Radiant Install Continues

We'll start off by showing off our newest notch in the studs. This is in Evan's room where he proceeded to stick his head between the two studs and got stuck. So Daddy had to cut out a notch with the sawzall so that his ears could slip out again.

If you recall, we opted to go the DIY route on the radiant install. We did hire a company from the east coast to design the system to figure out what we'd need for manifolds, water temperature, boiler, parts, etc.
The nice thing is that they took what we had already done with the loops, and worked with that to figure a system for our needs. They sent us design drawings, and we bought all of the parts from them. Now is up to us to figure it out.
So far it hasn't been too bad, and they've been really good about answering questions.
Of course, Shawn has been doing almost all of the actual installation, and I help here and there every chance I can.

And when we got started, we realized that we really didn't know what loop was actually going where, so it took a few hours perusing through some old construction photos to get what we wanted. I had to get the information from other pictures to identify all of the loops that went to the manifold location that you can see in this picture. I had to color each loop just to keep them straight. Like I said last week, thank goodness for digital cameras and taking a bunch of pictures of the work.
So with the loops finally identified we started working on the radiant installation.

The manifolds came pre-assembled with the flow meter valves (the little clear tubes on top in the next picture), the brackets, the union ball valves, and the fill in valves. Shawn had to take it apart so he could lubricate the gaskets with some silicon grease, then put it back together again, and tighten things. Then he cut each of the pipes flush and installed the pressure fittings to he could hook up each pipe to each manifold. We started with manifold 1 that is withing the fireplace walls.

Here is manifold 1 installed. This manifold will handle the loops that will heat the family room and the kitchennette/bar/lounge area.
The white pex pipes are from the loops buried in the concrete. The red pipes are the supply and return feeds coming from the master manifold that is in the mechanical room.
After the manifold was installed, we put 80 lbs of pressure on it for testing. After 24 hrs we discovered that we had lost about 20 lbs of pressure so there was a leak somewhere. With the help of some soapy water we zeroed in on the leaks where it bubbled.
Most of the leaks where in the compression fittings so Shawn just tightened them until it quit bubbling. We pumped this loops back up to 81 lbs and thirty some hours later we had lost only 1 lb. of pressure. But this was mostly due to temperature changes in the air whicn makes it contract.
This was really good news for it meant there were no leaks in the manifold connections, but more importantly there were no leaks in the pipe buried under concrete. That would be a major PITA if we discovered a leak under buried!

This manifold is called 2.4 (Though we're not sure why they chose to label it as such). This is the manifold that handles all of the loops that you can see in the first picture of this post.
It has two bedrooms, the bathroom, the office and the hallway loops. Again, the white pipes are from the loops buried under concrete. The red pipes are coming from the master manifold in the mechanical room. Shawn pressurized it, and two of the fittings weren't tight enough so two gaskets blew apart.
So Shawn took two of the fittings from the master manifold to replace them. He tightened everything up, put 81 lbs of pressure, and a day later we were at 80 lbs. Another manifold done, and more loops confirmed to be sans leaks under concrete.

When Shawn went to install the master manifold, he discovered two things: 1. We needed a 5 loop manifold, and they sent us a 4 loop manifold. 2. The red pipes are 5/8" but they gave us 1/2" compression fittings for those.
So I called the company and they shipped us a new manifold piece, and the correct fittings. We had to ship the wrong manifold back, but they will credit us the return shipping. So we're pretty happy with them so far. Also, we had to purchase two replacement fittings for the two the blew out, and we ordered a couple extra to have just in case. But those won't arrive until Saturday, probably.

We got the replacement manifold in the mail, so Shawn mounted it to the white plywood that he hung in the mechanical room. This is going to be our Control Board.

Here is a closer look at the master manifold configuration. None of the pipes are actually hooked up since we're awaiting for the parts to arrive.
I supposed next is to lay out the control board components and to get some copper pipes, solder, find the torch, and get all of that that installed. I think that once the control board is done, we can have the electrician come in and do his thing.

We'll see. That's it for now.

Until next week!