Radiant Tube

Tim Doran

Experts

"The reader has to know how much it cracks me up to hear these folks tout themselves as heat transfer authorities".

Another interesting reply. So what is it that makes you an expert or that makes your research and data any more credible than ours? I am certainly no expert but I would consider several of the professors that are helping me to be experts. One is the head of the engineering department at a leading European university and a fellow at ASHRAE, the second is the professor of technical physics at another leading university and the third is a major contributor at ASHRAE and a consulting enginner. All are widely respected authorities in this field. So once again, what makes your data any better than ours?

I am also interested in your pictures. Why do you have copper in one picture and pex in the others? How about keeping apples to apples?

The bottom line is this. There are differences in the products and T-fin does offer more output at the same water temperature. The user will have to decide what is considered "Much" in terms of the common statement that T-fin offers much more output. In my opinion the data shows that the difference is insignificant. What will the home owner experience with one vs. the other? Will there be a noticable difference in thermal comfort or measurably decreased cost of operation? I doubt that anyone could tell
the difference.

What I do see as a measurable difference to the installer or homeowner is this. If it's Joist Trak and HePex and something goes wrong I'm only a phone call away and so are the dozens of others in our support network. If it's brand a with brand z and a little brand p mixed in who do they turn to? I saw on the RPA site that there is an issue with a certain type of plates and a certain type of pex. Who is responscible and who makes it right?

Tim D.

leo g_13

From what

I have read here, I would agree with you Rob. I guess the difference in my part of the world, is that we are working with relatively "medium" ODT. So maybe that is why I have not come across the Thermofin et al style of plate. Or maybe it is because so many just do the hanging method (as I use to also, until I got edumacated) here that the more costly brands would not find a market here. Oh well, one day.....

Leo G

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rb_6

ASHRAE 138

I'm really looking forward to the day when ASHRAE 138, Method of Testing for Rating Ceiling Panels for Sensible Heating and Cooling gets released and adopted because we should with some basic revisions be able to adopt the procedures to floor and wall heating systems. Then each competitors product and assembly could be measured against a standard test.

Absence of published test data to a recognized standard from a certified facility always leads to interesting conversations.

Tony_8

I'm not

the one comparing brands. I simply stated my experience with J-T. It happens to be what is available to me and was a hard sell over staple-up as it was.(Everybody's an expert, you know)

As far as parroting is concerned, that's not my style. I'm my own man and I'm sure I can tell differences in products when presented with a fair comparison. I'll ignore the implication from here forward.

Tim Doran

Soon

I will model them when I have a chance. There will certainly be a difference but I suspect that it is not as great as we would all think. I'll go out on a limb and guess at 10%-to 15%.

Tim D.

Tim Doran

Not confusing

Good thoughts, I am not confusing specific heat with conductivity. I am mearly pointing out that they work in concert to an extent. My understanding is that a material can only move heat relative to temperature differential, conductivity of it and it's sorroundings, and it's ability to act as a capasitor. Things like emissivity and angle factors also play a part in radiant transfer. Am I missing something? Keep sharing so we can all keep learning.

Tim D.

hr

Love to see ASHRAE 138

but the issue I have heard so far is manufactures may be reluctant to submit their product for testing.

As we talked about this at several RPA board meetings the manufactures present had cool feelings about third party testing and ratings?? And who would pay for this 3rd party testing? The manufactures felt their own testing and output claims are just fine. They've already paid for those results.


What it really comes down to is how good is good enough. Some say 10- 15% is not much of a difference. Yet we all are seeking higher efficiency boilers that are working in that same % arena. Plain to see most contractors are willing to gamble on this new technology as consumers demand it.

If money allowed, seems a 90% plus heat generator, with an excellent thermal conductor, say gold pipe for instance A good transfer product, aluminum gets close for the cost and workability. Efficient responsive controls, then a good insulation package around the assembly.

The goal would be to heat the space, comfortably, with the lowest possible fluid temperatures, with the most energy efficient appliance.

This may not be the "everyman's system" at least until energy prices double again!

