RADIANT FLOOR HEATING
Hydronic radiant heating is the best way to heat a house. Infrared rays from the floors warm up objects they hit, providing uniform heat from the floor to the ceiling. There is no noise, dust, clogged filters, ducts or wind. In a house that is heated with radiant floor heating you don’t feel hot, cold, you don’t even realize that the heating system is on. You simply are comfortable like on a warm spring day.
I suffer from sever asthma. In our new house we opted for radiant floor heating as this is what the Asthma and Allergy Foundation is recommending. Since we moved in I saw my attacks greatly reduced in both frequency and intensity…
Radiant heating can be installed in floors, walls and ceilings, with the most common place for the tubing is to be encased in concrete in your basement slab, on upper floors stapled to the sub-floor and over-poured with self leveling Agilasilica concrete. The source of heat is most often a gas or electrical boiler, but we can work with wood burning boilers, oil fired ones, heat pumps, geothermal and anything else that can be used to make waters warmer than 120F.
You forget that this is the heating season. The whole house feels simply put; comfortable. We walk around barefoot from the basement to the second floor all year round. Would never go back to traditional forced air furnaces. All this and 30% energy savings compared to before we installed radiant floor heating during the renovation!
It is best to plan things out well in advance. Will you only heat the basement floor? How about the upper floors too? Maybe the garage? What about snow melt and domestic hot water? The beautiful thing is one single boiler can take care of all of the above and even heat your swimming pool or hot tub not to mention provide heat for forced air systems should you want them through hydronic air handlers that use the hot water to heat the air. When you integrate you not only simplify and therefore lower your total costs but you also will be saving space and energy. Sure the up front costs are higher than a traditional forced air system but not by that much. You can expect about 6 years until your extra costs are made up by the energy savings you realize. All the while enjoying a much better quality, low maintenance heat.