Seperating Upstairs / Downstairs rads into Zones

[dar2008]

I’m in the middle of a major house renovation, doing as much as I’m able to myself. When we moved in 18months ago, we had the boiler replaced, but linked to existing (at least 30years old) pipework. I want to make a change to my setup so that I can independently control the upstairs and downstairs radiators – it’s a large Victorian house of approx. 250sq metres.

Upstairs there is / will be 8 radiators and downstairs there is / will be 5 radiators (a large area of downstairs is already running as a separate new zone with UFH). My boiler is a Worcester 30cdi System boiler with Megaflo for hot water.

Now to my question...

I will be running new flow and return pipework for the two radiator zones. Dealing first with the upstairs radiators, I will have a zone valve positioned near to the boiler (but after the by-pass and DHW) to send the flow upstairs when the new thermostat calls for heat. When the flow pipe arrives upstairs, do I have to take it alongside each of the eight radiators in turn OR can I Tee the flow (and indeed the return) as it arrives upstairs so that one half does the rear bedroom radiators and the other the front bedroom radiators?

I hope my question is clear, but if not please let me know.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Blagard]

You can and should branch out the flow to the radiators to suit the heat each radiator requires and to keep the pipe runs short and simple.
In most cases the return pipework will tend to be running alongside and branched in a similar manner.

It is quite common to have a few main branches going along the route of external walls with radiators connected with very short lengths of pipe to them.