The warm floor brings comfort and coziness to the house, allows you to forget about drafts and frequent colds. Such a closed sealed system can be an additional or basic type of room heating. But that the warm floor lasted a long time, it is necessary to take into account all the nuances during installation. An important factor is the choice of pipes.
Which pipe to use for the warm floor
Types of installation
The pipes are laid in three ways:
- - with concrete screed( concrete);
- - the pipes are laid without the use of cement, while the finishing flooring rests on aluminum sheets and a moisture absorbing layer of foamed polyethylene or cardboard( flooring);
- - pipes for installation of a warm floor are laid on wooden floor lags or on rough floors.
Requirements for
pipes Since the installation of a warm floor is not the easiest process, heating pipes( in no case can pipes be used for hot or cold water supply) must necessarily be long-lived , that is not subject to failure at pressure or temperature drop,arising chemical or bacteriological loads. At observance of all norms of operation and installation, the service life of polymer and metal-polymer pipes is more than fifty years.
In addition, pipes must necessarily have a reliable insulation and tightness , which protects the entire heating system from oxidation.
Pipes for the warm floor must be elastic ( manually bend), bend-resistant ( mandatory for high-quality installation and calculation of the distance between pipes), do not break and crack.
These requirements meet the metal-plastic( metal-polymer) pipes, copper pipes, pipes made of polyethylene, polybutane, and also steel.
It is forbidden to use cast-iron pipes in accordance with the norms.
It is recommended to choose pipes for the warm floor from well-known manufacturers. This is not only a pledge of good quality products, but also in the event of a marriage will get compensation for defects.
Metal-plastic pipes
Metal-polymer pipes are made of polyethylene and aluminum. They are able to transfer heat up to one hundred and ten degrees( optimal heating of the water for the underfloor heating system is not higher than 55 ° C) without damage, to bend to the required angle( the maximum bending radius is equal to the outer diameter of the pipe multiplied by 8) and are very reliable. In addition, metal-polymer pipes are environmentally friendly, resistant to corrosion and chemically active media, have low weight and high properties of sound insulation of the coolant( the sound of the coolant movement is absolutely invisible).
There are some drawbacks: a change in the temperature of the coolant is detrimental to the walls of the pipes;If the pipe is repeatedly bent, the aluminum layer may be damaged;It is impermissible to twist the pipes or bend about their axis.
Metal-plastic pipes are made of thin aluminum tape( thickness 200-400 mk), which is welded using the methods "overlap" or "butt" with the help of ultrasound. After that, a layer of polyethylene is fixed to the outer and inner parts of the pipe for a special glue.
Welding of plastic pipes
The most commonly used products with a diameter of 16 and 20 mm. The thickness of the walls is 2 and 2.25 mm, respectively. In this case, the weight of 1 meter of linear is 115 and 170 grams.
Video - how to bend metal-plastic pipes for laying a warm floor
Marking: on the pipes indicate the manufacturer's company, certificate, production date, wall diameter and thickness( in millimeters, less often in inches), nominal pressure, serial number of lot, PE gradePP-R - polypropylene, PE-R - PE, PE-X - cross-linked PE).
Sample marking on pipes
Polypropylene heating pipes
Installation of pipes from polypropylene is made only at an air temperature not below +10 degrees. Their main advantage, along with low cost - after heat-welding pipes become monolithic. Such pipes are very strong, their service life is not less than 25 years. The maximum water temperature is 95 degrees. However, such pipes for the warm floor are not often used because of their small bending radius( which, accordingly, reduces the heating level of the room).Special edgers or welding nozzles are required for installation.
For heating use pipes marked PN25( reinforced with perforated aluminum foil).They are produced with an external wall diameter of 21.2 to 77.9 mm and a wall thickness of 4 to 13.3 mm.
Polypropylene pipes for heating
Pipes for warm floor made of polyethylene( PE)
These pipes are preferable to the previous ones, but it is easy to damage polyethylene during installation. The smallest radius of the bend is 5 pipe diameters of the outside( for pipes made of polypropylene - 8).PE pipes for installation of a warm floor system can withstand a maximum water temperature of 120 ° C.For the installation of PE pipes, a large number of fasteners is required, since the pipes do not hold the mold after bending.
Marking: HDPE - the pipes with the highest density, MDPE - with medium density, LDPE - with low density.
Pipes of cross-linked polyethylene( PE-X) have increased strength and resistance to deformation?temperature and pressure drops, such pipes are more flexible, lightweight, environmentally friendly. They are produced with an outer diameter of 10 to 110 mm, coiled in coils of 200 meters, which reduces the number of seams and simplifies installation. At installation use fittings for металлопластика and axial technics.
Polyethylene is crosslinked via peroxide, silane gas or electrons in an electromagnetic field. The processing method affects the strength of the product. The most high-quality pipes are peroxide-crosslinked( PE-Xa marking).
Pipes for warm floor made of polyethylene( PE)
Copper and corrugated stainless pipes
Quite expensive pipes, but the most durable and meeting all installation requirements.
These pipes are characterized by the smallest bending radius without the appearance of defects, which makes them the leaders in the installation of warm floors. The minimum service life is 50 years. They can withstand the rise in water temperature in the system to three hundred degrees, and pressures up to 400 Atm. Copper and stainless pipes are not afraid of liming, corrosion, they are not spoiled by rodents, pipes are impermeable to gases, they have high heat emission.
However, it should be remembered that copper pipes can not be connected to any fittings other than brass.
Copper pipes for the warm floor
We summarize which pipes to use for the installation of the warm floor and which ones are not available
More common are plastic pipes because of their low cost and ease of installation( connection fittings without welding).Abroad, for a warm floor system, plastic pipes that do not have an aluminum layer are more often used. They are quite cheap, but inferior in quality to metal-plastic and copper pipes. By the way, about installation of a warm floor from heating we wrote on our site.
