Removing Air From Pex Attached Kickspace Heater

Timco

Is your system a two-pipe system, or loop? Your piping may be wrong. Also, you need pex-al-pex, or hepex for heating systems. Either has an oxygen barrier. If you are sure about your piping, each kickspace heater should have a bleeder screw acessable from the face. If no, turn off other rads on the same zone and force the water through the troubled heaters.

Tim

Joe_78

I'm renovating my kitchen. I'm replacing two baseboard hydronic heaters with kickspace heaters. Since I don't want to cut up the bottoms of my new cabinets, I decide to use pex tubing to connect the kickspace heaters into the loop. I've connected to the main copper loop with two 5 foot lengths of pex running through the floor into a pair of tees spaced 12 inches apart. The tee connecting to the return side is a monoflo tee. The system is self-venting with an air scoop, vent, and expansion tank connected off the boiler. I didn't need any additional air vents on any of the baseboard heaters on either floor, and didn't expect a big problem with the kickspace heaters. I was wrong though. Neither kisckspace heaters will pass water. The rest of the system is running fine. My solution would be to attach air vents such as the Taco HY-Vent to the kickspace heaters. The only problem is I haven't been able to find any pex fittings that would support a device like this. Does anyone know of an easy way to vent this with my pex installation? I'd rather not create a method using a whole bunch of different adapters. Thanks.

Regards,
Joe

Joe_78

Thanks for the reply Tim. It's a one pipe loop. The Pex tubing is correct. The kickspace heaters I have don't have any bleeder valve. And finally, there's no way for me to shut down the other heaters. They're in series, part of the loop. The only heaters that are not in series are the kickspace heaters. They're connected off Tees. The whole system is 3/4 inch copper, and the kickspace heaters are 1/2 inch. When I disconnect the kickspace heaters, I have no problem getting water to flow out of the Pex tubing. It seems that little bit of air that's trapped in the kickspace unit is enough to block the flow under normal configuration. The water takes the path of least resistance; the 3/4 inch copper.

kevin coppinger_4

are the tees...

diverter tees or just regular tees? If they are not diverter tees nothing is making the flow go to the kick heaters....kpc

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Bob Bona_4

you need

to sweat in a 1/2" baseboard T to one of the kicker's stubs before you go to pex. A coin vent on the bb T will get your air out. A 1/2" stop and waste sweat coupling will work too, if you can find one.

Robert O'Connor_12

what brand is it?

Which brand and model # is it?

Jeff Elston

pump

you can put a pump on the kick space circiut and a purger that will move the water or maybee both tees should be monoflow and a purger that may work

I agree with Kevin one mono flow maynot be enough to make a traffic jam



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Maine Ken

cut in a ball valve between the tees. close the valve and force all of the water through the ks. after it is full open the valve.

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Ron Schroeder

Three ways to purge

1 is to put 1/2 inch coin vent at KSH out let, 2 put in a 1/2 inch ball valve where the pex returns to the main loop with a purge valve just before that, 3 put a 3/4 ball valve between the two tees in the loop to force air out then open for heat. I have had no problems with this set up as long as the KSH are short runs going up but if they go down or are long runs make sure there are two Monoflow tees to increase resistance in the main loop.

Joe_78

The kickspace heater is a HydroTherm HK-84. I thought of most of the ideas presented here. What I was really looking for was an All PEX solution. There just doesn't seem to be a good selection of Pex fittings available. All I've come across are about a dozen of the most basic (reducers, elbows, couplers, ball valves, etc.). I've yet to be able to find a Pex version of a Baseboard Tee. A Pex X Pex X Fip Tee would be ideal. Bob Bona's suggestion makes the most sense to me. I'll have to substitute the BB Tee for a CxCxF Tee though. The way the heaters are set up, the 90 deg bend in the BB Tee won't work. Thanks for all your suggestions.

Regards,
Joe