A contractor is asked to design a hydronic heating system for a modest, super-insulated house in a cold Northern climate. The home’s design load is only 18,000 Btu/h. The owners are planning to install a 12 KW solar photovoltaic electrical system.
An installer sets up a zoned distribution system as shown below. To keep it simple, he uses the same size piping for the headers and all the distribution circuits. The heat source is a low-mass, copper-tube boiler with high-flow resistance.
The schematic in Figure 1 represents a drawing I recently reviewed for a proposed system that was to supply three zones of finned-tube based, two zones of low-temperature radiant panel heating, and an indirect domestic water heater.
An installer is asked to install heating in the slab floor of a farm workshop. The owner has already purchased a used cast iron boiler that will run on propane.
The Glitch: Eager to keep up with this new technology, an installer decides to install a hydraulic separator between a boiler and distribution system as shown below.
An installer needs to provide heat from a conventional gas-fired boiler to a large buffer tank. The tank is necessary because of a highly zoned distribution system.
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