Infloor heat

[Black Feather]

Do any of your guys use infloor heat to heat your house? What would you say are the advantages vs disadvantages of this sort of system? I'm not thinking of the pure electric infloor heat, but the kind that uses water tubes going through the floor and you heat the water.

Thanks,
Urban Coyote

 

[smom1976]

that would be really neat... but we have concrete slab floors here... no crawl space at all... so we really wouldnt be able to do this.. all our heating/ac runs through the attic.

 

[Steve]

I built a auto body shop for a client about 8 years ago that had that type of heating system in it.

They absolutely love it.

 

[1mommahen]

I have it in my house! We call it radiant floor heating. It's under my ceramic tile floor in the bathroom and in my foyer area. It's great! It's nice not to hit cold tile with your feet!

 

[Sylvie]

I want it, too.
We have a slab floor that will be covered with hardwood and between the two we want to put in Pex tubing for radiant floor heating. It will require insulation between the concrete pad and Pex so the heat isn't lost into the slab. We are presently discussing different ways of heating the water for the system.

 

[azelgin]

I have de-commisioned two of these systems for clients over the years. Both of them were in homes with slab floor where the plumbing ran under the slab. One was with electric water heaters, the other was propane. The biggest complait was that they had to keep the heat turned on even when they were not home, or it then took too long to heat the house back up to a comfortable temperature. Both customers had forced air systems installed as replacements. You don't have to heat up all the ground and concrete befor the house gets warn.

 

[smom1976]

how many inches do you loose when you put it on the concrete slab.. you would think that you would loose a few inches of floor-ceiling space...

 

[azelgin]

Quote:
It all depends. There are some new electric grid products that go down under the floor tile in the thin set. These don't heat the room, but they make the floor nice and warm. If, you are talking about the radiant floor hot water systems, you will most likly lose about two inches by the time you sheath over the plumbing with a new subfloor material. One of the other methods is a 1 1/2" layer of light weight concrete that pours over the plumbing and acts as your new sub-floor.

 

[Jennyhaschicks]

We have it. We have had it since we built the house in 1998. This last fall we took out the oil furnace and put in an interior wood boiler. It's great!
I would have to ask my dh any technical questions.

He put the tubing in the addition when we added on in 2005.
The biggest trouble we had with the older part of the house was that there was not enough tubing and too long of a run for the water. It was cooling off before it was getting back to the furnace. I guess a lot of people have that trouble.

 

[Sylvie]

My ceiling is 26' high in the great room it'll go in so I have no concern about losing ceiling height. We will have to adjust the doors, though.
I agree about the 2 " added over slab.