What is Radiant Floor Heating? How Does It Work?

How will homes be heated in the future? Your family already has plenty to choose from when upgrading your home heating system, including:

• High efficiency furnaces
• Solar powered heating solutions
• Radiant floor heating

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But you don’t have to dive much further to see the value of each system.

If you and your family are considering an upgrade, start by prioritizing comfort, energy efficiency and cost. When these factors are taken into account, no matter what order you rank them, you’ll find radiant floor heating might be your best option.

What is radiant floor heating?

Radiant floor heating keeps your home warm from beneath the floors. A safe heat source is placed beneath the floors throughout your home and heat steadily rises evenly through the house as the system runs.

The concept is well established. Wealthy merchants, landowners and politicians burned small wood fires below the raised marble floors of their estates in ancient Rome. A smart bunch!

Different types of radiant floor heating

There are two common radiant floor heating systems.

• Hydronic systems, where hot water pipes line the under side of your floors.
• Electric radiant floor heating, using insulated, electric lines in place of water pipes. Don’t worry, it’s totally safe.

Electric radiant heating systems are quick and affordable to install, but expensive to run over the long term. This makes them more suitable for smaller areas, like bathrooms or small work spaces.

Hydronic radiant floor heating is more expensive and challenging to install, but won’t cost as much to operate on a daily basis, so it’s a good option for larger areas like the kitchen, dining room or games room.

Why invest in radiant floor heating?

Think of the icy floors last winter! Waking up in the morning, walking across the frigid tile floor in the kitchen to grab your breakfast.  Warm air from your furnace doesn’t spend the night at floor level. So even if you crank the heat when you wake up, or program your thermostat to do so, you’ll have to throw on some socks when you roll out of bed this year.

That, or upgrade to a radiant floor heating system and enjoy a more evenly heated home all day, all night.

Because it spreads heat more evenly, radiant heating is more energy efficient than most other home heating solutions. Furnace heat will escape upward rapidly, and the furnace works longer and harder to replace that lost heat than a radiant floor heating system does.

Will my floor work with a radiant heating system?

Many commercially available floor materials conduct and withstand the damaging effects of heat well.  Some of the best floor materials to use with a radiant heating system include:

• Concrete
• Stone
• Ceramic tile

Wood is an option also, but you’ll need to invest in professional floor installation to manage potential shrinkage that can occur in wood with fluctuating temperatures.

Carpeting is the worst option because it can actually block heat moving through the floor.

For more information about installing a radiant heating system, reach out to a member of our team today.