Heating Pipe Diameter and Golden Section.
Heating Pipe Diameters and the Golden Ratio.
Hello.
Today we'll be discussing the selection of the required pipe diameters in heating systems without the use of calculations! More accurately, there will be a calculation, but a very basic one based on the Fibonacci Sequence. This principle is also known as the "Golden Ratio." You can google it if you'd like, but from here on I'll stick to the topic.
1. Building heat loss based on aggregated parameters.
If the building is old and without wall insulation, then for Ukraine, you can assume 100 W/m².
Modern buildings in Ukraine are approximately 40 W/m².
If your house is insulated, check the design data for your specific heat loss. If it's not available, ask your insulation materials retailer.
There are good people in the world; someone will be able to help.
In our example, this is a typical old residential building measuring 9x9m, so we'll assume its maximum heat loss is 8100 W/h. The boiler, accordingly, must produce the same or greater power.
If you're installing a dual-circuit boiler with a hot water circuit, then for one bathroom and kitchen, choose a minimum of 16 kW; otherwise, it will take a very long time to fill a warm bath.
Yes, this is more than we calculated, and as you can see, knowing the heat loss wasn't at all useful, since the boiler will be more powerful.
In most cases, in houses with an area of 300 m2 or less, you can ignore heat loss and install a 20-30 kW boiler.
The main thing is that you've chosen a boiler! Whether it's 16, 24, or 32 kW, it doesn't matter.
Congratulations, half the job is done!
2. Selecting the heating pipe diameter.
Now carefully examine or measure the pipe diameters for the heating circuit on the boiler.
Let's say it's ⌀32 mm.
Excellent, so the pipe diameters for the heating system in our case will be 32, 25, 20, and 16 mm. This is the entire range of pipes "for reduction." I recommend avoiding the use of pipes smaller than 16 mm in heating systems at all.
Next, let's draw a schematic diagram of our house.
Room numbers are circled.
Heating appliances are black rectangles.
We install them only in rooms with external walls.
Room No. 8 has no heating appliance.
The boiler is a red rectangle.
Now let's calculate the "nominal" power of the heating appliances, without reference to absolute values, but with one caveat.
The number next to each room is the area, and if the room is a corner room, we multiply this figure by 2.
The resulting values will also indicate the relative proportional thermal output of the required heating appliances, and the larger the area, the more powerful the appliance! Then, we add up the results for all the rooms and get 120 (highlighted in red).
Since the boiler outlet pipe is 32 mm in diameter, we write 120 opposite it.
Opposite the 25 mm pipe, we write the number obtained by dividing 120 by 1.618 (there you have the golden ratio).
Round to the nearest whole number (even down) and get 74.
Write this down.
Now we divide 74 by 1.618!
And so on.
So, the actual process of choosing the pipe diameter for the heating system comes down to this:
We go from the outermost heating appliance (room #7) to the boiler. Look at the number next to this room – 6.
Next to the 16 mm diameter pipe – 27.
Since 6 is less than 27, the pipe in this location (between rooms #7 and #6) is 16 mm.
The next section of pipe (between rooms #6 and #5) already supplies two heating units, in room #7 and room #6, respectively.
Add the numbers next to these rooms: 6 + 12 = 18.
Still less than 27, so we keep the 16 mm diameter pipe.
The next section (between rooms #5 and #4) is also added together, but this time for three rooms. 6 + 12 + 9 = 27.
27 = 27!
A borderline solution, in which you can either keep the 16 mm diameter pipe or switch to a 20 mm diameter heating pipe.
Either solution is fine, but personally, I always use the larger of the suggested heating pipe diameters.
For the next section, feeding four heating appliances, we get the number 51, which corresponds to a 25 mm diameter pipe.
And so on.
Here's a second option for choosing heating pipe diameters for our house.
But only with a boiler whose outlet into the system is from a 25 mm diameter pipe.
The construction principle is the same.
You can pause and spot the differences.
That's it!
This method for choosing heating pipe diameters is suitable for any heating system!
Surely, among the commentators, there will be people with specialized education who will say that you first need to calculate the heat loss of the enclosing structures and then choose the boiler and heating appliances.
But let me tell you this: in real life, people often don't perform heat engineering calculations for their own homes or other private buildings, but rather choose a boiler based on general parameters.
This method is perfect for such cases.
They have a boiler, they have radiators, but they don't know how to choose the pipe diameter for the heating system.
Now they do!
Thank you for y...