Ok, the local library can get me an interlibrary loan on "Pumping Away" so I can read that without buying it.... As well as several other hydronics books.
Now, some questions for you gurus!
Where I'd like to have my boiler, the piping lenghts will be as such:
To house: 100 ft
To Milkhouse: 55 ft
To Shop: 88 ft.
In addition, I'll have 14 ft of vertical piping (7 down, 7 up) on each run to get my lines below frost level. (Our ground heaves very badly and I don't want any chance of trouble down the road.)
Now, unfortunately, that's not the end of the story, the shop has a bit of a problem in that where my lines will come in is at the farthest point from where my radiant floor tubing comes up.... So I can pipe the water down one side of the shop, then across the other side (88 ft of run) or up the wall, across the ceiling, and down the other wall (65ft). Being in either case it will be inside the heated shop, I'll just use slip-on insulation for the pipes.
Now, my first question is: Can I get away with piping up and over the shop, or do I need to go around the perimeter with my piping? I was initially worried about exceeding the head capacity for my pump, but then got thinking that even though the water has to go up 12ft to get to the ceiling, it will then have 12ft of drop on the other side which should negate the 12 foot of rise once primed.... Am I correct in thinking this? If so, then running up and over should give the pump less "head" than around the perimeter by shortening the run by 20ft.
Second question: The calculated heat loss for my shop is about 55,000 btu/hr..... No, figuring that radiant slabs are efficient down to 80F water temps, I should be able to extract 700 btu's per gallon of supplied water from my boiler/hot water storage (conservative figure). Therefore a flow of 78.57 gph or 1.3 gpm will be necessary. That should be easily accomplished with a Taco 007 on 1" pex.. Right?
Third question: For the house, haven't calc'ed a heat loss analysis on the house yet, but I'm sure it's gonna be pretty high. So, planning on going with 1" pex again, but with forced air handler in the furnace. Probably need minimum water temps leaving the air handler of 100F right? if so, that be about 480 BTU/gal usable energy from my water (once again, conservative figure) meaning that 100,000 btu/hr (just a wild guess at the house's heat loss as of right now) I'd need 208 gph flow or 3.5 gpm. Once again, definitely seems possible with a 007 on 1" when the run will only be 100'.
Finally, the milkhouse will be heating DHW for milking..... We go through about 50 gallons 2x day..... about 84,000 btu/day in heat up + maintaining energy... I don't plan to have a flow-through setup to heat the hot water.. Rather, a large tank that can be heated by a small 10plate heat exchanger over a large part of the day, then can draw off the tank at milking time..... Since the water is used in large amounts, all at once, at two times a day that are roughly 12 hours apart.. I figure being it's only 55' from the proposed boiler location I should easily be safe with 3/4" pex for that..... Though if I'm going to have enough 1" pex left over from the other stuff, I'll sure as heck use it......
What do yall think? Correct me on any incorrect logic I've got here..... That's why I'm asking....
Oh, and yes; as soon as I get the time, I'm doing a heat loss on my house to have better numbers to work with.