4 Methods To Run Radiant Heat PEX Pipe

the build show today we're talking radiant heating that's right this is a really soft even way to heat your house however full disclosure i've never actually built a house with radiant heating because i'm a texan we don't need a lot of this so that being said i brought an expert with me today i've got eric ani from mechanical hub out of minnesota with me eric's done a ton of these installs he's also done a ton of service on these systems so eric and i are going to talk about the pros and cons of five different methods for installing radiant heating for either your remodel or your new construction job today's video is sponsored by open r let's get going [Music] all right y'all if you haven't met my friend eric eric is a mechanical contractor a plumbing and heating expert based out of minnesota he's probably better known though as mechanical hub on instagram eric thanks for joining me today brother yeah thanks for having me all right so eric here's what we're talking about we're talking about radiant heating in houses and full disclosure i've never built a house with a radiant even though i've i've thought about it i've seen houses i've never actually done one myself so i really appreciate you coming on how many years have you been doing radiant projects i think the very first time i ever worked on a uh in-floor radiant system was in 1996 so a little while it's been a couple years and i started in construction in 95 so we're both old guys who have done this a few years is what you're telling me here all right so first off eric in your opinion what is it about radiant for heating that makes it a really nice way to heat your house compared to forced air which i've done a lot down here in texas well i think there's a whole you know there's a handful of benefits first and foremost i think what people notice the most when they experience a radiant heated environment whether it's in their own home or they visit family members that's often where my customers come from is they they come to me because they said well my sister has this in their house and we love it we when every time we go there we want to stay longer so ultimately it's the comfort yeah when you're not moving air you're pulling less heat out of the the human body right so that's we lose about 70 of our heat just through convection and that would be air currents and things like that in a space and we can closely match that heat loss through convection using radiant systems so really ultimately we're creating by just with science really simple science like a a more comfortable environment because we're pulling less heat out of the body does that make sense it totally makes sense now delivering that heat is interesting eric you know if you think about this open or pipe right here this is a half inch tubing and this is typically the size you're using for your radiant projects right half inch tubing compare that to let's say a 10 inch air duct or or a you know a trunk line on a system that i might put in you can route these through some pretty tiny spaces and not have to have a lot of crazy architecture or structural moves let's say to get that duct work in right yeah so like the half inch tubing is smaller than what i'm going to use a comparison for like inducting a one inch pipe a one inch pex pipe can carry as much energy heat energy in it as an 8 by 12 duct so if you can imagine the amount of energy we can carry in water versus air in a smaller cap you know much smaller footprint taking up less space for construction whether it's how the building is designed or how we retrofit it's it's has such an amazing advantage yeah big time big time and a quick plug for openor who's our sponsor the reason why i used open r piping in my house when i built my brand new house for my water piping was i love how flexible this is this is a pex a pipe which can bend and move and be flexible and as a result i had very few joints at my house very few uh you know 90s or anywhere i had to cut that pipe and make a fitting my assumption is eric because of that flexibility if you're installing a radiant system you might be able to go from the cold to the hot side of your manifold with maybe even no joints is that true yeah so that would be our preference actually and so we can utilize that pex a like you said open or tubing and it's able we're able to snake it into smaller spaces we're able to put it into our designed system in a way that we don't have to have any joints at all which is a huge advantage yeah that's a big deal all right with that being said eric let's switch gears and let's talk about install there's kind of five methods as i look at the open or catalog for using their pipe and delivering that heat to the space let's start with method number one which is actually this product on my desktop opener calls this fast track this is a basically a a grid that the tubing snaps into and this grid has an adhesive on the back so that you could put this over an existing concrete slab let's say or even over an existing subfloor route your tubing through this fast track and then pour lightweight concrete on top of this i don't think you've not used this method before right eric i've not used that product no but it's really cool on how the tubing snaps into it and holds it pretty well i know that much i've seen it in use i've just not installed it myself yeah and they sent me a uh kind of a quick clip of how it works and what's interesting is they even have kind of a foam board that you put on the outside of your your wall cavity so that your concrete isn't up against the wall allows probably for some good expansion and contraction and then after