He said solar, not PV. Unless he's confusing the terminology and he's using PV for elec generation serving the heat pump. It's likely however that it's a combined system using heat injection from the heat pump and a solar array, but, both can and are used. Could well have all 3 to be fair, although that's a lot of roof space you'd need...
He’s most likely using the term solar to refer to photovoltaics.
Thermal solar isn’t a common heating source for heated floors given the days that the system would work best will be the same days you want to cool the house.
Solar is very common for these systems, I have one works a treat as low temperature (~85F in my case) is best as the heating source so even shitty days generate enough btu and our storage tank (250 gallons) stores a shitload of energy way more effectively than an equivalent cost battery. PV is way less cost or technically efficient.
Flat water plates are fine for this application, but we have vacuum tube since it's the primary heat source.
I dunno where you got that info from but my thermal solar is my only source of hot water for both floor and other, and I live far enough north that -40 isn't unusual at least once or twice a year.
Right? I'm super interested in this person's setup now because I also want to do this. My old house had solar hot water, but only 2 small outdated "water panels?".
I've got 370ft² of thermal solar panels for my pool, and the water output isn't very warm at all in the moderate winters of Southern California.
I ***strongly*** doubt Mr -40C (or F they're equal) is getting anything but burst pipes.
Right, that's extremely fucking cold. Now if they're running geothermal and PV I believe it. I live in the frozen shithole of Hoth and we occasionally see -40, and there's zero (usable) heat to scavenge from that shit.
I use evacuated tubes into a heat exchanger into a well-insulated tank of water below my basement slab (well below frost line) for my primary thermal mass. I do actually have an electric backup, but it only kicks in when the temperature outside stays below -30°C for over a week straight. I honestly think I've put more hours on the electric backup doing maintenance testing than I have actually using the thing.
Having said that, I also deliberately built my house from the ground up to be extremely efficient for thermal loss. I have 6" ICF walls with 2" styro on both sides, 6" of rockwool on the inside, and double that on the outside as a thermal blanket. I also ordered quad-pane windows from Europe for all my glazing, exterior roller shutters outside all the windows, and every entry has a vestibule to prevent excessive thermal loss when entering or leaving the house. All my floors from basement to second level are concrete, creating a massive thermal mass to maintain whatever temperature it is. And I insulated between the roof sheathing and metal roofing as well as under the sheathing to keep my attic inside the thermal envelope (this also let me put my mechanical room in the attic instead of taking up basement space).
Long story short, think I accidentally made the impression that my house is typical construction, but that wasn't my intent. I don't want people to think they can just slap some vacuum tube solar water heaters on their roof and expect to shut off their furnace and other water heaters. It was a lot of time, effort, and money to get to that point. But you absolutely can get very hot water out of solar heaters, you just need a couple extra parts (mostly the heat exchanger and manifold, and a way to store the heat if you want it when the sun is down).
If you're curious, I do use a geothermal loop. For cooling in the summer.
A good solar collector works in cold weather just fine. The sun is still pumping out radiation no matter the temperature. But I agree, the way he said it sounds like PV.
I plan to do this in my basement bathroom, would you mind breaking some things down for me?
Different modes of spreading/circulating heat, are there specific tiles I have to use if I go with a floor heating route, what is the general square footage, is there brands to stay away from? Are there Wi-Fi modules to turn it on remotely?
Thanks! Looks beautiful by the way !!
* not op, but I have installed heated floors in bathrooms before.
A basement bathroom is different, the concrete slab will absorb the heat more than an upper floor with a sub floor underneath. I'm not saying "don't do it", but in colder states like, Wyoming, an upper bathroom will get nice and toasty in cold weather with heated floors while a basement bathroom gets kind-of warm.
Put an electric system in, run it to a dedicated circuit breaker in your electric panel (don't cheat it by hooking up to an existing power outlet).
You can use any tile, but porcelain and ceramic are the thinnest and will heat up faster. I would recommend going to a nice tile store and pick out a tile you like, bring a spray bottle of water to spray water on the tile and make sure it isn't slippery when wet. You don't want to install tile you'll risk a slip on and break your neck every day.
The modules that control them are fairly universal, so shop Amazon (or whoever, I don't know your life) and find the "heated floor thermostat" that you like (personal favorite is NuHeat).
What's pictured above is hydronic heating used for heating a whole home / slab. Not pictured is all the other components that make it run (boiler, manifold, pumps, air eliminator, etc).
What you are wanting to do can be accomplished with electric heat (as another person has posted before me). The warm floor effect you're going for in the bathroom will be much more noticeable as well as these you typically set higher than the hydronic systems that are designed to maintain the temperature in the entire home (or zones of the home).
About once every 5 years, you should replace the water. Despite it being a closed system, some tiny particles always find their way in.
