Hi Pete, I have the very same thing in my house, you can have your zoning with zone valves as well as circulators. However what is not typical is that on a zone, you should need a zone valve AND a circulator. I have seen installations like this and it installed in this manner to prevent gravity hot water flow in a zone when that zone was not calling for heat. The zone valve acted as a positive shut off. I would have installed a check valve on the system after the zone circulator. If you have further questions, please don't hesitate to contact our Technical Services Team at Taco.
If you're fine feeding the same water temp to all your low-temperature loops (e.g. radiant floor heat), set-it-and-forget-it mixing valves are the way to go. Slap a dumb circulator in there with some zone valves and you're off to the races. Budget permitting, there's the dream: independent digitally controlled injection pumps per-zone (or group of zones). Honestly, as cheap as circulators are these days it's not _that_ cost prohibitive, and is the design I'm leaning towards for my dream house in a few years. Last I checked, a digitally controlled circulator is cheaper than an electronic mixing valve. Is it overkill given the thermal mass of a concrete slab? Almost certainly. Does it mean I can go wild with building unnecessary software solutions in search of perfectly even heat with zero "bang-bang" control logic? Yes.
Is it odd that my system has both zone valves and circulator pumps?
Hi Pete,
I have the very same thing in my house, you can have your zoning with zone valves as well as circulators. However what is not typical is that on a zone, you should need a zone valve AND a circulator.
I have seen installations like this and it installed in this manner to prevent gravity hot water flow in a zone when that zone was not calling for heat. The zone valve acted as a positive shut off. I would have installed a check valve on the system after the zone circulator.
If you have further questions, please don't hesitate to contact our Technical Services Team at Taco.
Very intresting.I wish,all maths was in metric.
If you're fine feeding the same water temp to all your low-temperature loops (e.g. radiant floor heat), set-it-and-forget-it mixing valves are the way to go. Slap a dumb circulator in there with some zone valves and you're off to the races. Budget permitting, there's the dream: independent digitally controlled injection pumps per-zone (or group of zones). Honestly, as cheap as circulators are these days it's not _that_ cost prohibitive, and is the design I'm leaning towards for my dream house in a few years. Last I checked, a digitally controlled circulator is cheaper than an electronic mixing valve. Is it overkill given the thermal mass of a concrete slab? Almost certainly. Does it mean I can go wild with building unnecessary software solutions in search of perfectly even heat with zero "bang-bang" control logic? Yes.
There are so many ways to control a hydronic system and as long as the end result is achieved, go for it!