6.2.5. Pipe feed and pair of pipe feeds<br>

### 6.2.5. Pipe feed and pair of pipe feeds

Pipe feeds in the program are used for connecting heating zones to manifolds. Although in reality a pipe feed forms with the heating circuit one segment of piping, in the application it constitutes a separate component. This is justified by the specific nature of the pipe feed: it reduces the surface area available to circuits in rooms which the pipe feed passes and gives up heat to those rooms (unless it is insulated). The designer must see to that the documents clearly specify planned manner of laying out pipe feeds from manifolds to heating zones, and at the same time pipe feeds must be appropriately taken into consideration when doing calculations.

Pipe feeds are edited in a similar manner to pipe-runs in the graphical editor. A pair is available as well as a single pipe feed, which takes on the role of a supply or return line, depending on connection point. Pipe feed pair is a single component only at the time of placing it in the drawing. Later the supply and return pipe feeds form separate components, which can be edited independent of each other.

Buttons on the “Radiant” toolbar:

Appearance on screen (plan) (colours: red = supply, blue = return):

“Pipe feed” component data:

Length

Information field. Total length of pipe feed. This value may be taken from drawing or may be the result of adding the lengths of fragments of pipe feed, if the length was imposed manually.

Across HZ ...

Compound field. Button on the right side of the field enables display of table with data on the crossing by pipe feeds of individual HZ’s. Detailed description of the manner of editing this table is given in section 6.5.3.

Line style

Selection field. Select from list the appearance of the pipe feed or configure it – component appearance window is opened.

“Pipe feed pair” data during drawing:

There is no need to change any data associated with pipe feeds. However, two options of pipe feed data configuration are recommended:

Retain default settings

Spacing (auto) and non-insulated pipe feeds. In this case the HZ across which the pipe feeds run is ‘simulated’. In the case of HZ heated by pipe feeds that pipe spacing will be adopted, which matches heat requirements of that HZ.

User-specified spacing – (preferably small, e.g. 10 cm) and insulated pipe feeds.

Pipe feeds are arranged close to each other and are insulated to eliminate heat dissipation. If insulation is not provided on pipe feeds arranged close to each other, substantial floor overheating may occur in HZ’s with, for instance, ceramic tiles and pipe spacing in the main circuit of e.g. 30 cm.