Radiant Floor Heating Proffers Tiptoe Comfort

Your spouse got up in the middle of the night and like a shot those cold toes are occupying your personal space with the perseverance of a heat-seeking missile. Good for you, the new home will have radiant floor heating - a sure cure for meetings with cold feet at 2 in the morning or a midwinter chill that extends to your bone marrow.

Under-floor heating has been utilized since the Roman Empire when it was in its peak in public buildings and the villas of the well-off. Hot air was distributed below tile or brick, offering a radiant heat - energy that transmitted warmth through the flooring and along to colder objects like Roman recumbant chairs, statues, marble-topped desks and frosty centurions.

With the advent of flexible PEX pipe in the United States in the 1980s, its use has rocketed 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, up-to-date hydro floor arrangements using PEX plumbing products furnish more uniform heat to a room, are less drying, more capable and a whole lot quieter than aging furnaces or metal steam pipes.

PEX tubing is constructed of cross-linked polyethylene, which contributes to these high tech pipes durability, chemical resistance, higher mobility, a streamlined installation profile and greater temperature adaptability. This polyethylene tubing can be exposed to water as hot as 200° Fahrenheit in heating schemes.

There are disparate methods of installing radiant floor heating. Some use electrical line voltage systems, but easy-to-use PEX tubing products have made hydronic under-floor heating fashionable with both home constructors and home owners. Because the piping is so elastic, its rolls can be employed in a uninterrupted distance, doing away with the need for multiple junctions and fittings.

Many radiant floor heat schemes employ oxygen-barrier PEX radiant hosing applied in gypsum concrete. Others incorporate low-mass underlay - wood panels with recessed niches for flexible piping.

Every reconstruction or new-construction design is well accommodated by one application or another, so look into your hydronic floor heat choices fully. Do your due dilligence!