1st College Loan

Radiant Floor Heating Proffers Tippytoe Comfort

Your partner got up in the dead of the night and straightaway those cold toes are invading your territory with the perseverance of a heat-seeking missile. Fortuitous for you, the new home will be sporting radiant floor heat – a dependable curative for meetings with cold toes at 2 in the morning or a midwinter chill that reaches your bone marrow.

Under-floor heat has been used since the Roman Empire when it existed in its heyday in communal buildings and the villas of the well-off. Hot air was dispersed below tile or brick, supplying a radiant heat – energy that channeled heat through the floor and on to colder furniture like Roman reclining chairs, statues, marble-topped desks and cold centurions.

With the coming of resilient PEX pipe in the United States in the 80’s, its use has taken off as more products have been developed for the construction industry – among which have been water arrangements to supply radiant floor heat. Unlike forced-air furnaces, modern-day water floor arrangements utilizing PEX plumbing products supply more homogenous heat to a room, are less drying, more cost-effective and a whole lot quieter than old furnaces or metal steam pipes.

PEX tubing is made of cross-linked polyethylene, which grants these modern pipes endurance, chemical resistance, superior mobility, a cost-efficient installment profile and better temperature range. This polyethylene tubing can be exposed to water as hot as 200 degrees Fahrenheit in heat arrangements.

There are different methods of installing radiant floor heating. Many use electrical line voltage arrangements, but easy-to-use PEX tubing products have made hydronic under-floor heat fashionable with both house constructors and home owners. Because the piping is so elastic, its coils can be used in a straight length, eradicating the requirement for multiple junctions and fittings.

Some radiant floor heat arrangements use oxygen-barrier PEX radiant tubing applied in gypsum concrete. Others contain low-mass underlayment – wood panels with recessed niches for flexible tubing.

Every reconstruction or new-construction design is better fit by one application or another, so look into your hydronic floor heating options fully. Do your due dilligence!