Re: SB: radiant floor pumps

[Speireag Alden <Joshua.M.Alden.91@alum.dartmouth.org>]

Sgrìobh Carolyn Hoagland:

>Have any of you had experience with this or other pumps (el sid, 
>dankoff)?  Can you tell me some basic parameters of your system, how 
>often your pumps run, what brand and size, are they on a timer or 
>thermostat?  What water temp are you running on the supply side? (I 
>assume the pumps can run less if your water is 130 degrees than if 
>it is 90 degrees?) We can easily go DC or AC, depending on what type 
>of pump has the best wire:water ratio.

     I've been happy with our Taco pump.  Never a problem.  Our water 
goes in at about 125°F and comes out at anywhere from 85°F to 100°F, 
depending on how recently the floor has been charged with heat.

>All of our tubing runs end in a basement, so the manifold and pumps 
>and timers/thermostats can be added later?

     I would think so.  Just stub off the pipe and ignore it until 
it's time to hook things up.

>   I've been reading that a lot of systems use a computer module that 
>senses the temperature dropping outside and turns the pumps on ahead 
>of time (before you start to feel cold) - Is all this really 
>necessary?

     No.

>   We were hoping to use just a single programmable timer that could 
>store several pump timing routines, so we could just look at the 
>weather report for the next 24 hours and choose a routine (until the 
>weather changes and we choose another).

     I suppose that would work.  I have a very massive floor (two to 
four inches of adobe above the pipe, and over a foot of material 
below it, before the insulation).  On those rare occasions when the 
house feels quite cold (like we've been away for a few days and 
there's been no sun), it can take as much as three hours to get the 
felt temperature back up.  But then it stays there for a long time. 
In the meantime, you just put on another layer.

     We have our circulator pump on a manual timer switch.  When we 
anticipate the need for heat, we give it a twist to the number of 
hours we want.  We've learned pretty well what that's going to be, 
and it didn't take long to learn.  Cost of switch was barely into 
double digits.

>   Someone is here in the building almost all the time and we are 
>used to moderate temperature swings (we currently heat with wood and 
>sunshine) and are hoping to keep the control part of all this 
>extremely simple (and inexpensive)!

     You're in a pretty moderate climate.  I don't think you need 
anything more than a simple switch.  Make it a timer switch so that 
you can't forget to turn it off.

-Speireag.

-- 
Be a full bucket,
drawn up the dark way of a well,
then lifted out,
into the light.
--Jalal al-Din Rumi, Sufi poet

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