[chronojosh]

Current situation: 1950's ranch with original oil fired boiler. The house is heated with hydronic cast iron baseboards and convectors. The main plumbing loop in the basement is 1 1/4" copper with 1/2" lines to each side of each radiator. I have a basement bathroom that I am adding, and a breezeway I enclosed to make a mudroom between an unheated garage and the house.
1) Can I simply add a sharkbite tee into the main line and drop a supply and return line to a new radiator in the basement?
2) Can I do the same for the breezeway, but put the radiator on an "inside" wall? The breezeway is on a concrete pad, so to put the radiator on an outside wall (garage side) I would need to chip a tunnel in the concrete for each line to the radiator.
3) If I chip away the concrete for the lines, how do I wrap and protect the supply/return lines?
4) can the basement radiator be some sort of wall mounted/recessed set up? I would like it to not stick out into the room.
Thanks in advance!

 

[beenthere]

I don't think I would use shark bites.

But you can do the rest of it as you want. A heater on the inside wall will work fine for a mud room.

Is your piping a monoflow, or 2 pipe system.

 

[chronojosh]

It's a single loop system, just one pipe loops around the entire perimeter of the basement.

 

[beenthere]

Okay, its a monoflow system. For the basement, you will need to use a monoflow tee on both the supply and return side of the heater. Hot water is resistive to being forced down, so 2 monoflow tees. Will only need one for the mud room.

 

[chronojosh]

I take it the tee would be reversed from the supply to the return? Also, how do I tell the supply from the return? The radiators I have now just tee off of the main piping run

 

[beenthere]

If the water is flowing from the main pipe to the rad, thats the supply. If its flowing from the rad to the main pipe, its the return.

Yes, reversed.

 

[chronojosh]

Right, bit how would I tell the difference if they are both tied into the same pipe? I'm a simpleton so maybe I just missing something...

 

[beenthere]

From the boiler. The pipe comes out of the top. That is the water flow out of the boiler. First tee flows to rad, second tee flows water back from rad.

 

[Ocelaris]

Depending on the loop, you may not need a monoflo diverter on both sides. I just tore out our Monoflo system last summer and repiped the whole thing as a reverse return system. My recollection was that if the radiator was above the monoflow loop you didn't need a diverter tee (venturi) on both sides, but if the radiator was below the loop (like in a basement) you did need both diverter (venturi) Tees to get the water to come back up. Check your existing loops off the main loop and follow what you have. i.e. even though they're all "Tees", one may be a monoflow diverter, and the other may be JUST a Tee. Some of the diverter Tees work on venturi, others just pressure. I forget if you put the diverter on the front or back side... you need to identify which direction the water flows and match what you have though. Also I would suggest putting a thermostatic radiator valve on the new radiators, just in case you need to dial back the heat on one radiator loop, it's a pain to add them later. You can just get the TRV and not buy the actual thermostat addition, but you could also add a thermostat to the TRV valve if you wanted to keep the breezeway at a lower temp than the other areas. Plus balancing a monoflow system can be a pain, they generally work well, but always helps to have a fine tuning mechanism.

I'll also strongly recommend insulating any small copper lines very well if they touch outside walls. Realistically any copper lines should never be in an uninsulated area. Bring the area that the lines go through into the heat envelop of the house, and still insulate the pipes.