Concrete Floor Radiant Heating
When radiant floor heating was first introduced into new homes, back in the 1950's, it relied on using a small water boiler in the house, and a system of copper pipes that were laid into a slab of concrete, that formed the floors of the house. Unfortunately the copper pipes did not have a lengthy life span, and when they decayed, split or broke, it was a difficult and costly procedure to fix them.
Today, science has refined this hydronic radiant floor heating into one of the most efficient and comfortable heating systems around. Today plastic tubing is used in place of copper, for its durability and heat transfer in concrete. Then each room is divided into a zone, and each zone can be individually connected and controlled by a single boiler, which again are much more efficient and quieter than their 1950's counterparts.
The reason that this concrete floor radiant heating is so efficient is because of the thermal mass of concrete. The thermal mass of an object is its capacity to store heat, and its ability to store that heat during varying air temperatures around it. With concrete, it is slowly heated from the water inside it, but once warm, it radiates its heat over a large surface area, and even when the hot water supply has been turned off, the concrete slab retains its heat for many hours, continually warming the air in the room, even though the supply has been turned off, and you are incurring no heating bills. This has obvious benefits over forced air systems, that to keep a room at a constant temperature involves the continuous on and off of the fans and airflow.
People often consider electric radiant heating as a viable alternative to this method, due to its advantages of being easier and cheaper to install, the pads that this method use do not hold their heat for long, and therefore require more constant heating, and subsequently higher heating bills. Another alternative to replacing your entire floor is to have hot water running through the joists of your house, but this method relies on heating the air beneath the floor, which is not as effective as heating concrete, and does not retain its heat once the power is off.
So there are a lot of options and variables to consider, but if you have the option, laying hot water pipes through concrete is the most cost effective and efficient heating option currently on the market.
For more information about how to install radiant floor heat, please visit our website.
Similar