Look at what happened to GM when they put so much faith into their SUV product. Around here they are advertizing $4,000 rebates. Can't give the **** away. All of a sudden that 15 mpg figure starts to look really bad to the consumer as oil prices continue to rise. Status symbol be dammed

hot rod

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ALH_3

There's a lot to it

Apparently I misunderstood your point earlier.

I agree. The idea of using the most conductive material economically possible is an attempt to minimize the temperature differential required to drive the heat through the plate, and also to distribute the heat as evenly across the plate as possible. This is all very analogous to electricity. Each material in the floor is acting as a resistor in the circuit. If we can remove resistors (such as removing a layer of plywood) we increase the potential.

The easiest resistor to remove is any air gap in the path between the tube and the heated space. So a tight fit is critical. This is a major drawback to systems such as Ultra Fin and staple-up. It takes a lot of potential to transfer the heat through air and to create strong enough convection currents in the joist bay, thus the higher fluid temperatures required with these systems.

Once any air gaps are removed, the next area of attack is to provide as much transfer area as possible. The fatter the wires, the more current you can pass through them at a given voltage. This is also where material selection is important. The pex is a resistor that could be replaced with copper. That's not very practical in most situations however. Plywood is essentially the same. Insulating floor coverings are obviously to be avoided if possible.

I'm not sure what you're getting at when you mention capacitors. From what I can tell, the closest thing to a capacitor in the system is the fluid. If we can increase the heat capacity of water there will be more energy stored at the same temperature. Would that decrease temperature differentials across the loops? Viscosity and turbulence are also important because of the thickness of the boundary layer of the fluid on the wall of the pipe.

Foil facings seem very mis-used. I really dont understand what the theory is behind the foil tape used with Sub Ray. The tape is too thin to really do much conduction, and even if it did it should be stuck to the underside of the flooring. This assumes the tube is in contact with the foil, which I think is a reasonable assumption since it's at the bottom. Wouldn't conduction take over any reflection of the radiant heat from the tube at that point? That might not be an easy question to answer. My feeling is that the tape is mostly to make people feel good about the product, which is a marketing factor that cannot be ignored.

If it heats the house and the customer likes the product, then it's a success. We all have our preferences and thought processes. Some products really do work better than others. Where do we draw the line at what works acceptably and what doesn't? What's worth the extra money and what isn't? Those are subjective answers and I think that's where many of the product disagreements stem from here.

These are all very qualitative statements, but quantifying them can be extremely difficult.

-Andrew

Nick_16

I agree

I agree that increasing the plates conductivity by say 25% will not increase heat output by 25%. However, If you install 25% more pex tubbing and heat transfer plates of any kind, you should increase by 25% output. Am I right?

rb_6

Bingo

I'm guessing the reluctant manufactures are not Twa, Frenger, or Invensys ... but other less well known entities. Kind of like the no name brand mid efficiency boiler co. complaining about the market leader high efficiency co. responsible for pushing the environmental combustion standards bar higher than they can reach. They would spend more time fighting the improvement than improving their product. So how far is too far – is like how good is good enough…that’s more fodder for the frying pan.

Looking forward to some more therm pics...

ALH_3

Output

Not necessarily. As far as conductivity, all we're trying to achieve is an even temperature plate. Aluminum does this very nicely and it's the right price.

Say you have Thermofin-U 4 inches on center. The floor is a sheet of 0.050in aluminum effectively. You have 1 square foot of aluminum per square foot floor area.

Then say you go to 8 inches on center. You then have 0.333 square feet of aluminum per square foot floor area on average.

Is the output of 8oc 0.333 times the output of 4oc?

Nope. Hot Rod's IR photos illustrate it. The wood conducts the heat laterally so that even where there is no fin there is still some, not insignificant, output. Also the joist bay warms up to equilibrium particularly with below floor fin, especially on constant circulation systems.

What percentage it actually would theoretically be, I can't tell you off the top of my head. It's definitely not linear.

Closer spacings do allow more output. Tighten up the warm strips in HR's photos and you get close to an even temperature, very high output potential, surface.

IMO anything closer than 6oc is overkill because of the diminishing output returns. Below floor has it's own issues due to joist spacing. Anything other than 8oc is a pain.

