Month: January 2021

I’ve spent the last few weekends on radiant. With the second floor panels installed, the next step was to run the Pex tubing. To do that you vacuum out the track, put down a bead of sealant that helps thermally connect the tubing to the track, then put the Pex tubing in. You can supposedly “walk it in” but in my experience you have to follow the tubing around with a rubber mallet and smack it into the track.

I got a couple loops of the second floor done during the week, then Aaron and David came back to help me finish the rest of the second floor loops. I had forgotten my careful previous planning when I bought the Pex, so I wound up using the wrong length coils on the second floor, which led to some unfortunate waste and a hasty order of additional tubing. With the loops down, we cut and fit plywood into all the remaining sections of the floor until everything was filled in.

During that week I got the rest of the joist tape up on the first floor ceiling. I didn’t want to drag the ladder around with the panels down. The next weekend I started clearing out the first floor and of course discovered a list of minor tasks that also needed to be done, like chiseling out a section of blocking that I had originally expected wouldn’t be an issue if we furred out the ceiling, which we wound up not doing. I also had to screw up additional 2x4s as nailing edges in the ceiling in a couple places.

I got the panels down in the back of the first floor, and the next day with Aaron and David’s help we go the rest down. Unfortunately, as we got to the front door, we hit two snags. First, we ran out of panels. I had ordered extra, but apparently not enough. I had a small stack of the return panels, but no more straights, so we counted up what we needed and I got those on order. Second, the subfloor by the front door was too high.

After all the time I spent leveling the joists and subfloor, this is frustrating. I calculated the height of the finished floor and positioned the door jamb accordingly, but somehow, there wasn’t enough room for the door sweep to clear the finished floor. Better to notice this before I put the radiant panels down, but still a headache.

Since we were out of panels anyway, I spent the week sorting out what to do, considering an engineered floor rather than hardwood, and eventually using a laser level to find that there was a distinct bow in the subfloor. I got out my power planer and a couple block planes and shaved down the subfloor until it was consistent, flat, and low enough for the door to clear it. Even so, I may need to replace the weather stripping.

With that done and the new panels arrived, Aaron and David came back this last weekend and we got the remaining panels and pex installed, but ran out of screws and pex before we could finish. We also got some of the plywood cut and fit, but not screwed down. To finally wrap this up I need more screws, more pex, more plywood, and probably one more weekend.

As I mentioned in my last post, we needed to make some progress on the radiant installation. We’re using in-floor radiant heating for the basement, first, and second floors, with radiators in the attic. The basement has tubing in the concrete slab, but on the first and second floors, this takes the form of plywood panels with aluminum backing. The first step is to design the layout, followed by cutting and fitting the panels to match that layout. The next steps are to apply a bead of caulk and run the pex tubing in the track, perform a pressure test, and then connect the manifold for each floor to the boiler in the basement mechanical room.

Sarah and I got started installing the radiant panels on the second floor. Then our nephews, Aaron and David, came down to pitch in. We managed to get all of the panels for the second floor installed, with only a couple small deviations from the plan where measurements were slightly off. We got into a routine where I measured and laid out panels, Aaron cut the needed pieces to length on the chop saw, and David followed us a room behind with collated screw gun.

I was pleased with how smoothly most of this process went, since usually we quickly discover unexpected complications. The trickiest part was where the lines converge at the manifold. the manufacturer recommends putting the converging pex lines into thinset or buying a fancy panel, but instead I used the router to add some additional tracks to the panels. There were also a couple of places where we needed the path needed to bend a bit to fit through a doorway. We have six lines running down the hallway (supply and return from three loops), which didn’t quite fit through the door.

We also had a couple of moments where we had to re-trace the path of the tubing a couple of times to be sure we had it right. The curved return track pieces can go either direction, so it’s not obvious how things will route with a glance. Sarah even brought up a ball of yarn to lay out in the track to keep things straight.

I’ve started filling in the plywood strips and we’ll get the tubing installed and pressure tested. We’re hoping to knock out the first floor this weekend, and hopefully get the system powered up and heating the house before too long. To do that we still have to reconfigure the core in the mechanical room, which will be a nerve-wracking undertaking, since we’ll lose heat during the process.