Radiant Floor Heat Provides Tiptoe Comfort

Your partner got up in the middle of the night and now those cold toes are raiding your personal space with the persistence of a heat-seeking projectile. Fortuitous for you, the new house will be sporting radiant floor heat – a sure curative for meetings with cold feet at 2 a.m. or a midwinter chill that gets hold of your bone marrow.

Under-floor heating has been around since the Roman Empire when it existed in its heyday in public buildings and the villas of the well-to-do. Hot air was distributed under tile or brick, providing a radiant heat – energy that transmitted warmth through the flooring and on to colder objects like Roman recumbant chairs, statues, marble-topped desks and frosty centurions.

With the coming of elastic PEX pipe in the United States in the 1980s, its use has jumped as more products have been developed for the construction industry – among those have been hydronic arrangements to furnish radiant floor heating. Unlike forced-air furnaces, modern water floor arrangements employing PEX plumbing products allow more homogenous warmth to a room, are less drying, more effective and a whole lot quieter than old furnaces or metal steam pipes.

PEX tubing is made of cross-linked polyethylene, which yields these modern tubes durability, chemical resistance, superior mobility, a cost-effective installment profile and better temperature range. This polyethylene piping can be utilised for water as hot as 200° Fahrenheit in heat systems.

There are several modes of setting up radiant floor heat. Some use electrical line voltage schemes, but easy-to-use PEX tubing products have made hydronic under-floor heat popular with both home constructors and house owners. Because the tubing is so resilient, its rolls can be applied in a uninterrupted length, eradicating the need for multiple junctions and fittings.

Some radiant floor heating schemes use oxygen-barrier PEX radiant hosing applied in gypsum concrete. Others incorporate low-mass underlayment – wood panels with sunken niches for flexible tubing.

Each remodeling or new-construction project is better fit by one application or another, so investigate your hydronic floor heating options fully. Do your preparation!