I’m looking at Radiant heat for the CEILING of my woodshop. So I had one of the DIY radiant heat company’s do a lay out for me. Long story short, I’m looking at $1500 just for pex and a ton of those Aluminum plates that help distribute the heat.
I could do the whole thing in ½” copper for under $400. I know it would be at least 3 times the labor involved, but would it work? This is only my work shop, (700 sq’ garage). It will never be pretty, I probably won’t even put drywall on the ceiling, just leave it open.
So with out getting to far into the technical stuff, at least not yet, is it feasible to replace the pex and aluminum plates with copper pipe? I’m talking about 3 loops approx 250′ of pipe in each loop. Heat loss for the building is roughly 23,000 BTUH, closed system, domestic water heater.
At this point it will be either Radiant Ceiling heat, or two Hydronic fan units. I would rather the ceiling heat cause once it’s up their’s no maintainance.
Ok, let the beating begin<G> Bill
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Bill, I have radiant heat in my ceiling, copper tubing imbeded in plaster, works great. I'm doing a small addition and I'm doing exactly what you are doing with the plates and PEX. I got the extruded aluminum Thermofin plates which are much better than the thin plates. The plates are heavy guage aluminum that are 8 feet long. I got them from http://www.radiantengineering.com/Links/Finhomepg.html. These guys are very knowledgable and will help with desing and heat loss calc's. I'm going to install sleepers on the across the ceiling joists then screw the plates in between them. If you want a lot more info on this go to http://forums.invision.net/index.cfm?CFApp=2. These guys are experts in this. Hope this helps -Ed
Could you give us an idea about the cost of the thermofin plates?
Kid, I paid about $1.00/ft. If you call the company they'll send you a sample. There is a huge difference between the Thermofin and the thin plates. The thermofin grips the tubing very tightly, so in a ceiling application you wouldn't need staples to hold the tubing in place. I know that the contractors that use it on the heating.help web site swear by it. -Ed
make sure you use a good quality PEX. Does it have an oxygen barrier? And those Therafin plates are the only way to go. Top quality!