UFH Zoning requirements

Hi,

Was wondering how many zones should i go for/recommended in a 2 storey 3200 sq foot house with geothermal?

Cheers

I would suggest one zone per room, ie. air/floor stat in room + actuator at manifold and suitable controller. Depending on number of rooms you may need more than one manifold/controller - I have 2 manifolds in 2200 sq.ft bungalow, one with 8 zones + towel rad, other with 6 zones + towel rad.
I have seen some suggestions that only one or two stats for whole house would be sufficient but I don't like the idea of such limited control - but maybe that's just me.

Agree with Ennisjim. With UFH you'll probably have a circuit to the manifold for each room anyway as the length of pipe in a circuit is restricted. IF you haven't chased for elec 1st fix then adding a stat to each room makes sense.

I have a zone per room and a manifold for each floor, what i meant was actually sections which i found out that i have one upstairs and downstairs from the UFH supplier

We have some large rooms in our house so the manufacturers recommended 2 zones in some of the rooms with one thermostat controlling the room . It has to do with the length of the run of pipe under the floor they don't recomend any run goes over 100 mteres

cheers bertie1

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you are mixing up zones and circuits. If you have a large room that needs two circuits from the manifold but both actuators are connected to the one stat then that is one zone. Your UFH installer should work out the circuit runs for you.

Well the drawing were done out by Quality plastics in Whites cross Cork who estimated the lenghts of pipe in each run ( very accurately if I must say with very little waste.) They broke up the rooms in to Zones in each room and put 2 into some of the larger rooms with one thermostat controlling 2 acuators/ motorised valves for the large rooms . They only supplied the materials , our own plumber fitted it.The coils were marked 100 meters and 150 meters . If 80 meters went into zone 1 in the kitchen they said used 150 meter coil and use the other 60 or so meters in another room in the house with a shorter run. Very little waste. Those drawing also estimated the BTUs required to run the under floor so we could estimate the size of the boiler and it uses less BTU than your conventional radiator system.

It has been up and running over 12 months now and we are very happy with the comfort levels in the house not to mention the pleasure of walking into an ensuite in the morning with a warm floor especially last week !!!

Dont forget to zone off separately rooms that will be subject to solar gain