that goes down this seems like it goes down pretty quick in the video they showed two guys doing a pretty big look like basement space over top of concrete and they put this down over 300 some square feet in just 20 minutes or so so i think this would grow pretty fast and if you're going over an existing let's say concrete slab and adding radiant this seems like a pretty good retrofit method doesn't it yeah i like that it's adhesive on the back so like there's less fasteners involved as long as you're working with a clean surface that product is supposed to perform really well and stay in footwear where you've placed it yeah i like that that's cool all right so that's method one and this really would be i would consider a generally speaking a good remodel method over concrete or existing subfloor let's talk about the method though that i know you've used a lot which is their quick track this is a half inch plywood panel with aluminum on the back side what situations could you see people using quick track for so quick track is very popular like out on the east coast they've done really well with it for years so you can use the quick track on a sub floor you can put it over top of a concrete floor if you've got some kind of uh barrier between it to get that aluminum and that plywood off the concrete itself so you have to have a memory in between there uh so maybe an extra step or material but then it's also good for ceilings too or low yeah that makes sense so that you could let's say put that panel in on top of your studs snap your open or piping in and then you can see the piping so that when you're installing let's say a sheetrock finish over a ceiling or a wall or a hardwood floor on a floor you can actually see where that tubing is and avoid it for your fasteners right yeah so you can use conventional methods for whatever those finished materials are whether it's concrete or i'm sorry like a wood flooring vinyl planking or sheetrock you name it you can use all normal conventional installation methods because the tubing is exposed that's pretty cool i don't know i've seen i've not seen that before that's a neat product all right method three openers joist track this is i think probably the most iconic one for for somebody like me who's not done a lot of radiant when i think of radiant this is kind of what i think of is this a method you've used before yeah so the joist track is where we're putting it up underneath the subfloor typically in a joist bay but sometimes even with you know like your wood truss construction what it does is it operates maybe with a little takes a little more energy to operate but it allows for um we don't change any of the ceiling or floor heights or anything like that as far as you know construction of doorways existing or stairways and so it's a nice retrofit product and it's a extruded aluminum um bracket that goes up underneath the subfloor and then the tubing snaps into that that aluminum helps with the heat transfer and it kind of makes the surface area of the tubing larger on the upper side of the floor if that makes sense yeah that makes sense i hadn't thought about that that's probably one of your biggest concerns when you're thinking about especially retrofit is what do i do with this extra thickness and so that's really where quick track comes in because it's in your floor system you don't have to worry about doing something that's above the floor system yeah that's you know i'm not a carpenter i'm a plumber and plenty of heating contractor i'm not you know i'm not gonna rebuild stairways and raise all the doorways and stuff like that if i got to put something on top of a floor it's gonna change elevations of everything yeah so you have to consider consider that on the design side all right now the fourth method which is i know a method that you've done because i actually saw you use this method on your shop that you uh are in the middle of building right now talk to me about the staple down method and kind of thinking about how thick is that insulation what do i want to use metal staples do i want to use plastic staples kind of walk me through that process yeah so like in in the case of a basement we'll just talk about that that's easiest to kind of visualize for everybody you're building that that insulation barrier between the ground and the floor probably in most cases a high performing house anyway well even if you're not going that construction method that's what you're going to do in this case you're going to you're going to layer first with a extruded foam board or a polystyrene board and typically in our area we use 2-inch foam so it's got an r10 performance value there and then we take this this specialized stapler like you've got there and we're using these two and a half inch long plastic staples they have these great big barbs on them and they don't staple through the tubing they hold around the edges of the tubing and they they secure that tubing right to the surface of that foam board insulation that you've covered the entire square footage of that basement let's see that's pretty cool and then the design phase of things we figure out how much tubing is needed per square foot things like that but we're directly we're we're applying it directly to that foam and then the concrete is being poured over the top of it and then uh talk to me about layout for your piping i'm assuming you're when you're when you're designing the system you're figuring out okay i need these pipes roughly one foot on center two foot on center whatever that is and then are you simply just pulling a tape measure out and going all right let's let's mark our uh our on centers and then you