It's not easy to take something round and make it behave like something flat.

-Andrew

Dale Pickard

Pex in Tfin

Here you go.

Dale

Dale Pickard

To answer your questions

What make us qualified?

We did the studies you are starting over 12 years ago.

We produced the original design for extruded heat transfer plates intended for floor heating applications. We didn't just knock off someone else's design and ignore basic heat transfer principles.

We installed, maintained and evaluated hundreds of heating systems and continued to refine our design of the extruded heat transfer plates. Our refinements were done for technical reasons, not cynical, greedy ones.

For all of your paid consultants, and your toy computer software, you manage to produce a heat transfer plate
design that is an unexplained compromise of basic principles of heat transfer.

Our simple, uncompromised heat transfer plate designs are available from us directly and also available from other responsible manufacture's. Presently Zurn, Viega, Watts, Slant Fin, and Roth produce heat transfer plates of our design that do not incorporate the inherent defects of design seen in the Brand X plate.

We did this without your money and your resources. To a large extent, we did this in spite of you.

Truth over power.

Dale

Dale Pickard

Not reluctant

You can add us to the list of those who are not reluctant. We donated the ThermoFins used in the U Kansas study.

I'm a little concerned that the "testing" fairly compare methods. I am less enamored of "laboratory" testing. Read Hot Rod's post above about how the real world sorts things out. I think that the engineering community needs to incorporate real world, human impressions and reliability into the evaluation of different methods. I'd really like to see a monitoring program of case studies. The contractor in me tells me that case studies are the way to go. We go farther faster in the field than we can in the lab.

Dale

Mark Hunt

Oh don't worry Tim


I already placed my order for the Joist Trac.

It's sitting in a warehouse waiting for me along with the Quik-trak.

Wirsbo will get every plate job I get.

Thanks for all that you folks do!!!!!!!

Mark H

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Dan Foley

I'll second that

We have installed many thousand joist trak plates without any problems. Wirsbo has been a great business partner. -DF

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Tim Doran

Toy?

So when you ran FEA it was science and when we run FEA it's a toy? Seems like a very arrogant statement to me. You'll find it interesting that I predicted this response to a close friend on Thursday.

"We did this without your money and your resources. To a large extent, we did this in spite of you".

So you worked this stuff out over 12 years ago and did it without us and in spite of us. Why then was a link to our web site and our logo on your web site as recently as two to three years ago? It wasn't long ago that the empty block that used to be our logo was still there. Why then were you also looking for our business in the not so distant past?

So enough is enough. We can argue this stuff for ever and no-one will really win. My belief will remaine that the differences in these products yields a relatively small difference in performance at the end of the day and I would suspect that you will hold onto your belief that the difference is more significant. I would not expect anything different.

One final thought. If the RPA or some other organization gets into the testing and verification business and prints data that supports one belief over another where do we go from there. What will these threads look like then?

Tim D.

hr

By far the biggest issue with transfer plates

would be operator error! The care taken to adequately fasten them and assure good contact over the entire surface is the biggest performance robber.

If the screws or nails are not pulling them tightly to the subfloor a tiny air gap will make a huge difference.

Also some thinner plates distort when a power fastener is shot through them. this too can cause them to not "contact" properly.

Take a 12" piece of the transfer plate and drag. on edge, it along the bottom of the subfloor. This will show any nail points or other stuff that might keep the plate from contacting tightly.

I'd like to see peel and stick transfer plates! Maybe a few fasteners for alignment purposes. Must be a thermal transfer double sided tape out there somewhere

Notice in this picture I pulled the plates down away from the subfloor to make the pex crimp (this is actually copper in ThermoFin) I forgot to re screw the plate after I crimped. Notice the difference, even though the plate did go back up, it was not fastened tightly.

hot rod

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Unknown

2 Question for the Great Plate Debate;

I'm surprised to find Radiant Engineering is fond of PEX C, PAP and copper for the ThermoFin. Why PEX C over A or B?

Also, it seems to me that PAP would be a poor choice for any plate because the tubing has to be forced (smooshed) into the channel. Since PAP has no memory, wouldn't this fit be looser than any type of PEX?