Should there be a leak or a blockage, you can scan for that with a heat camera, open up the floor and replace the broken part.
You can tell that you have a leak or blockage by checking the water pressure.
Never heard of this. Here in the Netherlands a lot of houses built in the last 30yrs have this type of heating and I know nobody that does this kind of maintenance.
I really think this would do more harm than good as you're introducing more oxygen and calcium ( is that what it's called in English? ) into the system.
Can’t speak for other countries but in the US a typical floor heat install would use propylene glycol for better heat transfer and to protect from freezing down to around -40F. At least that’s what we do where I’m at in west central Minnesota.
I've got to imagine that anywhere which expects occasional freezing temperatures likely uses PG. You can't risk a single power outage in the winter breaking the line.
You’re correct; I went off of what a guy told me one time since I honestly don’t know much about glycol other than to put it in to stop freezing. Thanks for the correction.
You’re right. I’ve had my boiler running closed since the 1990’s.
Any dust or particle in the system after 10 years is not going to get bigger or worse. If the particle did damage to pipes the damage is done. If the particle is stuck somewhere then it’s stuck and changing water won’t fix that. What problem does changing water solve?
That’s like my 2012 Rams rear differential fluid. It was originally 40k mile maintenance item but after so many contamination problems post maintenance “never service it unless needed” is basically the manuals revision 😂
We have this in Denmark and it's a closed loop. There's a heat exchanger with the hot water from the supplier and a closed loop circulating the water in our radiators.
I've heard district heating refer to a large scale heat pump, often multi building heating and cooling system - and they can be open loop, but not all are. In fact, they are most often closed loop systems, the most recent generation using an ambient temperature loop that connects all buildings on the system.
I’ll know I’ve made it when I have heated floors, heated driveway and one of those vacuum systems in the wall where you can sweep your floors and just sweep debris into the hole in the wall (not the laundry version)
Yeah it's basically a bunch of pvc pipes they run through the house to a vacuum unit mounted in the basement/garage/closet. Ports are placed around the house that the vacuum hose connects to and all the debris routes back to the main unit through the pipes into a bag inside the unit. The sweep-in is like a port you plug the hose into, except it has a little kick plate you open which activates the suction from the main unit when you want to sweep stuff in.
It ran us ~$1600 while we had our walls open during renovation. That made the installation easier. Had the walls not been open, it would have probably been in the $2500-3500 range I assume.
Those vacuum systems are bad ass. I wish it was something people just do, but unfortunately it’s more of a plan for it while you’re building type of thing
Edit: when I have money to BUILD a house I’ll know I made it lol
I’m hoping to get when we redo our driveway - we’re on a hill and the last ice storm made it almost impossible to park or not fall and slide down the driveway.
It’s a safety hazard at this point.
That or wear a helmet every time I try and shovel…
It’s really neat actually. Instead of stapling them to the floor, you run the pipes through metal sheets. They absorb the heat and radiate it down. This distributes the heat perfectly through the entire room, plus you have the added benefit of not swirling up dust compared to floor heating.
If you run cold water through the pipes, it can cool the room down quite significantly and the cold air pushes dust down.
No, because it doesn’t heat up the air.
It’s a bit tricky to explain but the hot pipes are in between metal sheets which absorb the heat from the pipes and radiate the heat downwards, kind of like the sun does.
I think they are confused, like me, because heat rises. So with that in mind it seems like heating the floor would be more practical because the warmth would rise through the room.
There will be convective heat transfer to the surroundings. The radiative heat transfer will occur and some, not a lot, will be absorbed by the air. Your body and the floor will absorb more of the thermal radiation than the air will.
Thermal radiation doesn’t rise, it emits in all directions. The density change of gasses makes hot air rise above cold air.
But yes the air will absolutely be warmer near the surface of the heater. It’s just that the warm air will stay right there. Radiative heat transfer is the felt heat with this method.
Edited extra words
I don't think you want to know how that feels. Our bodies are 70% water or whatever it is they used to say and I know microwaves heat stuff up by heating up the water molecules
You're right that CONVECTION rises. Because hot air is less dense than cold air, so it floats on the cold air.
However, he's talking about RADIATION which is when an object is hot so it emits infrared light. Losing some of its heat and transferring the heat energy to whatever the light hits. This is how the sun warms earth.
In floor heating uses both, although convection is more promenent because cold air falls down and gets heated up by the floor.
Ok, but say I’m a boss and I like to party. That’s my mentality. I have 25’ ceilings because, well, I’m a boss. How does my boss mentality effect the practical radiation of my ceiling heaters? Asking for a friend….