have a probably a helper with you to pull that tube out and staple it down to those rough measurements how exact do you need to be well it's not an exact process but i would imagine that you know i think with my experience over the years there's less and less tape measures involved but i think the accuracy is still there you've got a few things you've got to keep in mind and this is all in the either in the training you could receive directly from open or or from their online training in person or even i've got this old manual that i've been carrying around since like 2004 it's like this my my open our bible i want to see that show me that manual i'm sure this is all available online but i love that you've got the printing i don't know if you can it's even got the words about logo which is their old name yeah this is just you know it's like a few hundred pages 300 pages of design and technical info on how to go about designing these systems and so in our the design ultimately comes from like for tube layout and spacing it comes from the heat load calculation phase so none of this is we're not winging any of it you know like we when you're when you're down in austin you guys are doing a load calculations for cooling we're doing the same exact thing for a radiant system only we're doing it for heating right and uh well and i guess in some cases you can use these systems for cooling but up here in minnesota we're using them for heating and we're doing all of that science-based calculation mat all the math for it so that in that process on the design side of things we're coming up with things like tube spacing how much tube is going to go into a slab things that that dictate that or like how thick is the slab what's the floor covering of the slab because floor coverings have r values or uh whether or not like if you've got a really high ceiling because all of these uh things dictate what is needed to come you know to heat or cool that space right you know that for any conventional system well it's the same for radiant makes sense have you used their loop cad design software at all before or you are using it pretty much all manual out of the uh the paper okay so i should clarify so i use the i use the manual like the paper manual as reference but yeah i actually do all the math on my computer i'm using loop cad yeah the nice thing about loop cad though with open order system is they've got all their catalog pre loaded in there so it helps me create quick and easy quick and accurate like uh material list for the job got it so your take-offs are all in there too got it yeah now this is a a stainless manifold from those guys that they sent me interesting that it comes in stainless any benefit to that versus another metal in your mind well you know ultimately i think it's a manufacturing thing stainless can be used for distribution for you know potable water for radiant and there's just a lot more they can do with that because they they're cutting down on different material sourcing stainless is just really kind of taking over on on systems like this ultimately okay good to know it's corrosion free basically you know yeah that makes sense now this one happens to be a five port manifold so the red is obviously uh from the boiler to the radiant zone and then the the blue is the cold line in other words the return loop but when i see this the first thing i think of is oh gosh you could have multiple thermostats in your house with multiple zones and each one of these could end up having a different you know feed let's say a different amount of heat going to those locations talk to me about zoning and what you've done for clients yeah so like that's that's the beauty of like a radiant system when you're using a manifold for distribution like that each one of those we call them loops so you know your top and bottom supply and return is a loop of tubing right just like you explained but that every single one of those could be a different zone or combination of multiples and and you could have a whole wide range of zoning on that one manifold or it could just be one right but we look at zoning just like you would for cooling for you know any other kind of heating and cooling system you know how is the room used what is the you know the oc what how are the occupants going to be most comfortable so like usually bedrooms a little bit cooler kitchen's cooler than the living room that kind of thing and so through distribution alone like how we lay out the tubing and let's say an in-floor heat system we can go room by room and we can make every single room a different zone if we wanted to oh man so it's yeah it's super flexible and it actually to do that is honestly when you compare this to a ducted systems way less expensive because it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to make every bedroom in your home a different zone if you were running a heat you know a ducted forced air system and the other thing i think of for multiple zones on forced air is oh my gosh if i had a five zone forced air system that means i've got five filters that need changed on a regular basis and depending on what type of system you know maybe it's a big forced air system and i've got a filter i got to change every six months or a year but if it's a vrf system or a cassette or a mini split head i might be messing with those filters every 30 days and you've got none of that with this system there's no moving air there's no you know kicking up of dust or filtration of particles in the air and not only that there's really no noise associated with these systems right yeah that's the thing that i think people are they come away from these systems knowing