Friday, November 17, 2006

Thermostatastic!

The pumps which control the radiant heat were installed yesterday, and all the thermostats were hooked up. This means the heating system is now completely, fully, 100% finished. Yay! Here's what the finished upstairs manifold looks like, with its little WIRSBO pumps all in a row:
The way it works is that each "zone" of the house has it's own loop of the radiant tubing running through it. We have 4 zones for each floor of the house, for instance upstairs each bedroom is it's own independant zone. Each loop of tubing comes back to a separate node on the manifold. Each node on the manifold has a pump on it, which is controlled by the thermostat in the individual room.
When you set the thermostat higher in a room, the pump speeds up the circulation of the water through the tubing, therby pushing more heat into the room. I just love how efficient it all is. Each pump is also conveniently labeled with the name/description of the zone it controls. Aren't those pumps just about the cutest little things? Ok, I can't beleive I just wrote that either. I better go look at some kitten pictures or something, quick!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So on your setup, those are pumps? Our setup has valve actuaters there, with a single central pump. We're having problems with an apparent mismatch between the actuator range of motion and the range of motion required to operate the valves.