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Radiant Floor Heating Proffers Tiptoe Comfort

Your spouse got up in the middle of the night and straightaway those cold toes are raiding your territory with the perseverance of a heat-seeking projectile. Lucky for you, the new home will have radiant floor heat - a sure cure for confrontations with frozen feet at 2 in the morning or a midwinter chill that gets to your bone marrow.

Under-floor heating has been in use since the Roman Empire when it was in its peak in communal buildings and the villas of the well-to-do. Hot air was dispersed under tile or brick, supplying a radiant heat - energy that transmitted heat through the floor and on to cooler furniture like Roman reclining chairs, statues, marble-topped tables and frosty centurions.

With the coming of flexible PEX pipe to the United States in the 1980s, its use has taken off as new products have been developed for the construction industry - among those have been hydronic arrangements to supply radiant floor heat. Unlike forced-air furnaces, modern hydro floor arrangements using PEX plumbing products allow more uniform warmth to a room, are less drying, more cost-effective and a whole lot quieter than older furnaces or metal steam pipes.

PEX tubing is constructed of cross-linked polyethylene, which grants these modern tubes durability, chemical resistance, superior mobility, a streamlined installation profile and bigger temperature range. This polyethylene piping can be exposed to water as high as 200° Fahrenheit in heat schemes.

There are disparate methods of installing radiant floor heat. Some use electric line voltage systems, but easy-to-use PEX piping products have made hydronic under-floor heat fashionable with both home constructors and home owners. Because the tube is so flexible, its coils can be applied in a sustained length, eradicating the requirement for multiple junctions and fittings.

Many radiant floor heating schemes utilize oxygen-barrier PEX radiant hosing applied in gypsum concrete. Others comprise low-mass underlay - wood boards with recessed niches for flexible pipe.

Each remodeling or new-construction project is well suited by one method or another, so look into your hydronic floor heat choices fully. Do your research!