kind of two things if they really stop and think about it is how comfortable they were when they're in that space but then ultimately there's no noise like a properly installed system you're not gonna ever hear it operating and i don't know about anybody watching this but i'll tell you that's attractive to me yeah i i just you know you could sit in your house in the middle of the day nobody's around is going to be completely silent that's pretty cool that is pretty cool that's very cool eric uh we talked about four or we talked about at the beginning that video we said we got five systems for and you kind of let the cat out of the bag a little bit as we were talking about um quick track but there is another method for installing and that's considering uh radiant for walls and ceilings right talk to me about that yeah so an awesome way to retrofit space is that is to consider uh all of the surface area in a room can technically be a heat emitter or like a radiator that's kind of a term that people probably understand the most so if we're not using in-floor heat in the basement let's say because the house is 60 years old but people hate using their basement because it's never comfortable i've been successful and i know many other contractors have and and all of this information is available from lupinor so i'd love to see it on their site don't take my word for it but you can just turn the ceiling into your your heat emitter or your radiator and it doesn't change anything like we talked about earlier floor heights it doesn't change doors or anything like that because you're really only giving up about an inch or three quarters of an inch or half an inch of space and you can actually make that your your radiant panel and it's radiant energy you're not heating air so you're not you know you're not concentrating injury in the space that doesn't benefit the occupants it's just energy that's going from a from hot to cold yeah and you know i know that's an oversimplified simplification of it but think about a space on a wall like what is the first four feet up from the floor like what are you using that for you're not hanging pictures there you're not like nothing's that's that's just space yeah and it's not really even usable so you could consider like a wainscot kind of uh situation where you can turn that into the radiant panel for the space and it is completely hidden and silent and there's no duct openings that you got to worry about putting furniture over the top of or not putting furniture over the top of right there on the entire wall or ceiling right and your ceiling you're never hanging your pictures there and you're not putting couches or beds on top of it so it's a huge advantage i think it's it just goes without i'm so happy you brought it up that's just get passionate about it because it's really cool my customers that i've put their radiant ceilings in uh really really enjoy that they were able to put this technology in a space that they thought wasn't even possible that's so cool quick track really makes it pretty straightforward i mean it's not even much of a carpentry project it's it's already the panels uh already come with the track ready to snap in so screw those panels on snap them in and add your finish and you're done even even a plumbing and heating contractor can do that i love it i love it eric thank you for the knowledge my friend uh anything i missed before we uh close out the video no well i mean you you touch on the stapler uh you know if people aren't familiar with pex a and how it kind of goes together especially the group in our system you use that you typically use the the expansion tool we can use that in our radiant systems too so like those manifolds they can have expansion connections on them and you know who doesn't like to play with like new tools like that stuff's cool yeah but it's a trustworthy connection yeah it's it's an impressive connection and i love that it's uh that there's frankly so few of them in the system right and ultimately it should be less labor it should be easier to install and and easier to maintain and more reliable and durable long term yeah absolutely yeah for sure eric really appreciate you joining me brother guys if you're not familiar with eric's work as you can tell eric is passionate he's smart and he's really darn fun to watch and by the way eric is making a video every single week over on buildshownetwork.com he along with a couple others were our latest contributors that we added at the end of 2000 and uh or sorry pardon me 2021 and so if you're not familiar with eric's work i'll have a link in the description to both eric's instagram feed he's at mechanical hub on instagram almost every single day he's publishing uh from his job sites showing you all kinds of really cool things from his plumbing and heating jobs and then sign up for our newsletter below too so you'll know eric's new content on the site you can get that on that link below big thanks to opener for sponsoring today's video though guys this is a great company with some terrific products and if you're not currently using radiant reach out to an open or dealer plumbing contractor heating contractor in your area to learn more about this potentially for your remodel or your new construction job eric you want to close it out with me do you know the you know the uh have you ever heard me say the build show closeout before follow me on twitter instagram otherwise we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 267,472

Keywords: Matt Risinger, Build Show Network, The Build Show, Build

Id: TJNCDVAaPzg

Length: 23min 0sec (1380 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2022