from Hacker News

Have we forgotten to make heat traps? (2012)

by vq on 5/16/19, 7:13 PM with 43 comments

  • by mcmatterson on 5/16/19, 7:46 PM

    I designed and installed a complete hydronic heating system in our house last year, replacing a conventional forced air system. It being the first time I'd ever done such a thing (and indeed, the first time I'd ever really been exposed to hydronic heating at all) I learned everything through reading (mostly the excellent idonrics series at https://www.caleffi.com/usa/en-us/technical-magazine). I went really deep on the reading so while I had/have a pretty solid theoretical understanding I was/am a complete novice on the craft side of the field.

    Overall, the practice seems to be very heuristic based, with every installation being a bit different and rules of thumb being the norm. Our system seems to work fairly well in practice, but I've been curious to get a professional's opinion on it (the only pro that's seen it was the gas guy who did the final hookup, who seemed impressed but didn't really offer any specific criticisms).

    Repo at https://github.com/mtrudel/boiler

    I've since added an elixir based graphing system to it, at

    http://mat.geeky.net/boiler

  • by gowld on 5/16/19, 7:57 PM

  • by thefourthchime on 5/16/19, 7:44 PM

    Seems like something trivial to make with PEX these days. I have no idea if it's regular practice or not. The only downside I can see is if there was recent hot water, it might take slightly longer to reach the faucet.

  • by dqpb on 5/16/19, 10:31 PM

    > it saves you time and hazzel

  • by sctb on 5/16/19, 7:39 PM

    Since the submitted link has a download disposition we've updated it from https://www.esbe.eu/it/en/~/media/ESBE%20Public%20web_BRserv... to the abstract.