Just wondering.


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Dale Pickard

I looked into this

some time ago. We could do the peel & stick with high bond adhesive tape, but it would have to be of a decent thickness, like at least .020" and it limit the heat transfer over all of the plate as there would be not be a place that contacted the floor directly.

The cost for something appropriate would be quite high. Plus I don't know about cooking all that tape under my floor. You'd want something that could handle the heat without outgassing.

I think that buying silicone sealant or construction adhesive and troweling it on with a notched trowel would be more appropriate....wear a hat. : -)

I don't think any of it is worth it. Put a few more staples into it.

Dale

hr

Gary

the channel in the plate flexes to allow the PAP into the groove. This is why that groove has to be designed and extruded carefully to allow the fit to stay tight after it is spread to allow the tube in.

The extra material, in the correct spot, and of the right aluminun temper all are part of that design.

I understand some of the softer more flexiable pex can get an oval shape when coiled and does not go back round when uncoiled. This can be a loose fit, in the plate, in the narrow dimension.

hot rod

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Dale Pickard

Everything Hot Rod said

except that truly we've used all kinds and have had very little problems with any type, including PEX A. We've had a few cases of expansion noises with a certain very flexible pex A product, but we continue to use it. Roundness is an issue. It's true that the PAP has that "smooshing" characteristic along it's length but it's quite rigid radially. With respect to noisemaking, it expands less and the outside over is ususally PE or PEX without the EVOH expansion barrier. It's pretty dead stuff.

Dale

Dale Pickard

Your prediction

Is hardly clairvoyant. It's the answer to your question. You don't value our experience, and that's ok, I don't value your lack of it.

The toy software comment was a little rude. When you told us that you approximate the tube with a square and I saw the model of the plates, I assumed that the software allows limited resolution. If I am wrong please correct me.

We did the first fea work with CosmosM in association with Montana State University, who owned the (quite expensive) computer code. The grad student who did the Cosmos modeling of our designs did a really super job. Cosmos will take the original cad geometry directly, no assumtions or generalized geometry.

Later we acquired FEHT, which is much coarser. Even with FEHT however we could work with irregular octagons for circles, irregular because we adjusted the contact area according to our assumptions, as you did. FEHT is ok and produces ok results. Some time ago I introduced John Siegenthaler to it and I believe the he uses it.

Finally, I never said that the brand x product is that much worse. It shouldn't surprise you to know that we've already evaluated it and compared with the ThermoFin.

We learned that both extruded products far and away outperform the sheet metal products and the staple up and suspended tube techniques. All of the sheet metal products are grouped more with the staple up techniques. I was astounded at how poor they really work.

You are correct that it takes an experiment with at least a little resolution to show up the differences in the Brand X product and the ThermoFin. Think about an ifrared image of the photos that I posted. The thermal resistance across the air space in Brand X would jump out at you as significant.

It is true that the extrusions work much better as much as anything by virtue of their heft and their rigidity.
Still, you would be surprised at how easy it is to demonstrate a real difference between the two extrusion designs, a difference that is almost entirely due to the design of the snap channel and the loss of contact area. A difference that never had to be. Our product is designed according to pretty sound and simple heat transfer principles and your product is designed according what kind of principles.....

One other thing. You talk a lot about belief. I don't indulge in belief. Or at least I slap myself everytime I use the word in a technical discussion.

Dale

Unknown

Thanks for the replies.

We are currently working with a homeowner who has chosen to install some ThermoFin "U" plates we provided. I visited the job on friday and he is moving right along without any problems so far. The product is "pretty user friendly" claimed the home owner. The Wirsbo HePEX plus fits really tightly into the channel and it's not too hard to persuade the snap fit with a rubber Mallet. The Radiant Engineering return bends are a nice feature making the entire floor (loop ends and all) a uniform surface for nailing off the hard wood flooring.


RE: ThermoFin Vs. Joist-Trac.

Both Wirsbo and Radiant Engineering have been equally great business partners. It should be obvious who's plate design gives the best performance. When it comes to heat transfer conduction is and will always be king. It makes little or no sense to me in arguing over what plate is better. For me it's about providing the very best products to my clients. I presently use both brands of plates.

