How many loops...

[LittleJohn]

What have I gotten myself into, again I help a buddy in need, as I am the radiant savant of the group.  He recent bought a very old house and is in the process of gutting and refinishing, we are talking Cast iron radiators, knob and spool wiring, lathe and plaster walls and BEAUTIFUL wood floor someone put carpet over.  So I go over to look at hooking up a few more radiator in an unfinished attic.

I go to the basement and everything looks good, new gas boiler (middle of the city, so no OWB) and we start talking about where to run pipes since walls are open.  Then I look at his manifold, a nice 10 looper with 3 open connections on the supply manifold and this is where the problem comes in....only 1 open connection on the return manifold.  So just to clarify there are 7 loops going out of the Supply Manifold and 9 returning pipes  ???.  So I ask him what the contracter was doing, he said he had no idea but after 3 months of work, thats what he got and it was working.  I said OK this is a starting poing and I can work with that, I guess...

So off to the drawing board to figure out how I can make this work.

[Holmes]

The 8th return could just tie back in to the 9th return.  Try taking it apart see how much water you get , blow thru it?

[LittleJohn]

They had to take at least 2 supplies and split them  :(

...I figure that when I get into stuff, yeah I might try to figure out where all the fricken' pipes are going and clean it up a bit.  Also he only had one thermostat in the house so the install told him not to zone the house, that it wodul be less efficient  ??? ...how is sending heat to only the areas that need heat less efficient.