Finished railings and floors

Here's a look at the finished railings with the finished staircase and the finished floors. The railings, stairs and window trims are ash that was cut in the woods (click here!).  and finished and installed by Willy the timberframer. Good view in this picture of how it all works together. The yellowishness of the hemlock timbers and ceiling planks matches the lighter birch floor planks, the knots in the timbers go with the knots in the floor planks, and the bright hues of the ash are brought in the brighter floorboards. The floor brings it all together.

I sound like an art critic.

The flooring detail shows how the lower grade wood actually works better in the farmhouse. The higher grade hardwood would have made it look like a concert hall or museum.

Wood flooring isn't the ideal covering for a hydronic slab. It does not conduct heat very well, and it requires a high-grade OSB subfloor to keep it stable with the expansion and contraction as well as the high humidity associated with a hydroninc slab. When Francois (the current tenant of the house)  is  not supplementing with wood, he needs to keep the temperature of the slab at 79 or 80 degrees F to keep things comfortable, about 5 degrees F higher than the recommended temperature for a "naked" floor.

One last finishing touch to go: the floorboards. We've got some hardwood at the sawyer that we'll use for this. It will probably be ash like the staircase.

Sun for the solar collectors

If you want solar hot water,you need to keep the snow off your collectors. Lisa did a fine job this morning. You'll notice in the photo that the snow has been piling up copiously on the rooftop. I bought a nice long telescopic pole from SKWEEG (RONA's house brand, I think). Not wanting to scratch the collectors, we use the car brush attachment. It does a fine job, but with anything that freezes to the glass we have to wait for a thaw.

This is the solar controller in the utility room showing the temperature in the solar collector. When this temperature in the collectors gets a set number of degrees higher than the temperature in the water tank, the controller turns on the pump and transports the heated anti-freeze to the coil inside the hot water tank. the reading of 28.7 degrees is good for January! As a matter of fact, the collectors were actively collecting heat when the sun was out today. It's been so cloudy through all of December and January that it's been rare to hear the solar hot water pump going. When the cloud sets in, unfortunately, the collectors do not warm enough to heat the water. Let's hope for sunnier February! The sun starts getting stronger in February, and we could use a break on the hydro bill.

Hydronic heating partially installed

The hydronic heating system is partially installed. Seen here is the utility closet. The first picture gives the view from the living room (a door will eventually block this view, although the plumber and I agreed that this beautiful work of copper and heating technology should be displayed; Lisa seems to think utilities should be hidden by silly doors; what an artsy!). The second image shows the view looking around the corner in the closet to the right towards the hot water tank.


I've already pretty much outlined everything this does, so if you are technically inclined, I refer you to the link to the solar hydronic heating system at the right side of the blog to read up on this.

Copper pipe insulation

One odd thing about the heating trade is that they don't really want to sell the the products they manufacture. I've been going crazy trying to hunt down some heavy insulation for my solar pipes. The regular stuff you buy in stores melts when facing the high temperatures.

Armaflex
I've managed to hunt down some Armaflex insulation at the Home Depot in Burlington, Vermont. It's usually used in refrigeration systems to ward off condensation, but it works well in high-temperature solar applications.

• Price: $6
  
• Max temperature: 220 F or 105 C
• Min temperature: -257 F or -183 C
• Lengths: 6 ft
• Diameter: 1.875" (about 1/2'' thickness)
  
• Pipe diameter 3/4"

Aubochon hardare sells it in bulk by special order 54 lengths for $253.

Delivering heating system

Lisa caught me delivering the heating system from Vermont. The solar collectors took up the bulk of space on the truck. The big tall thing is the water tank, which needs to be kept upright (the other one is me). Yes, it's a tall puppy, about 6 feet high, and will keep the plumber on a ladder when he installs the cold water intake and output. I wish I could claim credit for this packing job, but I cannot. The guys at the radiant floor company really know how to pack a truck. I drove extra careful and avoided potholes for fear of damaging the collectors and glass-lined tank.

Leveling the concrete

The concrete is poured directly on the ground and spread using a special rake. It's backbreaking work because the concrete is heavy and the areas involved large. Once evenly distributed, the concrete is smoothed using a special polisher. More bending and back breaking as they check for straightness using levels. You need an eye for a level floor to do a good job. Our floor came out very nicely, thank-you.

Concrete pour for slab

The snow also brought with it our concrete slab. The cement truck backed right up to the door and funneled the cement right into the house. The cement is then funneled to different parts of the floor using an interior chute.

The truck actually ended up making two trips. It couldn't hold enough to do the whole floor. Wish I'd known the capacity. I would have made some adjustments to the floor design and saved some money.

We protected the bottom of the posts and chimney from splatter using newspapers. Apparantly, the concrete stains the wood permanently becuae it is alkaline and corrosive. It's a messy job too. The concrete splatters when it hits the ground.

I was away at work, and Lisa had to go into Montreal to take care of some parental health matters later that morning, so she only got pictures of the beginning of the pour. Fortunately, Papa came buy later and got pictures of the workers finishing the job (to be posted later).

