Radiant Dreams

The architect sent something back to the permit expeditor, so maybe that’s moving forward? I’m not sure. Something else to follow up on. We don’t have a new roof yet, but we still have a round 8″ hole in the roof that lets in the rain. Apparently the “Estate Gray” color is out of stock everywhere for the rest of the year. Instead we’re getting Onyx Black, which I don’t like as much, but hopefully at at least they can install it. I suspected when we had beautiful weather at the beginning of the month that it meant we weren’t getting our roof, and so it was. The weather has turned to cold and rainy, and even though we settled on the “in stock” color a week ago, no word yet as to when they’ll be putting it on.

I pinged the concrete guy since two weeks had turned to three. He said the end of this week as long as it didn’t rain. Well the end of the week is here, and it’s been rainy. Next week temperatures are dropping into the thirties; not great for pouring concrete. I haven’t heard back from him yet about a new date.

I asked the radiant company if there was any way to lower the cost (partially since they had originally quoted me much lower, suggesting such a thing was possible) and they never responded. I considered just putting down a half inch of plywood and heating with minisplits, but this is a feature of the house we’re really set on and don’t want to give up. If I had it to do over, I might have skipped it, but we’re committed at this point.

Instead, I started measuring, whiteboarding, planning, spreadsheeting, and SketchUping (I promise at least some of these are real verbs). The result is a complete hydronic radiant floor panel plan of equally-balanced loops each under the maximum length that all connect back to a central manifold.

There are apparently tools to help you do this, but I didn’t have them, so I made some formulas in Google Sheets, I fired up SketchUp, and I worked it out. It’s not the most elegant design, but it keeps the loops all the same size, which is the real trick. Since each floor is one temperature zone, it doesn’t especially matter if the loops are divided into discrete areas of the floor, just that they are the same size so that the manifold will flow evenly throughout.

After I worked out the first floor, the second floor came together more quickly, even though it’s quite a bit more complicated, since there are more rooms and less open space. The first step was to cover the house in rectangles that had a dimension divisible by 7″, the width of one panel. Cutting them down is certainly possible, but it will go much faster if I only do length cuts with the chop saw. The total square footage (actually I worked in square inchage) is divided to an ideal size for each loop. Then I come up with a layout plan that works. I had to work out ways to “borrow” from one loop to make another the right size, and then work back through the remaining adjacent loops to even everything out. If I came across something that changed the area to cover, everything had to be recalibrated. It was a bit of a pain.

After a few days I had all the loops designed. The next step was to measure up the total length of the straight and return sections to come up with exactly how much I needed to buy. I used another spreadsheet formula to confirm my panel coverage matched my area and saved myself a ton of errors. After finding the best deal online, paying the equivalent of a decent used compact car, and clicking the order button, I had a glass of scotch and wondered —not for the first time— about my life choices.

Just a couple of days later, I got a delivery notification and went out front to find the above box collection in the front yard. I’m not sure why they didn’t ring the doorbell, but as each box weighs about 60 lbs and it was a short enough time, none of it walked off (to my knowledge). We got it all inside and I’m now in the process of carting it up to the attic, one of the few places we’re not putting in-floor radiant heat and it hopefully won’t be in the way.

I emailed the radiant contractor (again) this time asking for a revised quote where they just install the pumps and controls. I have a miter saw, a collated screw gun, and the ability to follow directions, so I plan to take some time off work and put this stuff in myself. In theory, we’ll save a chunk of money in the process. If I’m lucky, it may all wind up costing around what they wanted to charge in the first place. We’ll see if they respond this time.

My preference is not to install the floor panels until the drywall is in to ensure it doesn’t get damaged, so that will be a while, especially at the pace things are going. I’ll still need the manifolds installed and the pex run through the walls, but I think I can manage that in a weekend or two. Wish me luck!