Planning boiler lines

[NorthernWisconsin]

I attached a photo to show my predicament. I'm looking for opinions on what makes the most sense.

There are four building total on the property:

House - 28 x 40 lower level (propane boiler radiant in floor and wood fireplace) and 28 x 20 upper level (baseboards). The fireplace probably takes care of 75 percent of the heating load but needs to get loaded every couple hours.
Guesthouse - 28 x 24 and heated by a wood stove when used. Otherwise it allowed to freeze because there's no plumbing. We're planning a 18 x 24 addition with plumbing so will need to heat that portion. I drew its planned location on the picture in blue.
Garage is 28 x 32 and unheated. It's not insulated right now but at some point I hope to get to that.
Shop is 30 x 40 and isn't currently heated but is insulated. I would like to heat it to 45 or so.

I'm looking into putting in an indoor boiler with storage in the shop. This would heat the shop, guesthouse, and house although I would have backups on everything for when not around for a few days. I'm trying to figure out my line locations before I get into the guesthouse addition this summer.

I can run straight underground between buildings, or I could bring it all inside the currently uninsulated garage. If I ran straight underground, I probably wouldn't tie into the garage because I wouldn't really ever heat that anyways.

I've seen the horror stories about lines getting waterlogged or losing too much heat which is why I was contemplating pulling it indoors for part of the run. It would also allow me to do different things than just a simple loop (house first, then guesthouse) although simplest might not be bad either. Frost line is 70 inches up here.

I'm all ears. Let me know your thoughts.

Chris

 

[bigealta]

IDK but i'd make sure the new plumbing in the guest house is easy to shut off and drain and all pipes pitched to drain out. That way you don't have to use a compressor to blow them out if you decide to not heat the space either for vacation time or full winters, power outages, or whatever.

 

[sloeffle]

Frost line depth doesn't matter when you have good lines such as Thermopex, Rhinoflex, Logstor etc. As long as the your lawn mower blades don't hit it, you should be okay. On a 100 foot run with good pipe you'll lose about 1 degree. I'm not sure if you plan on digging up drive but that would get spendy pretty fast. I'm sure having it bored isn't cheap either.

Personally I might opt for 1.25" pipe from the shop to the garage and then 1" pipe from there to the guest house. You might be able to get away with a 1" run depending on your BTU requirements for guest house and garage. I'd say your house is going to be biggest consumer of BTU's so I might do a direct run of 1" from the shop to house. If you figure out your BTU requirements that would tell you if you can get away from pulling it from the garage. You are probably going to need to build some kind of manifold system in the garage.

 

[Pinesmoke]

My son bought a place with a 2yo boiler install and the guy cheaped out on the lines and they waterlogged a year later. He had to replace them.

Like sloeffle said buy good lines, once.

 

[NorthernWisconsin]

Thanks for the responses guys.