# Is Ultra-Fin System the way to go?



## yooper rich (Jul 16, 2009)

We are building a new home and are looking at the Ultra-Fin Radiant Floor Heating System.  Any thoughts on how this would work out for us would be welcomed.  We will be heating with an EKO-40 and 800 gallon storage.


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## stee6043 (Jul 16, 2009)

You may find this site of some use for radiant in-floor information....

http://www.radiantdesigninstitute.com/index.html


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## Piker (Jul 17, 2009)

I have personally used some ultra fin in my own home... it's not really tru radiant if you ask me, and generally requires warmer water to be effective than tru radiant.  I installed it long before knew I would ever install thermal storage, so if i had it to do over again, I wouldn't.  I will probably be ok with the number of fins I have installed because the heat loss is so low in those areas that I will be able to keep the house warm with 140* water even on the coldest days.  

cheers


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## SolarAndWood (Jul 17, 2009)

Piker said:
			
		

> I have personally used some ultra fin in my own home... it's not really tru radiant if you ask me, and generally requires warmer water to be effective than tru radiant.  I installed it long before knew I would ever install thermal storage, so if i had it to do over again, I wouldn't.  I will probably be ok with the number of fins I have installed because the heat loss is so low in those areas that I will be able to keep the house warm with 140* water even on the coldest days.
> 
> cheers



If you could do it over, what would you do?


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## Piker (Jul 17, 2009)

SolarAndWood said:
			
		

> Piker said:
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> 
> 
> ...



Some sort of heavy guage aluminum plate that has direct contact with the subfloor material.  If I could go back even further to a time when I replaced all the subfloor material, I may have used an engineered radiant floor panel of some sort.

The ultra fin is a nice product... I know a few people that use it and have good luck with it, (including me)...  but they have all been running 180 water from their oil or gas boiler through it all the time, and don't have to even think about thermal storage issues.  Like I said, i figure i will be good down to 140 at design temps in the areas where i have the ultra fin installed because of low heat loss.  It's just not practical in the rest of the house.

cheers


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## SolarAndWood (Jul 17, 2009)

I keep pitching concrete or tile floors but the wife isn't buying it.  I love wood, but there seems to be better choices for a floor in a northern climate.


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## Piker (Jul 17, 2009)

We have a radiant concrete slab in our sunroom with flagstone on top of it... it's THE most comfortable place in the house.

cheers


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## stee6043 (Jul 17, 2009)

I find it interesting that the folks over at this "Radiant Design Institute" claim the metal plates do "nothing".  Not installing the plates would sure make for a faster install I would think.  Not to mention save a few dollars...


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## Chris S (Jul 17, 2009)

Ultra fin is IMO a great inexpensive way to get radiant out of a high temp. system.  As to the original question, I would answer no.  If you have the ability to install one of the other options,  that is the route you should take.  I have never installed quick track, or any of that type,  but have installed some gypsum, and miles of embeddded concrete and staple up with great success.  *  Our staple up applications start with advanced  insulation techniques, or ICF , and have low btu/ s.f. requirements.  Also,  new, or newer construction- we would not attempt such an install on a mulit-layer built up floor.

I see ultra fin as the second part of a baseboard, or other high temp zone.  Plus... I did like the video.


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## tom in maine (Jul 17, 2009)

I think Ultra Fin is the answer to a question nobody asked.
It complicates a simple process, which is the staple up radiant floor.
Most staple ups use high temp water regardless. If you are concerned about the surface temps, use a floating hardwood floor, or
install the tubing on the side of the floor joists, about an inch away from the subfloor. Install insulation another inch below that.
It is prudent, though, to have that direct thermal contact with the subfloor.

I am not a big fan of aluminum fins, but they do work, as does a straight staple up without the fins. Tubing is cheap enough that you can double the footage of tubing used and still not break the bank. 

It seems really silly to install the tubing perpendicular to the floor joists. What an extreme amount of labor to replace what is a perfectly viable
concept, the basic staple up system. Don't buy into the marketing hype.

Tom


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## DaveBP (Jul 17, 2009)

Tom's right. The Emperor has no clothes.

If you have to run high temperature water through the tubes why not simply run the tubes the easy way (not that any underfloor work is easy) parallel to the joists and get good contact with the subfloor over the greatest area for better conduction? I've never understood why a 1/2" air space in between glass plates makes them "insulating" windows but several inches of air between PEX tubing with aluminum christmas trees on it and the subfloor above will somehow get heat to the room above faster. 
That they aren't painted black suggests to me that they were designed by salesmen, not engineers.

Here's an interesting read on the subject.

http://www.radiantengineering.com/PlatelessInRadiantville.pdf


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## yooper rich (Jul 17, 2009)

Thanks for the info.  I will keep reading and learning.


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## Gooserider (Jul 19, 2009)

I'm not in the heating business, but I know that some of the pros on here have expressed the opinion, and pointed to some pretty heavy duty articles in their industry mags to suggest that plates are worth doing in some form...  You might try using the search function to find some of the other threads on this.  The "Radiant Design Institute" guys seem to be in the minority, but I've seen lots of cites of that Sigenthaller article.

