Installing a woodfired boiler for a customer, and the plan is as follows.
Trench is in, conduit for ele, in and inspected. Same trench gets in/out water lines.
1.5″ copper line with neoprene “armorflex” pipe insul. I plan to make a box/chase of 2″ extruded dow foamular board. 12″ wide x 12″ tall and fill with sand. Backfill above.
Any other ideas?
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
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Same trench with water and elec may not pass code. Something to check into.
Got the OK from the County Insp. Need 1 foot apart min. Trench is 4' deep x 2' wide, good to go. There is 12oo amps in the bottom, hopefully any future diggers stop when they hit the water box..LOL
We rivsed the plat plan with a new page showing the new utils, this guy is covering all bases.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj_oEx4-Mc4
The world of people goes up and
down and people go up and down with
their world; warriors have no business
following the ups and downs of their
fellow men.
Drop a Cat 5 line in a cheep 1/2" conduit for phone/sensors. I can't imagine why except sometimes these guys that get unusual things like to see gauges or numbers to see how well they work.
All of that is done as well. FIOS is being run in the trench too.
I'm just concerned about the insulated box/sand scheme I concocted. The MFGR of the boiler sells a pex type pipe and insul at a higher cost than copper and what I propose, with possibly less efficiency. Going 160' from boiler to house.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj_oEx4-Mc4
The world of people goes up and
down and people go up and down with
their world; warriors have no business
following the ups and downs of their
fellow men.
Been researching this same thing.
Check out thermopex, about 12 buck a foot around here.
Everyone I've talked to says it's a lot better than any on-site constructed insulation.
Customer insists on copper, we have it, and it's never gonna have an issue with high temps that long term may affect pex.
Copper has the yrs and yrs of proven performance, pex is too new for him to fully trust.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj_oEx4-Mc4
The world of people goes up and
down and people go up and down with
their world; warriors have no business
following the ups and downs of their
fellow men.
I put in a similar arrangement to what you're planning about 12 years ago - same distance, boiler to house. Whatever efforts I took initially to keep the sand-filled-box dry inside deteriorated some over time and now when the HO fires up in the fall the boiler runs flat out for 7-10 days and the water coming into the house is just warm but not hot. After that time the sand seems to dry out/warm up and he's good to go for the winter and everything runs normally with no noticeable temperature drop between the boiler and the house. I wouldn't do it again, though. On my own place now I have 1" plastic-coated aluminum line from IPEX running back and forth to the house. It sit on 2" rigid foam and then a foam contractor came and sprayed the whole trench, sealing everything in. It works great, although in another jurisdiction you might have inspection issues around that sort of thing, I don't know. j
We have the commercial insulated 4" pipe with the two 1" pipes running inside. buried about 2 -1/2' deep. http://www.greenvalleyheating.ca/products.html See logstor at the bottom of the page.
Electrical running in plastic conduit alongside. Had it two years now -- never been able to see any snow melt on the ground. We're in zone 5 if you're a gardener -- southern ontario. Seem to be getting lots of heat out of stove, runs the domestic hot water, plus. heats our 2400sqft addition (that includes radiant floor in basement and two levels) plus my mother's badly insulated forced air furnace heated century old house.
Her side was originally heated by combination wood/oil FA. My brothers took out the burners, and replaced them with a large radiator in the hot air plenum.
the DHW is heated with heat exchanger. Takes 20 minutes to go from freezing cold to shower hot. We run the furnace all year long -
Back to the pipe run. I went to the local farm show when I was looking to buy. It just made more sense to have the sealed unit logstor for running the heat, rather than foaming in place, where the foam would be subjected to water infiltration. Just thought that that wouldn't be as stable. I bought the heatmor because it has a few bags of sand poured around the base to act as a heat sink. (Not sure how many bags -- my DH got to crawl inside and do that.)
Edited to add: we ran a second empty 1" conduit alongside, just in case we ever want more elctricity out there.
Also had the furnace people put two sets of valves on the back -- just in case we ever build that horse barn with the heated tack room and warm bathroom ,,LOL. Maybe my kids will get to use those.
Edited 10/9/2008 11:20 pm ET by martagon
Thanks, I was mistaken earlier in my post to Pif, there is a power feed to the unit. Fan, Light at the feed door.
The HO, went round and round, it is decided to use amor-flex ( 1" wall) and the foam box, filled with sand as per our first plan.
It's pretty much up to him, I just advise and or help weigh the options. and install..yecch.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj_oEx4-Mc4
The world of people goes up and
down and people go up and down with
their world; warriors have no business
following the ups and downs of their
fellow men.
If you can seal the box and keep the water out it should work.
I would consider extra drainage, pea stone or crushed stone bed for the pipe and box and a water deflector over the box.
As it will be difficult to dig up at a later date.
What about copper and corrosion? I think there is a spray sealant you can use to form a barrier on buried copper.
Garett
The CU is sleeved, after that it's gonna be outta my hands, I reached the end of my authority. And Patience, it's not my house, my heater or my problem.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj_oEx4-Mc4
The world of people goes up and
down and people go up and down with
their world; warriors have no business
following the ups and downs of their
fellow men.
Some things to consider. I have the "urecon" pipe for my own. 4" pvc drain pipe(smooth) with 2" foam over that and a black wrap over that, comes in 10' sections, glues together...is awesome in my opinion, but was a bit over $10/ft 3 years ago.
Good thing is you can fish 1" pex thru it easily. I only have copper in the basement, pex the rest of the way. In event of a leak, I'd hate to redig a trench, but could easily snake new pex.
I played with a homebrew trench, with vermiculite, zeolite, all kinds of insulation....in the end Urecon was the best choice. Keith C