50's Ceiling radiant heat

[Jtibbs]

I went to a service call for "banging from the basement". The 15 year old dry base was in such bad shape, I could not tell what brand it was. Everything was leaking on this boiler. I was looking into replacing the unit, and came across two manually mixed zones. The pipes went up into the attic, 3/4 inch K copper, with 1/2 inch copper tubing branches that went out into the plaster of the ceiling. The pumps were these old tacos that has a sight glass of some sort on the rear. I could not get any numbers off the pumps due to corrosion, so my rep told me to put a taco 00R on each zone. Anyone have any experience with ceiling heat?? We are going to do the job in stages, boiler, manifolds, circs, etc now. Underground oil tank removal in the spring, the deal with putting some heat in the floors in the fall. I would like to reuse my circulators and mixing valves when we redo the radiant. Does anyone know what temp I should be sending out to the ceiling? Thanks for any help you can give.

John

[jjbleds]

We have a few of these around here. One of them belonging to my neighbor. You want to limit the temp to a max of 120degf. You will know when you are running too hot because the plaster will fall off. I have some original B&G info on these systems. I will look for it.

[Jtibbs]

Thanks for the info. I got it running over the weekend, and it seamed to work ok. The worst part was bleeding it, the air just kept coming. I am going back tomorrow and hope that it has cleared up some. It help air pressure for two days, so it still seams pretty tight.

[jjbleds]

The only way to get it out is fill with the force bleed method. I cannot find my info on that system. It was a really neat manual from B&G from the 50"s. I will keep looking. Once you get them working they work really well. Good luck.