I think they are both very good but if I have a choice, I'll support the inventor of the product nearly every time. This is a personal choice I've made.

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Tim Doran

Joist Trak Pic

Here is a picture of our Joist Trak with tube snapped in. Some background on the plate. It has been in our training center for a long time. Hundreds of students have used it to practice the application and lots of tube has been installed and removed from it and as you can see it still has a good fit. I ran it through a band saw several times and found no "loose fit".

Tim D.

Tim Doran

Square

The inputs are based on a square which allows easy placement within a grid mesh. The program then redefines the object based on a selection, in this case a pipe that is further defined as a heat source. So the calculation routine is based on a cylinder 1 meter in lenght. The mesh inputs are variable, in this case I used .5mm. It also allows the user to input the tube wall resistance. As you can see the isotherms are round which also indicates that the program is thinking about a cylinder.

In regard to experinece. I did not say that I do not have value for your experience or your work. I value and respect everyones work and experience. I simply asked why you considered your work science and our work play? As to my lack of experience. I find it interesting that you presume to know anything about me or what I have done. To say that I lack experience is a broad and unfounded statement and in my opinion slanderous.

Tim D.

rb_8

Experience...

I've got this hobby of collecting biographical information about the people I do business with...(can ya tell?)

Here's Tim's;

Tim Doran started in the trades in 1972 with his dad on Long Island until heading into the Marine Corp where he was trained and educated as aviation ordinates systems repair technician specializing in everything from the F-18’s to the Cobra Gun Ships. He left the marines to become a licensed master plumber and licensed electrician. Up to July of 2001, Tim has used his mechanical/electrical skills gaining experience in all aspects of HVAC including some time working in R&D on plastic extrusion equipment. He is one of the elite few that can jump into any mechanical room or system and have it figured out in short order (something the Marines taught him). The who’s who of HVAC have seen Tim in most of their factory training programs including several that I have taught. Since joining Wirsbo he has had three of the world’s foremost experts in radiant heating, cooling and snow ice melting as mentors including Dr. Olesen, Dr. Simmonds and Dr. de Carli. These gentlemen have adopted Tim as their protégé because he has the hands on, educational experience and willingness to learn new concepts…he tells it like it is and will be the first to admit if something’s wrong.

Next week I'll post John 'Mr. Allstate' Barba's cut sheet... tradesman turned teacher extraordinaire...

Dale Pickard

I'm not dissing your experience Tim

You shouldn't generalize my comment out of contest. I just don't think that you have focused on heat transfer in radiant floors quite as long some of us may have. I take it that heat transfer plate design and thermal modeling be new to you. If that's not true than I stand corrected.

Still, the JT design betrays some obvious defects in heat transfer capability that you refuse to adddress and I don't think that you are allowing for them in your model.

Below are some fun facts to know and tell. No belief needed.

Doing a little reverse engineering on the JT trak is revealing. The ThermoFin has about 28.6% more contact area of the tube to the plate than the JT. The JT loses as much as 19.6% of that lost contact in the score marks in the snap channel. It's losing a lot of contact area , (in absolute terms a little better than 5/16" x the length of the tube/plate lost), in a very bad place, right in the snap channel. To my knowledge there is no good technical reason to have limited the contact in the critical area.

Those of us, like you, experienced with liquid to liquid heat exchangers know that we take a pretty big performance hit when we have to use something that is double wall, with leak detection..

Yet, Uponor actually claims that this design feature, (loss of contact) "surprisingly increases the heat transfer". I can document this of course.

Now, perhaps you might understand how this kind of statement is very confusing to many of us who have not been trained in 4th and 5th dimensional heat transfer.

Perhaps if you put it ln laymans terms we might understand how you reconcile this design with your knowledge of heat transfer? Do you really think that you are being technically honest with us and yourself? Is this where science ends and belief begins?

Does your fea software allow you to resolve these fine features? It appeared that your plate model in the plot you ran looked like another approximation. I thnk the real geometry might prove a little harder for the SW to "think" about than an assumed cylinder.

