hydronic heat for the barn - part 9

The weather outlook does not look good. In fact we are going to get a dump of snow, and the next few days will be quite cold. Realizing this I got all the work done on the outside of the building, as well as connecting the PEX pipes to the manifolds. When the long awaited parts arrive I would not need to go outside the building to fight the cold and glue the pipes and caulk the holes I created.I wasn't looking forward to connecting the 16 PEX lines to the two manifold as PEX pipes are very stiff and stubborn that will not bend to one's will. Each manifold has 8 and collectively they exert a lot of force - hence stress onto the manifold. Each pipe has to be carefully cut at exactly the right place to minimize the stress. Also each cut needs to be done with care so to the pipe will have the best chance of making a secure compression joint again the manifold port. I took my time to make sure all the cut ends are square.
 

I had to remove the lower manifold to make the connections on the top manifold. As I went I inject compressed air into each pair to be sure they were not mis-paired

by the time all 8 lines were cut and connected the force exerted onto the manifold is substantial

I improvised this heating hood to tame the PEX pipes but it did little good in "training" them

I chose to mount the manifold quite high so I have longer PEX pipe lengths in case I make a mistake and need to recut some lines; the longer length also are easier on the manifolds

I shimmed the pipes for now as there is no point trying to fight them until the boiler fires up and the hot water will soften the pipes for me to tidy them up

the snow fall started like clockwork

I went outside and caulk the condensate drain line and trained it with these weights; the condensate hose will be trimmed shorter and covered with an outer casing to keep the temperature from dropping too fast during single digit temperature

I have a back up plan to discharge the condensate via an indoor pump into the sewer but I prefer not to.

I'd gone as far as I could until the remaining parts arrive Monday

3 inches of snow and it is still coming down

The LG multi-zone mini split system is performing well above my expectation. It has not problem keeping the barn quite comfortable except when I first got it working as the slab floor was so cold. As time went by the slab warmed up and now it is in the mid 50s. The slab has R10 EPS foam insulation including the parameter of the building. The barn has R30 for wall and R35 for the roof.

I only turn on the mini split heat pump when I plan on working in the barn that day. On average the daily on time is about 8 hours. The power consumption varies significantly depends how many of the four IDU I turn on, and their respective target temperature as it is inverter driver compressor.