I've seen a suggestion elsewhere that one may be able to get "scrap" aluminum sheet from some of the seamless gutter places (i.e. the tag ends of rolls, or the surplus from when they change colors on their machines) and bend your own plates for short money...  Not as fancy as the heavier commercial plates but not as expensive either...  Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

IMHO, this is one where it will cost a lot less to use plates of some sort than it would to skip the plates and try to do a fix later after a new ceiling is up...  It would cost a lot more to fix it later, so do it right the first time.

Gooserider


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## Piker (Jul 21, 2009)

I am going to stand by my thoughts on using aluminum plates for heat transfer.  It's just like any other heat exchanger... the more surface area you have to exchange heat from one body to another, the less temperature drop you will have across that exchange.  The less temperature drop you have across the exchange, the lower water temps you can use to satisfy the demand for heat.  I am sure there are instances where that much heat transfer is not critical, but if you're going for the most efficient system possible, a good plate seems to be the ticket.

The ultra fin I have upstairs is rediculously loud.  180* water expands the pex a significant amount, and around every bend it sounds like the house is coming apart, and I hate it.  I am going to add some provision to that zone in order to keep a more moderate temperature inside the pex.  

cheers


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## Gooserider (Jul 21, 2009)

I just spent quite a while looking at the Ultra-Fin Website and while to me it looks in many ways like a product for increasing the lubricosity of serpents, I will reserve my doubts about whether it works or not...  However if one accepts the claims made at face value, I would say that it wouldn't be a good choice for a wood boiler and storage setup...  All of their material keeps talking about needing high water temperatures, mostly in the 180*F range, just like baseboard, which a couple of their news articles compare it to.  Even their "low" temperature option defines low as 140*F

This may be fine, albeit not terribly efficient, with an electric or dino-boiler heat source that generates those high temps on demand, but with a storage system we are wanting to get our system temperatures down as low as possible (ideally into the 100-120*F range) in order to get the most heating value out of the stored water, and minimize the number of boiler firing cycles...  This doesn't seem to be any sort of a match to the Ultra-Fin concept.  Looks to me like staple-up w/ plates is probably still the best bet if you need to go below the floor...

Gooserider


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## yooper rich (Jul 22, 2009)

Thanks again for your time and thoughts.  Sometimes I think I'm getting in over my head with this project but I'm sure we will be happy with the end result.

Rich


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## in hot water (Jul 25, 2009)

The determining factor should always be the heat load when looking at distribution methods. 

 I'd say it is always best to heat the space, or meet the load, with the lowest possible supply temperatures.  For that a 4" concrete slab, well insulated below and along the edges wins hands down.  It is quite possible to produce 20 btu/ square foot in a 68F space with average fluid temperatures in the mid 90 F or a supply in the 100- 105F.  Higher room loads would require higher supply temperatures.  Tighter tube spacing 6 or 9" on center changes the required supply temperatures also.

Gyp, thin slabs will require a bit warmer supply, and they do not move heat laterally as well as a 4" concrete slab.

Adding aluminum transfer plates to bare pex tube does make a big difference.  You need to get the energy from the tube to the load (floor).  Aluminum being a great conductor does this, but also the conductive transfer of a wide plate opposed to a thin contact patch with bare tube stapled to the underside of the floor.  look for a 15- 205 decrease in temperature with good heavy gauge transfer plates.  Thin plates can be noisy "oil canning" is the sound you will hear as the plates expand and contract.  use outdoor reset controls to minimize the wide temperature swings that lead to noisy plates, or bare pex for that matter.

UltraFin can and does work at lower supply temperatures.  I have one system operating at 150F supply, powered by a mod con boiler.

A couple tricks... use PAP tube to minimize expansion movement of the tube.  Run the tube parallel to the joist, two tubes per space UF staggered every 3' on the tube.  UF does make clips to fasten tube without drilling across all the joists.  There is a method to "thread" PAP through the holes at the joist ends if you go that route.  If you have a high load area you can add some aluminum transfer plates with the UF.  I did that on the great room which was all glass on one end.  UF up until the last 4 feet then snapped into Radiant Engineering ThermoFins.  A nice mix to cover higher loads.

The UF is a great way to add some radiant floor to an exisiting HW baseboard system.  The higher temperature connects nicely to the UF without needing a mixing device.

UF is a joist bay heating system, driven mainly by convection.  No question conduction transfer with a good conductor, like aluminum, or graphite  is a better way to move the energy.

The load, as I mentioned above, will help you determine the system and operating temperature required.  For a residential application 27- 30 btu/ ft is a good guide for radiant.  Above that look to supplement the radiant floor with baseboard or panel rads.  Or better yet lower the load!  The goal is to cover the load and keep the floor surface temperature in the 80- 83F temperature range.  Above that it becomes uncomfortable to bare feet, especially on hard surface flooring, tile, concrete, etc.

I stay away from radiant under carpet and pad, regardless of the load, I feel it is a bad match.

I did infrared video tape the UF job I installed a few years back.  I will say UF does provide a nice even heat spread across the floor.  No stripping whatsoever, just a nice consistent even temperature spread.

 hr


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