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Reviewing the Boiler Pipes and Bathroom In-Floor Radiant Heat

Bob and plumbing and heating contractor Frank Iadarola review the air handler and bathroom in-floor radiant heat.

Clip Summary

Bob and plumbing and heating contractor Frank Iadarola review the air handler that will take care of the first-floor rooms in both winter and summer. They then meet up with Peter Knight from Heatwave, who describes the radiant heat system that will be used for the bathroom floor.
Okay, we're back and we're getting ready to solder some copper pipes together that connect with the boiler, right Frank?

That's correct.

So this will bring the hot water over here, via these pipes. And what it is you have do before you can solder the copper pipes together?

Well, what you have to do is clean the copper tubing with an abrasive cloth to remove any impurities, and then you flux it with a brush. And what that does is breaks the surface tension of the metal so that the solder will adhere to it.

Yeah.

And then you heat it up to a temperature of eight or nine hundred degrees for the type of solder that we're using , and that will fuse the joints. Now, this is the hot water coil that connects back to the boiler that we just left.

Mm-hm.

And the boiler will have its own valve that will open on demand from the thermostat from the ground floor level, which is what this hydro air handler handles.

OK.

It'll open its own valve, pump the water through the piping into the coil. The blower will be running, and it will take the air and blow it past the coil, into the air, and blow it to all the rooms.

And that's essentially how you get hot air from this particular air handler in all the ground floor rooms. We have another air handler that's similar to it, and it's located in one of the eaves up on the third floor and carefully hidden away there.

Precisely.

And that will take care of the bedrooms upstairs.

Correct.

Now, in the middle of this thing, we've got just so many different soldered joints.
Are they soldered exactly the same as what John's doing here?

No. No. This is what we call a soft solder, and it's a combination of 95/5 solder.

But this is silver solder, which is silver braid.
And that, that requires a much high temperature of around 1100, 1200 just because of I acquire it and a that exactly its.



OK.

So, in the middle of the air handler, we've got the squirrel cage fan, and then what's all this down here?

Well, this is the cooling coil Bob and this is used in a different season.

This will be used, the heating coil will be used in the winter season, this will be used in the summer season.

And basically that will circulate free air.

That circulates on through these two pipes that you see right here will be connected to an outdoor condensing unit.

Now does this unit include an air cleaner or a humidifier.
Well the unit normally comes with a fiberglass filter, which is located right here but we're upgrading to an electronic air cleaner which is going to be right in this area there right here.

So that will be a separate mount on the side?

Yes, it's going to be 2000 cfm that is 2000 cubic feet of air a minute, the air cleaner that will remove about 90% of the impurities with every air change. OK, Frank, why don't we let John finish up the soldering here. Let's go up to one of the bathrooms and talk about the radiant heat that's being installed in the floor.

Fine.

You know Frank, one of the worst thing about the New England winter is having to walk barefoot onto a ceramic tile bathroom.

That's correct. Bob, I'd like you meet Peter Night from Heatway.

Hi, Ron.

How are you, Peter?

I'm fine, thank you.

So tell us what you're doing here. This is a bathroom floor.

This is a bathroom floor that we're gonna be putting radiant floor heating in the floor in a thin slab. What we're doing now is putting in the heat transfer hose that will be used to carry the warm water from the boiler, circulate it through this this tube, and then send it back to the boiler to be heated again.

What's this tube made out of?

This is a multi-layered heat transfer hose. Andit's designed for applications of radiant heat in the floor.

How hot will the water that goes through here be?

The water temperature that we've calculated for this area would be at 125 degrees.


So this has to be real sturdy stuff?

This is able to handle temperatures much warmer than that, actually. If you look at it, it has a rating on it up to 180 degrees.

Well I've got a living room ceiling underneath the bathroom, so I would worry about that.

You' ll just be using the water temperature that you need in order to heat up the slab to the temperature that gives you a comfortable floor.

Yeah, this is the rough part of the job.

Yes.

And then what we'll be doing here, prior to ceramic tile installation, is to lay down what we call a mud job, which will be kind of a dry mix of Portland cement and sand, and the ceramic tile would be laid on top of that. Now how do you hook this product which is either, what is it vinyl or rubber?

This is a rubber compound that...

How do you couple this with the copper for piping.

This, we use a barb fitting that is fit into the end of the transfer hose.

So you do have...

A barb fitting which that hose fits over it on one end and that fitting would be soddered into a regular plumbing copper fitting on the other end.

On the other end, right here.

So, that would make your connection to the hard pipe in a copper piping.
That's normally used to run the hot water from the boiler to a manifold, that's located in the area of the radiant heat.

And this , of course, is again controlled by the manager down...

Exactly.


At the, at the point of origin.

Thank you.

Well thanks a lot. It's going to solve the problem.

Alright.

Ok. Thanks Frank.

We've got to break for some messages. Don't go away.
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