and peeled. We conviced him to replace the metal work which he did, but unfortunately he ordered the metal work for ARGO's low trim registers. The larger core of the original installation did not fit in the smaller metal work, so he "made" them fit by crushing the fins down the entire length of each core. The core is now touching the front plate and the back plate. When my husband tested the system, he found that the front plate of some of the registers reached 130 degrees. We contacted Mestek directly and were told by their product manager that the registers could not be installed in that manner.

We began contacting other HAVC places to get estimates on having the registers redone correctly. One of the plumbers was shocked that the original job was not zoned. He said that the loop length was too long to heat all the room sufficiently. The length of tubing was so long that the water temperature would drop by the time it reached the last two rooms. Those rooms would be colder than the rest of the house. At this point we don't know WHO to believe. Any help you could offer would be appreciated!

Our original home was 1190 sq. ft with a loop length of 204 ft including piping and registers. We had a 75,000 BTU boiler. After the addition, we have ONE continuous 414 ft loop heating a 1810 sq. ft. home. Our new boiler is 105,000 BTU.

Could someone give us an opinion on whether the original installation was done poorly and needs to be redone? Thanks!!

Brad White_105

I agree with John

I would have tried to work with the existing boiler and replace it only if on it's last legs, but also if replaced it would be sized to a calculated heat loss. The 75,000 BTU boiler would seem at first look to adequately heat an 1810 SF insulated home in zero degree weather (33 BTU's per hour per SF if 80% efficient seems reasonable to me.)

A single 414 foot loop?? So if you get too warm you move toward the end of the loop and if too cold you move to the beginning? What a concept. No way to live.

I would have a very pointed conversation with the contractor, hold all retainage and use the manufacturer's recommendations as a lever. Regardless of contracted details, installing material contrary to a manufacturer's listing tends to prevail for your side in arbitration if it comes to that.

As a matter of your path to correction, here is one experience I had some years ago: I investigated and fixed a similar issue (not so egregious as yours seems to be) in an expanded ranch house with over-extended baseboard, probably double the element which the pipe size could support. The fix was to split the zone and feed one of the most heavily glazed rooms (floor to ceiling glass and formerly the coldest room) first. What we would hope for you is that the piping can be intercepted from a basement or crawlspace directly below. The heating elements are an issue on their own. Without seeing them, replacement may well be required.

Want to know who to believe? Most any of us here. You may see occasional differences of opinion but within that, consensus.

Good Luck-

Brad