coachJC

Ed's fridge

This will probably be my last update on this build unless something crazy happens. I still have a list of things to do but the garage is finally functional for all 4 seasons which was one of the major goals with this project. Here is a bit of a list of things that I still need to complete but none of this prevents me from doing anything functional in my garage; 1-Eavestrough - in spring 2-WIFI in garage- this fall/winter 3-finish walls and ceiling - as money permits 4- add 4 post lift - as money permits 5- shelving and cabinets - ceilings and walls need to be done first 6- paint the interior and exterior man doors - spring I am sure there are a few things I have forgotten at the moment but that list is alot smaller than it was this time last year. Thanks again for following along everyone Jeff

Yesterday around 6pm I went out and walked around the garage with a laser temperature reader just to see what the variation of temperature is. The thermostat is set to 63'F, the floor varied between 59.7 at the garage doors to 64.4 at its highest about 10ft from where all the tubing goes into the floor, the majority of the floor read about 63.5'F. The walls were between 62.2-64.2'F, to me that seemed reasonable with no adjustments made to the manifold at this point. I went into the house (before my wife came home😁) and did the same thing, my 3 yr old forced air furnace is set to 68'F and just going around the main floor of my house and into the main floor bedrooms the temperature of the outside walls were between 63.5-64.2 and the interior walls were between 64.0-65.5'F. The highest temp is in an interior bedroom of my oldest son with just one exterior wall and he always complains his room is too hot. I just thought it would be an interesting comparison.

Thanks for the info Ed, I will do some reading up on your suggestions My boiler did come with an outside sensor but i did not install it as it is optional, you are now the second person who suggested I install it as it has benefits that will keep the boiler from running unnecessarily at times.

I did get my first text from my wife asking why the garage feels warmer than the house yesterday morning when she went to get her car out of the garage🙃.... I told her it's not and gave her the number but that did not matter...I thought she would be happy to get in a warm car and not have to scrap the frost off her windshield......no such luck...lol

I am currently trying to figure out what temp I would like the shop to be at, I worked over the weekend with it at 64'F and thought it was just a bit to warm, I am going to drop the temp every week until I figure out what feels good to work at and be able to wear a lite long-sleeved shirt. I started with that temp because my neighbours shop is set to 65'F all last winter and he liked that temp for working in, he did adjust his around a bit but ended up back at 65'F as he liked how that felt for him. His shop is twice the size of of mine with 16ft ceiling so I don't know if that makes a difference but mine feels warmer than his.

The next thing to do was to fire up the Boiler. I have a friend since elementary school run my gas lines, as that is what he does for a living and he was there for the boiler commissioning as he wanted to confirm the gas pressure. I am running propane to my garage as that is what I use for my household heat, on the the new Viessmann Boiler to switch from NG to Propane it is just a touch of a button, you no longer have to change springs and orifices as is done on other types of boilers and appliances, it is all controlled electronically now. The set up was nice and easy, there are a few setting you have to do with the commissioning, then I turned on the thermostat and everything fired up as it should. The air temp was 57'F and the pad temp was 56'F at initial start up, I had set the room temp to 64'F and we let the boiler do its thing. it took about 4hr for the room to come up to temp, When the boiler finally shut off i was amazed at how much condensate was produced, I currently am just collecting in a bucket so its easy to see the it fill up. Thermostat current settings

For anyone who is paying attention to the pictures, you will notice I had PVC furnace pipe for both the intake and exhaust, but i did realize my mistake and changed it to the proper CPVC pipe a couple days later.☹️

The last thing to do was to install the exhaust venting and the intake. I was surprised the venting has it own 40 pg manual...nothing like trying to confuse a guy. The exhaust is a CPVC and grey in colour and has a 90' C temperature rating, and it is expensive. For the intake you can use regular PVC. The CPVC cost me almost $400 and the PVC was under $100.

Next was to get the system all wired up...I have to admit I cheated a little bit and went over to my neighbours and took pictures of all his wiring and copied everything from his when I did mine. I did still referred to all my instructions that are supplied to make sure everything matched up. The second line coming out of the thermostat is the floor temperature sensor. It is something I did not think about when we were plumbing the floor so I added it into one of the cuts in the concrete which are about 1.5in deep, then I just added some self leveling sealant made for concrete floors over top of it to protect it. After that there was just a small amount of plumbing left...The pressure relief valve from the top of the boiler and the condensate drain.

I forgot to add I put a temporary plug on my pump to let the system run to make sure I had all the air out of the system.

From there it was a 2 step process to fill the rest of the system. I open all the shut of valves and let the system fill and let it run for about 30min, but after that i used to service valves that were added right under the boiler to make to pump the glycol thru the boiler system only and I was surprised how much air I got out from that operation. After that I filled my mini feeder with glycol which will pressurize my system as I don't have a water supply setup for my infloor heating.

With the plumbing complete next was to fill the system with glycol. It gets mixed down to between 30 and 35 percent. There are attachments on the end of the manifold where you add hoses, the hot side was the intake then the cold side is the return. With the manifolds you shut off all the valves for each individual line then you fill one and a time, then once they are all full you open them all up together and let it run until there is no air bubbles in the system. I used one full bucket to fill the floor. The rest of the system was still empty. I used a cheap plastic storage bin and filled it with the glycol and dropped a small pump with regular hose attachments to fill the system.