Radiant Floor Heat Offers Up Tippy-Toe Comfort
Your partner got up in the middle of the night and like a shot those frozen toes are attacking your personal space with the persistence of a heat-seeking missile. Lucky for you, the new home will have radiant floor heat – a dependable curative for encounters with cold feet at 2 a.m. or a midwinter chill that reaches your bone marrow.
Under-floor heat has been used since the Roman Empire when it was in its heyday in state-supported buildings and the villas of the well-to-do. Hot air was dispersed beneath tile or brick, offering a radiant heat – energy that transmitted warmth through the flooring and along to cooler objects like Roman reclining chairs, statues, marble-topped tables and cold centurions.
With the coming of elastic PEX piping to the United States in the 1980s, its use has skyrocketed as new products have been introduced for the construction industry – among those have been hydronic systems to furnish radiant floor heat. Unlike forced-air furnaces, contemporary hydronic floor systems employing PEX plumbing products allow more consistent warmth to a room, are less drying, more economical and a whole lot quieter than older furnaces or metal steam pipes.
PEX tubing is made of cross-linked polyethylene, which yields these high tech pipes endurance, chemical resistance, superior mobility, a cost-effective installation profile and better temperature adaptability. This polyethylene piping can be exposed to water as hot as 200° Fahrenheit in heating systems.
There are several ways of setting up radiant floor heating. Some use electrical line voltage schemes, but easy-to-use PEX hosing products have made hydronic under-floor heating fashionable with both home constructors and house owners. Because the tube is so elastic, its coils can be employed in a uninterrupted distance, doing away with the need for multiple joints and fittings.
Numerous radiant floor heating schemes employ oxygen-barrier PEX radiant hosing applied in gypsum concrete. Others incorporate low-mass underlay – wood boards with sunken niches for flexible tubing.
Each remodeling or new-construction plan is best suited by one method or another, so look into your hydronic floor heating options fully. Do your preparation!
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