Radiant Floor Heat Offers Up Tippy-Toe Comfort
Your better half got up in the dead of the night and right away those cold toes are invading your personal space with the persistence of a heat-seeking projectile. Good for you, the new home will be sporting radiant floor heat – a dependable remedy for encounters with frozen feet at 2 a.m. or a midwinter chill that gets to your bone marrow.
Under-floor heating has been utilized since the Roman Empire when it existed in its peak in communal buildings and the villas of the prosperous. Hot air was distributed under tile or brick, offering a radiant warmth – energy that channeled warmth through the floor and on to colder objects like Roman recumbant chairs, statues, marble-topped desks and stoic centurions.
With the advent of flexible PEX piping to the United States in the 1980s, its use has jumped as new products have been created for the construction industry – among which have been hydronic systems to supply radiant floor heat. Unlike forced-air furnaces, up-to-date hydronic floor schemes employing PEX plumbing products offer more uniform warmth to a room, are less drying, more economic and a whole lot quieter than older furnaces or metal steam pipes.
PEX tubing is made of cross-linked polyethylene, which gives these modern tubes endurance, chemical resistance, high mobility, a cost-effective installation profile and bigger temperature range. This polyethylene tubing can be used with water as high as 200° Fahrenheit in heat arrangements.
There are different methods of putting in radiant floor heat. Some use electrical line voltage schemes, but easy-to-use PEX piping products have made hydronic under-floor heat popular with both house builders and home owners. Because the tube is so resilient, its coils can be employed in a continuous distance, getting rid of the need for multiple joints and fittings.
Several radiant floor heating arrangements utilize oxygen-barrier PEX radiant tubing applied in gypsum concrete. Others integrate low-mass underlay – wood panels with sunken niches for flexible piping.
Each remodeling or new-construction project is better suited by one application or another, so investigate your hydronic floor heating options fully. Do your homework!
