I think it was my fiancée who told me that in Korea people have heated floors. How do they work? Electric? Liquid-filled radiators?
I don’t have a couch, so when I want to stretch out I do it on the floor. This house was built in 1934, and it’s not very efficient. I can feel the cold leaking in. New, efficient windows will have to wait until I’m employed.
Anyway… Heated floors sound good. Heat rises, so it seems to me that the whole room could be heated instead of just the top half like the furnace does. The floor would be warm to lie on, and the furnace wouldn’t have to work so hard burning that expensive propane to heat the room.
Not that I can afford to install heated floors; but in addition to knowing what they are, I’m curious as to how much they cost and how efficient they are.
The typical term for it is radiant heating. It’s really nothing more than water-filled tubing in the floor. I’ve seen it installed as a retrofit / remodel option - channels are nailed to the subfloring and the tubing’s snapped into the channels in a serpentine fashion. The “finish” flooring is installed on top. Commonly, the finish flooring is at least in part, concrete, to act as a thermal mass.
The whole thing is fed by a boiler, naturally.
Radiant heat in the concrete floor / foundation slab was a hallmark of Eichler-style homes in the US.
I don’ t know about korea, but my parents’ house in Japan has a heated floor in one room (living room). It’s electric. I don’t think it’s intended to heat the whole room, but only to make it pleasent to walk on. They used it liberally the first winter they moved in, but it made a noticeable increase in the electricity bill. Now they just use the wall-mounted air conditioners (heat pumps) and kerosene space heaters*.
We also had an electric floor mat when I was growing up - I think we mostly used it to sit on while watching TV. Central heating never caught on in Japan, and we still use a lot of localized and specialized heaters. I remember we also had an electric foot warmer to use when sitting at a desk. And most households have a kotatsu (low table with built-in heater and a blanket/skirt to hold the warm air in, like this).
*Modern kerosene heaters with electric blowers and electronic controls.
Heated floors are common in New Mexico. Nothing like a warm tile floor on a cold, snowy day.
Most systems use a boiler to heat water which is then circulated through heating coils via pumps. They’re very efficient though it does take some time to heat a cold room with tile floors - due to the thermal mass of the tile and cement in which the tubes are imbedded. Wood floors can be heated also. New systems are reliable (there are a lot of broken tubes in older systems - not good even if you’re handy with a jack hammer).
Cost varies with the size of the system - they should be sized to handle the coldest expected temperatures. My guess is most systems cost more than 10K and less than 20K - our system was 10K to heat 1450 sq. ft. We usually see them installed in new homes though it’s possible to retrofit a house with existing floors. It’s more common to use a boiler with baseboard heaters in those instances.
We had a kerosene heater when I was little and lived in Japan. Not very efficient at all.
Since the gas company can’t be arsed to join the parallel mains by running another line in front of my house, I have to rely on expensive propane. I turn it off at night, since I’m not using the house. I have an electric blanket on my bed. (I turn it to 9 or H a half-hour before I hit the rack, and then turn it down to L or 2.) This morning when I got up, the thermometer by my computer read 44°F. It’s 60° over here now (it’s 32° outside with the patio thermometer almost catching the sun) and the thermostat is set to 65°.
Isn’t there an electric system? I seem to recall seeing an electric mat on one of those remodeling shows on TV. They enrolled a mat that sort of looked like a huge waterbed heater. They connected it to power and attached it to the subfloor, somehow. Then, the tile was installed and grouted just like normal. This was for a bathroom remodel and the owner didn’t want cold floors when he stepped out of the shower. I’ve been a bit interested in this, because my in-laws are remodeling their house. It’s on the Texas coast, so it’s up on stilts. The floor gets COLD in winter, since there’s no earth beneath them. The wind just howls and freezes everything. I thought it would be a good system for them, if it’s reasonably affordable to install.
Drum God, Google electric radiant heating. Johnny L.A., I’m not a carpenter or contractor, but I wouldn’t be surprised if electric works better for you as well.
This Old House has used radiant floor heating several times. Once, it was in a house (possibly a log cabin) with a 20-30 foot cathedral ceiling. They said it was a more efficient way to heat the room than forced air since the heat would rise to a comfortable level down where the people are and not so much up near the ceiling.
One of the Kiwis may be along to confirm or debunk this, but I believe that in the geothermally active parts of New Zealand, they run natural steam through the underfloor pipes.
Note that in colder climates, radiant heat can be highly problematic. My grandparents were scared to death to leave their Fargo, N.D. home during the winter in fear that in a power outage the pipes would freeze and burst, causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage – picture a house in which pipes have exploded inside your floor. I understand that more modern systems use flexible piping to minimize this threat, but I’d still be very leery.
Correct. They also often use PEX tubing, in part because this tolerates freezing rather well (i.e. it tends to stretch rather than rupture).
In view of the possibility of power failures, you’d think it would be rather basic that a heating system be designed to withstand sub-freezing temperatures (indeed, the lowest that can locally be expected) without catastrophic failure.
Speaking of using radiant floor heating in high ceiling cabins in cold climates:
My old boss had a cabin built and put this type of heating in since he thought it was cutting edge technology. Problem is he would only go sporadically up to his cabin and always turned down the heat when he left. Then whenever he got there in the middle of winter he was peeved because it took over 24 hours to warm up the house.
When we were dating, Mr. Pug lived in a small hand-built brick home which had radiant heating under its tiled floor. Man, was that ever cozy. You could walk around in the middle of winter in bare feet! Now that you mention it, that house did have kind of high ceilings. The radiant heating kept everything at human level nice and toasty.
Interstingly, I’ve heard that folks who have these installed often suffer from flu-lik symptoms for the first few months of use. Supposedly, the body’s thermostat is confused by the warm floors and goes a bit haywire.
My stepmother used to own a house in NJ that has one rooom heated this way. It was very cozy, but since it was one room I can’t confirm the flu-symptom story.
That’s weird, that_darn_cat. We weren’t sick a bit when my Dad built his house with radiant floor heat. I did have to get used to sleeping in warmer rooms, though. In the past, we’d turn the heat way down over night to save energy. With this system, it’s impossible (and unneeded). Most of the floor is big ceramic tiles, with some deep plushy carpet in the bedrooms and offices. They took a few extra coils and set them in front of each toilet, so the floor there is definitely warm to the touch, as opposed to “not cold.” Inspired, really. It feels so decadent to have warm tootsies while you’re on the crapper at 5 AM.
Only thing we have to be careful of is not to leave things on the floor that might be damaged by heat. Although I think that may be more my step-mom’s fear than any actual danger. But I don’t leave my drumheads on the floor, just in case.
Our previous home was a brick ranch built on a concrete slab. It was constructed in 1960. It had radiant heat (boiler + pump + many feet of copper pipe embedded in the slab). It was absolutely, positively, the best heating system. It spoiled you.
We now have forced air heating. How I miss radiant heat.
In floor heating with electric cables, hot water in copper or plastic tubes is not new, probably the most comfortable system available.
“Ceil Heat” consisting of electric cables in the room ceiling went out of style when it procuced cold feet under the table and high cost of repair when the cable failed.
A well insulated house with a good A/C system is about the best system for all around comfort all year around.
A ranch style on concrete slab could use a little suplemental in floor heat .