Anyway, I'm ok and you're ok, I'm not trying to argue with you but maybe we can be real. Engineering, you know.

Dale

Dale Pickard

How can I know?

Does this look familiar?
; -}

Dale

Dale Pickard

You remember this don't you?

Date: July 11, 2003 07:52 PM
Author: Dan Foley (dfoley50@verizon.net)
Subject: Clamps

The clamps between the plates keep the pipe from falling out of the plates. I once installed about 4500 sq. ft of RTI plates over the course of three bitter cold winter days. I returned to jobsite the following Monday to find close to 1/3 of the pipe had fallen out of the plates (even with silicone). Once bitten, twice shy. -DF

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Dan Foley

Dale

Dale,

I wasn't looking to start something with you or match wits with you. I recognize that you make a good product (maybe the best) and your knowledge of the physics of heat transfer is up there with the brightest minds in the business. The purpose of my post was to show support of a good friend, Tim Doran, and the fine folks at Wirsbo who have been great business partners and instrumental in the success of my company.

Since you dug up a post from almost two years ago and posted it out of context, it is my responsibility to respond. The job in question was installed in 1997-1998 using plates manufactured by RTI. We installed the tubing on a bitter cold day and started the system. We returned the following day to find that a significant amount of tubing had popped out. To avoid future issues and most importantly to protect my reputation, we installed EMT clamps on the tubing between the plates. In the many years that have passed since that job was done, improvements have been made and I have been told by the current manufacturer, Wirsbo, that clamps are not necessary. Why do I continue to use clamps? Because I choose to.

I have read many of your posts and I marvel and your knowledge of the trade and the design/engineering behind many of the products we use. I wonder, though, why you feel it is necessary to poke a stick in the eye of those who use competing products and those with views and opinions different than yours. I took a long look at your product line at the recommendation of several contractors whose opinion I respect. As recently as two weeks ago, I had a conversation with a local rep who was considering taking on your products. Like Mark H., I think I'll stick with the Wirsbo plates.

Respectfully,

Dan Foley

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Mark Eatherton1

Doctored photos?...

Or intentional misapplication of the tube. Decide for yourself... Looks like marketing hype to me Dale. We know yours is a better design, but it looks like an intentional mis-information campaign to me.

ME

rb_8

A true story...well the first part is...

The very first plates we ever used was in the early 80’s…and it was a plate… a plate of sheet metal cut 10” wide and about 48 “ long.

We stapled it to the under side of a cantilevered section to improve the conductive transfer.

It didn’t make any noise and did what we wanted it to do.

Then we got sophisticated and started to talk about snap in grooves – but then we wanted to know how tight was tight so we asked this kid to demonstrate…

Now you know the rest of the story…

ScottMP

hmmmm..

That face looks familair.

A Young RB ?

You decide !!

Scott

PS: That young mans tongue is still recovering from sticking it to a cold lamppost

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Unknown

Photos don't tell the truth.

Photos can be deceiving.

WRThis subject. I thought I'd share a couple of experiments I did today. No matter how hard I try, I can't get a really tight fit from the Joist Trsck.

The first photo shows a 14" piece of Wirsbo PAP (MultiCor) hand pressed into a 12" piece of Joist Track. Cheryl helped me with this.

The others show how we can expect what will happen in the field.

Interestingly enough, no matter how we tried, we could not get the tubing to show any air gaps on the ThermoFin "U" Even with PAP handled roughly.

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Mark Eatherton1

Distortion...

Try the same thing now with Dales plate and the same tubing. PAP can be distorted. Maybe PAP is not a good choice of tubing with JT...

I've actually tested both under laboratory conditons, and I found Dales was better than the alternative, but they BOTH delivered more energy than was necessary with 140 degree F water through a 3/4" plywood floor.

In other words, even with all the suposed lack of thermal contact and broken continuity, the brand X works just fine.

Dale is carrying around a HUGE aluminum chip on his shoulder, and it's going to cause him to die at a much younger age than he should if he'd just accept the fact that there is another device out there that mimicks his invention. If he'd concentrate his energy on selling his product instead of bad mouthing the competiton, he'd probably sell a LOT more product. I understand his passion about his patent, but he's already PO'd numerous participants here at the Wall and that doesn't include the silent ones reading his posts. Not that thats going to make or break him, but still, why all the stress...

