Entran Ii Abatement

[Jerel]

Our home built in 1993 has Entran II tubing.  We have registered with the class action suit.  We have had two cast iron boilers fail due to corrosion.  Our home is about 5000 sq ft.  Half the basement is excavated, the other half finished with Entran in the concrete floor.  The rest of the houss has staple up tubing.  200 sq fet on the first floor, and about 1500 on a second floor.  About 1/2 of the first floor is accessible through a crawl space.  There are copper tubes to the different zones.  About two thirds of the upstairs is carpeted.  We have detected no leaks in the tubing.  We are told that the boilers are failing because they are oversized for the application - the basement is very hot when the boiler runs even with that circuit off.  The oversize allows condensation to form causing corrosion.  In addition the Entran allows Oxygen to enter the water adding to the corrosion.

We have one opinion that we should use a smaller capacity stainless steel boiler, run it at 130 degress, and that would be enough of a solution.  

In your opinion should we remove the Entran and replace it modern tubing.  We are concerned about selling the house in the future.  Is it feasible to use baseboard heat in the basement instead of replacing the tubing there.  One plumber told us that the baseboard units have to run at a higher temperature than the radiant tubing.  The first floor tubing can be accessed through the crawl space and by removing the ceiling in three rooms.  Second floor is problematic because the ceilings in the first floor are complicated.  Is it feasible to remove the carpeting in the second floor(it is all carpeted) and replace the subfloor, or better to put panels on the sufloor and shorten the doors.  How about baseboard in these rooms - there are two bathrooms and four bedrooms, each about 250 sq ft.

We live in Pueblo, Co 150 miles south of Denver.  No one in our City is an expert on hydronic heating.  Do you know of an experienced person or engineer in our area that could advise us.

Is it possible to intergrate solar heating of the water into the natural gas heating?

Thank you in advance for your time and attention.

[Edwaldo]

Hello Ben;

It does sound like you are suffering for what the Late and Great Rich Harris used to call "drive by sizing". That is the contractor drives by the house and says; yup, that's a 2-boiler job.

It just so happens that you live in one of my favorite places in the world! I will be in your neighborhood in August this year and would be glad to re-engineer your system. I am not worried about Entran II. If you say in doesn't leak there are ways to avoid the ill effects of non-barrier tubing. Many systems are still designed using this inexpensive alternative to barrier tubing - saving 20 cents per foot or more - but many details must be taken into account. Since you have what sounds like a functional distribution system and the boilers are the only component suffering I would look at the whole thing afresh and not get too hasty.

You may fax me your building details, boiler make, model, input etc. and I will give you a proposal and price.

We don't know every thing about hydronic radiant heating yet, but what we do know is benevolent.

MA