April on the Pinnacle

So after 3 weeks of warm, dry April weather, the month goes out like a lion with 18'' of heavy, wet snow. By the time it ended, our yard looked something like this. The snow did not accumalate directly front of the house (foreground) because the running overflow from our well flows down the hill here (into our basement sump pump).

Here's a picture of one of our pear trees in bloom the day after. Most of the snow had melted by then, but it still makes for an unlikely picture. Fortunately, our trees did not suffer because the temperature never really got enough below freezing to damage the blossoms. I think we'll get pears this year.

Laying down the hydronic tubing

This is not an initiatory ritual of an ancient Greek mystery cult, nor is it a scene from the Lord of the Rings (with Alex starring as a Hobbit and me acting as an Orc). This is Alex and me on April 14 laying the tubing for the hydronic slab. Alex is tying down the tubing to a wire mesh using plastic ties. The tubing is somewhat unwieldy, so you need a second person to hold and unroll the tubing. Also visible is the polyethylene vapor barrier to keep the humidity away from the house interior, and the Styrofoam board used to insulate the outside perimeter of the floor.

The tubing is attached to the slab manifold, shown here. Hot water will be distributed by the manifold from the hot water tank to three loops that snake throughout the concrete floor. Here, only the first loop and the outflow of the second loop is attached to the copper tubing of the manifold.

My Dad has a whole bunch of pictures of the finished layout that I'll post later.

Plan for heated slab

It's almost time to pour the heated slab. Here's a footprint of the preparations for the slab. A previous post gives a nice overview of the foundation footprint.

Features include:

• A 4' perimeter of 2'' Styrofoam SM around the outside walls (light blue)
• A pantry area and storage area under the stairs which is to be unheated (dark blue)
  
• Manifold box (dark red)

Installation will include

• Compacted 1/2'' clear stone to fill the foundation
• 6 mm or thicker polyethylene vapor barrier
• 2'' Styrofoam SM
• Rebar grid to reinforce concrete and hold tubing in place
  
• 3 closed loop Pex tubing tied to rebar with plastic ties and attached to slab manifold
  
• 4'' poured concrete slab

References

• Slab on grade installation from Radiant floor heating company
• Radiant Heating: The Slab on Grade Installation - Video

Finished foundation

Here are a couple of pictures of the insulated foundation. It gives a good idea of how we did it. It's about $2000 of stryrofoam SM, but it will pay for itself over our lifetimes in heat savings. The aluminum coating on the interior is very visible, held in place by tape. This may be overkill, of course, but the stuff is cheap. It's also effective. Lisa said it really heated up on the inside as she was finishing the job.

In the first picture, Kitty inspects her new catwalk. It will not be one for long.

The second picture shows the sunset over Spruce Hill, with the access for the septic tank in the foreground.

Foundation insulation continues

Lisa points with pride to the fine job she's done insulating the foundation (not to the post anchor). In this photo, the outside is finished and the inside is in progress. She has since finished the inside.

Today, she insulates the pilasters and I line the inside with aluminum foil vapor barrier. Aluminum foil vapour barrier reflects the heat radiation emitted by the crushed stone into the space between the crushed stone.

Did I mention that she's very handy with a knife?

Insulating the foundation

Here's a picture of my lovely wife and assistant cutting 2'' Styrofoam SM boards for the foundation. She's very crafty with a knife. We are installing 4'' on the outside and 2'' on the inside. Today we nailed it to the sill on the outside. We'll need to nail into the concrete on the inside. Hello power drill.

This gives us R-30 insulation value. Overkill? Not with a radiant slab. The temperature of the slab will be maintained at 75 C (22 C) whereas the temperature of the air will be closer to 65 F ( 18 C) (for very toasty toes). If you want to keep the heat in, you need to insulate the slab. Moreover, with a solar system you want to store solar heat from the day and summer through the night and winter. You need to insulate below the slab as well.

Installing the drains

Martin (the plumber)of Plomberie Gilbert and his helper Ben arrived from Knowlton today on short notice (Alex told me this morning that he was coming to install the interior drains). Much to his relief, our foundation was not yet filled with crushed stone, making the work much easier.

The first order of business was to install the coil for the solar heat dump. The solar heat dump keeps the tank and solar collectors from overheating in the summertime when the need for heat is low and the supply of sun abundant. Martin pulled it out into a boingy slinky shape to help dissipate the heat even more. I'll be adding insulation above the coil to assure that the heat goes into the ground instead of to the slab, and to isolate .

Bill Northey and the technicians at Radiant Floor Heating Company customized the coil by adding two elbows and 42'' tubes to bring the cooling fluid from the ledge to the slab. He recommended burying in sand (instead of crushed stone) to maximize the thermal contact with the ground. The heat dump itself is pictured in the second image at lower right. We used it to measure out the position of the coil relative to the other plumbing.

Also shown here are the sewage drains under construction and, in the third image, completed. The main sewage drain runs out the hole in the foundation wall at back. You can actually see the top of the septic tank too. The floor drains runs out int he corner at left. The cruched stone supports the toilet drain. The whole foundation will eventually be filled with the stuff.

Great work by Martin and Ben.

