Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Toasty Toes

Our house will have in floor radiant heat, which is exceptionally comfortable and exceptionally efficient. The colder it is outside, the toastier your feet get.

First we laid the tubing. It took about a day. There are six 200 feet runs. Some people would have done four 300 foot runs, but this setup allows more than double the water flow, which results in evener heat, a faster heating floor, and a better load on the boiler.


The tubing was very unwieldy. Marcy handled the 1000 foot roll of it, and ended up bruised on her arms. I operated the stapler, which looked like a big bike pump, except using it it reminded me of catching a fast pitch softball. There were 500 staples. All the tubes terminate in the utility room.





Today the gypcrete crew poured the floor on top of the tubes. Here's three of the crew, loading sand, emptying bags of gypcrete, and operating the mixer. Our truck is in the background. We borrowed a 325 gallon tank which saved us the expense of a water truck.


Here is the fourth crewmember beginning the pour. It comes out fairly liquid from a hose and is mostly self-leveling.


About halfway done. We had 1.5" thick poured. It weights about 12,000 pounds. Don't worry, our floor was engineered to support 18,000 pounds of concrete, but then we added 50% more joists just to be safe.


All the gypcrete has been poured and is being screeded to a final finish. The whole opperation only took about 2 hours, half of which was setup and teardown.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sweet!! Were you tempted to write a message or draw a picture with the tubing? And I don't know if you noticed, but that guy totally walked through your wet cement! Looking good....hot!

Anonymous said...

Sure, how many other bruses do you have good excuses for. Marcy, physical abuse is not acceptable behavior for any reson. That hose can be a nasty weapon in the wrond hands, who knows how far this could go. Get help now if you still can?

Marcy Phillips said...

hehe :) You know anonymous, your right. It's torture when Andrew makes me roll out 1000 feet of tubing, using my arms as a spool. But I've always been a masochist. Besides Andrew got to use the torture device that was the massive stapler. It took an extraordinary amount of man strength to work it and then it made his hands feel like mangled meat by the end of the day. It didn't help that I beat him with it when he missed a staple.

Anonymous said...

Okay, when do I get to sign up to come on over and warm my tootsies on this wonderful heated floor? I'm ready! Marcy continues to be my "hero" for the young woman who can do anything/everything. I hope my son appreciates her!!

Beriukay said...

When walking on the gypcrete floor the other day, I marveled at how level and solid it felt. Then Andrew told me that it wasn't dry yet. I think that maybe all this construction has addled his brain. That's okay though, they gave me free food, and all I had to do was smile and nod.