The Heat is ON!

...it's on the street. er, I mean, on the floor. In the floor. Whatever. Yesterday the final hook-ups for both the water and the power to the Munchkin boiler were done, and the heat is circulating through the radiant floors. You can already feel it inside the house! It'll take a few days for the concrete to warm up enough to bring the heat up all the way, but there was enough of a difference between the indoor and outdoor temps to be noticeable last night, after just a half-day or so running. It has a really nice feel in the house. Like being around sun-warmed rocks in the evening after the sun goes down.

Here's Cary with the Munchkin. Now that it's running, it was easier to figure out which pipes were doing what, since some are quite a bit warmer than the others to the touch. I've labeled the parts that are shown in this image. (Click on it and it'll get bigger and easier to read.)

There are still some mysteries about this set up, so I still intend to make sure and get together with somebody who knows all about it and find out what all the various parts do. I'm especially curious about the little tank on the bottom of the system (scroll down a couple of posts and you'll see a picture of it). It seems to have a little pressure release at the top of it which would make sense if it was to provide for expansion due to the heating of the water, but it's also connected right up to the cold water intake. It's probably something really obvious, but I haven't thought of it yet. So I'll just have to pick the brain of somebody who knows.

Having the heat running should speed up the mudding process quite a bit, as it'll dry much faster. It'll also be more pleasant for the guys, working with their hands in cold wet clay all day must kind of suck, even with gloves. They're making progress every day though, most of the downstairs seams are done, and a lot of the upstairs patches have at least one coat of mud over them. It turns out it's not particularly photogenic process, though. I'll put up some shots when it's all done. :)