Understanding Floor Heating Systems

Everybody wants to be comfortable in their own home. And the first priority of comfort is climate control. Forced air heating and cooling systems are the most popular temperature control system, but they can't compare to quality floor heating systems. Rather than heating the air inside your home, floor heating systems warm the house itself, allowing for more consistent, comfortable climate control that eliminates much of the dust and allergens that are stirred up by forced-air systems.

Radiant Floor Heating Systems
Most floor heating systems are called radiant flooring. The name refers to the method in which heat is disseminated throughout the house. Instead a fan blowing in your face, imagine standing in the sun on crisp autumn afternoon. It feels warmer not because the sun is hitting your face, but the ground underneath you is radiating heat to you. Radiant heating transfers heat with significantly less energy loss than air convection. Naturally, this translates to a much more energy-efficient heating system for your home.

Radiant floor heating systems aren't nearly as susceptible to cold drafts from open doors and structural cracks. Better yet, with the heat travels through the walls of your home and the ambient effect allows you to set your thermometer a few degrees cooler to achieve the same comfort level. This not only saves you more energy on your utility bills, it helps keep your skin from drying out in the winter.

Radiant floors can be driven by air, electric, or hydronic heating and can be installed within a concrete slab or on top of the subfloor. That said, most residences use hydronic heating. Air doesn't hold enough heat to be effective and electric heating tends to cost a fortune. Hydronic heating uses liquid pumped through tubing under your floors to create the radiant heating effect. Where and how these pipes are installed typically depend on the nature of your subflooring, its accessibility, and whether you're installing the pipes in new construction or retrofitting an existing home.

Radiant Floor Cooling Systems
The technology for radiant floor cooling systems is getting better and better every day. The only current viable way to install a radiant floor cooling system is a hydronic system that uses a heat pump for its heat source. Heat pumps can be reversed to produce cool water in floor pipes. Depending on the quality of your heat pump, you may not have enough juice to get the job done. Plus, you'll need to be careful with the moisture content in your subflooring. Radiant floor cooling systems are typically only advisable in dryer climates.

Individual Room Floor Heating Systems
This may sound all well and good to you, but you also probably realize this kind of comfort doesn't come cheap. If you've already got a forced-air system installed in your home, you're probably willing to live with modest heating and cooling comforts and invest your money in other home improvement projects. Still, there are compromises and smaller floor heating projects. The biggest gripe most homeowners have with their cold floors is when they get out of the shower. You can install a makeshift electric floor warmer in most bathrooms for less than a thousand dollars. In smaller bathrooms, the cost may only be a couple hundred dollars. These floor warmers act on a similar principle as whole house radiant flooring, but don't expect them to replace your forced air central heating and cooling. Basically, these floors keep your feet warm when you get out of the shower and do little else.