When I put the addition on my house, I ran Rehau Pex to radiant heat the floor in two zones. The weather is mild in Seattle, so I haven’t hooked it into the hot water heater yet. The plumbing inspector said I should use my gas 40 gal. hot water heater as it would be adequate to heat my areas and provide hot water to the house. What I need is a a diagram of how exactly to hook the lines into the water heater and run them to a manifold and pumps. I’ve looked around for information on this and have come up blank and, sadly, the rough sketch the inspector made to direct me was lost long ago…
Does anyone out there have experience with this or perhaps ideas on how to do it? Diagrams or pictures would be helpful as I am a “do-it-yourselfer” and not familiar with lots of the technical terms.
Thanks!
MaryJo
Replies
I don't know the answer to your question, but if you type in the key words "radiant heating" on the Net you'll get a large number of sources.
Thanks. I will give it a try!
Mary Jo
Hi
I don't have radiant heating, but... I have used the pre-built copper flex pipes with the pex fitting built on to the end for connecting to my hot water heater. They are about 18 - 24 inches long. It should be the same scheme for your heating manifold system. I think I got them at Home Depot; they are setup for 3/4" pex.
John
Thank you!
I didn't realize Home Depot carried PEX stuff-I've been using a plumbing supply house which isn't very convenient. I will go see if the fittings you mentioned will work.
Thanks again.
Mary Jo
A company called Radiantec Company and others who advertise in Fine Homebuilding can help. Radiantec is most helpful to the do-it-yourselfer. You may want to use manifolds for the two zones. They all have helpful web sites.
Good luck - solar might work for you also if your hot water heater cannot handle the load. Often a separate boiler is put in place on the system.