New Heat Zones

The kids rooms had always been in the same heat zone loop as the living room. Since the living room is usually pretty warm from the windows or the wood stove, their rooms would get pretty cool.  When I remodeled their rooms, I pulled thermostat wire back to the boiler, and recently I finished splitting them out on their own zones.

First I added new zone valves so I could leave most of the heat on while I tied them in, which turned out to be a good idea since it took a couple days to get parts in the middle of the job.

The heat was originally run with a mix of copper and PEX.  Unfortunately we used 5/8 PEX in order to make it easier to pull (the house was largely finished when we put the heat in because we originally heated it with wood and a TOYO stove, but decided to go with baseboard once they ran gas to the neighborhood).  What was unfortunate was that 5/8 turns out to be an odd size. It took me a day to round up the only remaining 5/8 PEX to 3/4 Cu fittings in the Mat-Su valley, lol.  After, of course, I had already bought all 3/4 stuff since I was SURE that's what we'd run...

So I bought all the fittings I could find and saved some spares by the boiler.

This cut took Jake's room out of the loop.

This jumpered past the kids rooms to complete the living room circuit, 5/8 (blue) to 3/4 Cu to new 3/4 PEX (red).

The Cu is the new supply to Hanna's room and the red is the new living room return..

 Adding the first kid room loop...

Lots of copper on the ceiling :-)

Stack of completed zones...

At the end, the dielectric fitting was leaking at the boiler, which completely failed when I tightened it. It was worse than it looks...  Good thing there's a drain in the boiler room :-)

Another trip to Big Lake, arrived just under the 5 o'clock wire and I got a new one installed that night.  The whole black pipe portion needs improving - I'll pull it apart next summer and put a union in to make it all easier.

 One of the happy customers :-)