Hydronic installation

The image at right shows the hydronic heating components in the utility area near the house entrance. Not that the hot water tank also provides domestic hot water. The circuits are color coded for clarity. They are not exactly to scale, but give an idea of the space involved.

The following circuits are mounted on the wet wall. Cylindrical tanks represents expansion tanks. Long boxes represent circulation pumps.

• Hydronic floor circuit: this circulates hot water through the pex tubing in the hydronic slab. Water enters and leaves the slab through a slab manifold. Hot water leaves the circulation tank at the top. A valve allows hot water to be drained from the circuit for domestic use (not shown). Cold water from the well reenters the system through a valve further on in the circuit, so water continuously gets pumped into the floor. It renters through the bottom of the tank to be reheated.
• Solar loop: Heated antifreeze comes from the solar panels on the roof. It enters the heating exchanger coils in the bottom of the tank. It exits about halfway up the tank and flows back to the heating panels. A heat dump short-circuits this flow when the fluid entering the tank exceeds 160 F. This protexts the solar panels form overheating. The fluid is run through a copper coil buried under the house designed for this purpose.
• Electric boiler: An electric boiler acts as a backup heating device for when there is not enough sun to supply the system. The heating contractor recommends a 13.5 kW boiler. The circuit feeds into a coil at the top of the water tank.
  

Single zone open system

The following images illustrate the open system "Radiant Ready" system from the Radiant Floor Company that transports hot water from the tank to the floor and domestic hot water circuit.

• Hot water leaves the heat source (hot water tank in this case). The domestic hot water pipe may divert the supply, but this is replaced by water from the well.
  
• The water then passes through the pump. Notice that the water must move upward through the pump in this design.
  
• The water then passes through the floor and returns to the tank through the pipe at the bottom of the fixture.

Slab manifold

The slab manifold is the junction between the copper tubing of the hydronic system and the pex tubing running through the slab. This comes in a wooden box. The concrete slab is poured around the wooden box, and the wood removed once the concrete is dry. The hot water tubing is then attached to the manifold.

Images here show the manifold before and after the slab is poured.

Sundra 5-16 solar hot water system

A self-contained heating circuit transports the heat from the collector to the in-house hot-water storage tank (approx.300L). There the heat is passed on to the in-house hot-water storage tank by a heat exchanger and the water for domestic use is heated. When the heat supplied by the collector is not sufficient to attain the desired temperature, a conventional heating system takes over and completes the heating process. An electronic control unit (different-temperature regulator) constantly checks whether the temperature at the collector opening is greater than the temperature in the inhouse hot-water storage tank. If this is the case, the control unit switches on the heating circuit.

Source: Sundra SEIDO5 series Heat Pipe Vacuum Tube Solar Collector

Open Hot Water/Radiant System

Source: Radiant floor heating company: Solar water heating, The open system
The Open System

The Open Hot Water/Radiant System uses a heat exchanger to transfer thermal energy to a storage tank filled with potable water. This approach provides domestic hot water, radiant floor heat, and allows the system to be powered by a very low wattage pump.

A radiant heating system is considered "open" any time the same hot water is used for both radiant heating and domestic hot water. This type of system is very efficient because a single heat source (in this case, a hot water storage tank) provides for all the home's hot water needs. The homeowner doesn't need two completely separate systems, many times with overlapping mechanical components, performing separate heating tasks.

Note that cold water from the domestic supply enters the water heater via the floor tubing so that there's never any chance of stagnant water entering the domestic system. Fresh water enters the tubing every time hot water is used.

And although it looks at first glance as if cold water will be cooling down your floor, in reality that won't happen. The only cold water that can enter the tubing will be the "make up" water to your water heater. If no hot water valves are open in your domestic system, the radiant system is essentially "closed". In other words, cold water cannot enter the system unless there is an open hot water valve in the house somewhere. Normally, only the circulator pump supplying the radiant tubing can force water from the water heater into the tubing, and back, when your zone calls for heat.

Open system with solar tie-in

Solar water heaters interface well with radiantly heated floors because the large thermal mass common to radiant systems provides an excellent storage medium for the energy generated during the day. At night, this stored thermal energy is slowly released into the living space. The schematic below demonstrates how a solar thermal array can interface with an open radiant system.

The Stiebel-Eltron hot water tank has two heat exchangers into their storage tank. The lower (solar) coil heats the tank to a usable temperature, and the hot water is drawn off as needed for domestic and heating purposes. Fresh water enters the tank in direct proportion to the amount drawn off for domestic hot water. When hot water is taken from the tank for radiant heating purposes, it simply returns to the tank for re-heating.

Since solar panels can heat the tank to near boiling in the summer, a mixing valve tempers the potentially scalding water to a safe level. If cloud or winter limit the amount of sunlight , an on-demand (back-up) unit heats the upper coil so that hot water is always available for domestic or radiant heating purposes.

Solar heat dump

The solar heat dump prevents the water heater and solar collectors from overheating in the summertime. It moves heat away from the solar loop and into a copper coil. This coil will be buried under the middle of the house. A sensor at the entry of the water dump controls the flow.