I'm Radiant!

And so the radiant begins!

The weather is cooling down rapidly, so getting the heat in is highest priority. To be moving forward on this feels GREAT. 

Funny how obstacles turned out to be opportunities to do something easier...  The clips that came with the radiant kit to hold down the tubing had large holes, so they had to be screwed down, not nailed.  Much slower, and harder on the shoulders. Dang, I wanted to use my nail gun.  (LOVE my nail gun!)  

After putting down the first few clips, I realized they were too tall!  Oh no! This heat system has to fit within a ¾ inch space, and the clips for half inch pex were an inch tall.  Called Radiant Company of Vermont and they said no problem, just use polyethylene pipe tape instead. Yay! Now I get to use my nail gun!  Win-win.  

So three of five rolls of half inch pex are laid.  Radiant Co. said it's a two-person job, but I figured out the way to work solo so I could keep chipping away at it. I'm making an instructional video about how to wrangle the pex, and will add the link once it's edited and  posted.

A preview: when you get to the wall and need to turn around, it would be tempting to lay the curve of the pex down and work with that. But if you do, you'll twist the pex a quarter rotation. Getting to the other end, twisting it the other direction would introduce a 180 degree twist across the length of the run. The key is to literally make a u-turn with the roll. "You're walking the dog, you get to the end of the walk, and it's time to turn around to go home."  You'll see that on the video.  

In the second photo, see those thin pieces of wood laid between the loops? Those are 1x2 firring strips, aka "sleepers."  This is what the bamboo flooring will be nailed to, safely keeping the floor from crushing the tubing.  (1x2 is actually ¾ x 1½" so it's just ¾ inch tall) The space in between the sleepers will be filled with sand as a thermal heat sink. The heat sink provides a mass that holds the heat, making the system more efficient.  Not a big one as heat sinks go, but miles better than leaving the space filled with air, which holds heat poorly.  If you've wiggled your toes in sand on a warm day, you know it absorbs and holds heat well.  

On that note, time to head over and get back at it!