I'm glad I'm not in his shoes. Personally, I think Dales one of the most intelligent mechanical engineers I know. Some what rigid in his thought process and a real curmudgeon to thinking outside of the box, but none the less, a very well spoken and practiced engineer.

Just my perspective from having known him for as many years as I have.

Onward and upward.

ME

Dale Pickard

OK Mark

I'll accept your criticism. I can understand how you see things as you do. The truth of course always lies somewhere between the extremes and I can see where you have some valid points to make.

Let me address a few things.
About the photo of Brand X. I didn't do anything to doctor the photo. All I did was arrange the tube in the groove in such a way as to show the entire difference between the tube dimension and the plate dimension. The tube is sitting in the plate and settled to that position by gravity. Note that the tube is round, if I had shoved it deeper into the opening, the plate would have compressed the tube.

I could have arranged the tube so as to distribute the air space around the tube, as Gary Wallace did below. So I'm guilty of arranging but not "doctoring". I'm a straight guy, I don't play games like that. Gary's photo shows the same amount of space, redistributed.

I will also admit to posting a photo of the the extrusion as it existed before about a year ago. This is the version that Uponor sold for over 10 years without change except for the addition of the of the score marks and air spaces which they included in 1996. This is the version that generated so many problems with the tube falling out.

The (very poor) photo that you copied from Tim show the plate as Uponor produces it today. Apparently they finally decided that having the tube fall out might be a design issue, (rather than a "tooling" issue) so they altered the geometry, which is what I show in the image I posted above of the joist trak that I reverse engineered in CAD. I imagine that this design will address that issue.

I imagine that if we give them another decade, they'll learn enough about heat transfer to address those issues as well. They're such innovators. Such market leaders!

So the point I'm trying to make in all of this is that the Brand X people really don't know what they are doing with respect to heat transfer plates. A clumsy knockoff is a clumsy knockoff. The idea that they are into technical innovation is a joke.

About your own testing showing "far more energy than necessary with 140 deg water"..... Output as a function of water temperature is the name of the game.

The definition of performance. After all, why use plates at all? If a better design can provide a 20% - 30% performance edge and not cost any more, then your path should be clear.

The problem with a simplistic evaluation like this is that you are not plotting a performance curve based on water temp. The whole point is provide adequate heat at LOWER water temperatures than some other way of doing things.

I have to appreciate that the Brand X people defend their designs as "almost as good" and "good enough".

About me being an intelligent engineer, you need to be clear. My partner is a PE and I am pleased to work directly with several ME's along with a couple of mechanics that are brighter than most engineer's I've met. However, my academic background is biology. Before I started the solar business, I worked for the U.S. Forest Service. All of my mechanical engineering background and installation and fabrication is self taught. I also have had the advantage of having an excellent engineering school immediately available to me.

The idea that I'm a rigid, conservative mechanical engineer that has trouble with original thought made me chuckle. Truthfully Mark, I've learned to choose my battles and not to tilt at windmills, but that doesn't make me the conservative "curmudgeon" you describe. My guys will get a good chuckle over this in the morning. I am a curmudgeon, to be sure, and I get worse with age, but not in this way you describe.
About the chip on my shoulder etc. You can trust me on this, if it weren't for me "thinking outside the box", we would not be having this discussion today. Also, I don't really experience the stress you seem to anticipate. These days it's fun to point out how the emperor is naked.

Also, you can expect to see our simple and superior design work available from a number of honest, reputable radiant floor heating system manufacturers. We really don't need the Brand X people. I think our industry would be better off without them.

To infinity and beyond!*

Dale
*Buzz Lightyear (I think)

Unknown

Another shot

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Unknown

Truth or Power?

I'm just wondering why the JoistTrac™ has these strange looking air gaps around the perimeter of the contact surface. They seem to be intentional and I can't understand why they were molded that way !

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Mark Eatherton1

I stand (sit)

corrected.

ME