Hopefully simple system design questions

[Fred61]

Wonder if an air stapler and pointed sstaples will do the trick...

I assume the plates are fully annealed. That's what keeps them quiet and also allows you to easily form them. I tried my air stapler and was shooting the staple clean through. I ended up using a cheap electric stapler I bought at the local Ace store.

 

[Willman]

Wonder if an air stapler and pointed sstaples will do the trick...

I would use divergent point staples for extra holding power against the inevitable movement from expansion and contraction.

 

[BHetrick10]

Nor sure if anyone else has ever done this, but myself and a few friends have. I dont have mine up and running yet. I have my 1/2 pex one in each 16" bay and two in 24" bays. Just used regular tin the entire length of bay. Then put R19 below. I have about 4" air gap to theoretically even out the heat. The radius of the tin was spot on with the cheap aluminum plates. I was helping my buddy put up the aluminum plates and we had some scrap tin around and compared and decided to use the tin and save a ton of money.

 

[Fred61]

I would expect this method would sound like a steel roof on a pole barn when a cloud goes over. I wouldn't want to be lying in bed and listening to the expansion and contraction every night as the zone cycles. They use shorter annealed sections for a reason.

 

[BHetrick10]

At my friends we got Tyne water mixed down to keep the zone open as much as possible. The only time you here it is if the fire goes out and everything cools and has to come back up to temp.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

Well my help arrived. The way we strung the pipe in the joists was really ingenious. We fed the pipe up then down perpendicular to the joists (drilled holes), then pulled the loops down each joist cavity, feeding pex from that side. It had to be about 70-90 degrees to pull the pex down the cavity without kinking the pex. Kerosene bullet heater very helpful at -5 deg F ambient and only a tarp over the garage door.

It took two people. One person pulling and one person unrolling the pex. We got 5 runs on the far side, 6 runs on the middle and just short of 7 runs on the side closest to the manifold. We are going to splice on 15 feet approx on the closest loop to the manifold to complete the loop. A slight adjustment to flow control should fix this. 900 ft of pex ($400) 800 lin. ft of heat transfer plate ($800) 3000 Teks 1/2 inch Lath screws (non self tapping) ($100). Nice thing is, I can use leftover screws and plates for the remaining zones in the house that I have yet to do.

I figured screws would not work loose and could be removed easier (especially because im not 100% sure on plumbing placement for island with sink and other stuff. Staple the hell out of something and try to remove it and screws become suddenly worth it IMO.

The guy who is helping me felt I went way way overboard on the plates way more than he's ever seen (near 90% coverage on the underfloor) but this will help keep water temps to a minimum. He is thinking I can run one mixing valve for both both zones at 110 degrees for both the concrete garage below and the underfloor above.

I'll post some pics later.