Closed foam or insluated pex

[e60982]

Any input on closed foam vs insluated pex. Anybody got any experience either good or bad. what is best and how do you lay out pipe in foam insluation.. Windy Hill Posen MI P S got a propane fill end of march. Hope it is my last for 3 or 4 years.

 

[sweetheat]

we're building 2 new home's, 1 Tarm 40 will supply heat for both. pex is insulated and contained in a blue poly pipe for underground placement 4 feet below surface with blue styrofoam over. sweetheat

 

[coolidge]

I have spray foamed quite a few outside boiler lines in the past couple years. Works great and it was cheaper then the insulated lines. What you have to do is tape some foam blocks to hold the lines apart ( supply and return). When you are ready to foam the rest just hold up the lines, spray the foam and set the lines in it. Easiest to do the bottom before the top.

 

[e60982]

THanks I will probably do the foam. Windy

 

[Gooserider]

If you haven't already done so, you might want to do a search on insulating PEX lines - lots of threads on it, with both success and disaster stories with different methods... It is a CRITICAL thing to get those lines right, as if you don't it will seriously hurt your system performance...

I haven't followed it real closely, but the impression I've gotten is that the most important aspect is to make sure your lines are in a trench that's well drained - below the frost line, but ABOVE the water table, with plenty of drainage. If you do that then any half way decent insulation job will work pretty well, but if your lines get wet, it will cause many types of insulation jobs to fail completely.

Gooserider

 

[e60982]

THanks will do. Windy