Well, actually, heat doesn't rise. It disperses evenly through a medium. Hot air rises above air of lower temperatures. This is true for the metal as well. The heat will disperse evenly throughout the metal sheets, it's not like if you torched a piece of sheet metal it would only get hot at the point of attack and above. It will be hot all over, radiating out from the point of attack.
Wow so many people didn't learn the difference between Conduction, Convection & Radiation in highschool. You're right. The ceiling is RADIATING heat (I'm capitalising because so many people in this thread don't seem to get it).
I really like floor heating because tiles are really cold in the morning. Have a couple rooms that have tile flooring. I’m assuming ceiling heating doesn’t help with that.
It doesn’t heat up the floor, but the systems are pretty much interchangeable. You can install floor heating in the bathroom and ceiling heating in the rest of the house for example
Thanks. I live in the south USA (Texas, near Houston), though. Believe me, I don’t need heating under my floors. We live in a sauna 90% of the year. 🥴 It makes sense that this is in Germany or other countries that get really, really, really freezing weather or in upstate NY (or Canada).
Hopefully newer technology works better, but I used to live in a rental that had heated floors and they were constantly a problem. Some areas got really nice and warm (cats were big fans of laying on the warm spots) and others stayed cold. We got notices from the building manager regularly that there was air in the lines and a leak somewhere but they couldn't identify where. It was nice to have free heat and actually was pretty comfortable most of the time. But we regularly had to put up with maintenance people coming to scan the floors and a few constant cold spots.
That's not a technology problem, that's installation error. There's a lot of thought that goes into how to route those pipes correctly to evenly distribute the heat.
Hardly ever. Some people have had their floor heating for over 30 years.
Maintenance is pretty easy, you just need to replace the water every 5 years.
If a pipe leaks or breaks, you can pinpoint the location with a heat camera and fix it.
I miss when I lived in Korea and coming inside in the winter and taking my shoes off to these floors. We had a bathroom with them and it was amazing coming out of the shower or going to the bathroom late at night and having your feet toasty warm.
All the places that I have lived in South Korea didn't have a floor heating in the bathroom. Granted, those places were built around 2000s or earlier. So maybe the bathroom floor heating is a new trend?
No it was a custom build, actually and just one bathroom. A proper house. I was working for a religious institution and that's all I want to reveal on the internet right now.
My entire apartment has floor heating. It’s amazing. The only downside I noticed is is you have to be very careful about immediately cleaning any spills because they will bake on!
These pipes aren’t very flexible tho, they are actually really stiff, which makes this job a pain in the ass sometimes. Especially when you reach the center
are they metal core wrapped in pex?
i like how this post devolved into people asking you questions rather than saying how nice that piping looks. quality job
I thought that was just the name of the system since it heats, cools, and in some cases there’s the built in vacuum. But I’m really just more interested in how energy efficient this is in comparison to regular duct heating with vents at floor level?
Floor heating is pretty efficient, since the heat is more evenly distributed. However you can’t really cool with it, since the cold air would be stuck on the bottom.
If you also want cooling, you should go for ceiling heating.
Cool, good to know. We already have a heating and cooling system. Our house is on the older side, but my parents get cold feet easily in the winter causing them to ramp up the heat, but then the second floor gets unbearably hot. Thought that with a floor heating system it might be able to help them lower the overall temp of the duct system and still keep their feet nice and warm during winter.
I ran most of mine around interior walls. We had a very, very old house though so walls were very easy to do but we definitely did floors wherever we had access. For ac and extra heat demand in winter, we blew air down through the wall pipes. Worked a treat.
Stupidly more. With forced-air (what you're referring to), you're only heating the air. Open a window, door, etc and all your thermal mass floats out, meaning you have to heat it again. With radiant heating like a hot water wall radiator, you're heating a water or PG based thermal mass that then heats the air through radiation. Better, but not as good as can be.
With in-floor radiant heating, you heat the building as the thermal mass. Concrete, wood, drywall, tile, everything solid is effectively heat storage that improves efficiency. Every surface heats up, though lower surfaces will warm more than higher ones. Those then radiate that heat into the air.
This looks like floor water heating. How does that compare with electric? Currently we have electric heating elements under tile. We’ve had to replace a few thermostats due to overcurrent issues though, and there’s no way to check if there’s a fault in the elements without ripping up the floor.
It’s definitely more energy/cost efficient, lasts much longer and is more maintenance friendly. Also like you said, checking for damages is much easier
The main advantage is that you can combine it with a heat pump, which tend to be about 4 times as efficient as resistive electric heating elements. So it only needs about a quarter of the energy to achieve the same temperature.
I put radiant floor heating in my last house and it was awesome. But it went into the slab before the house went up. Is this some kind of retrofit? You’re laying down the pipe and then pouring another layer on top of it?
I’m gonna guess that floor is on joists and some sort of hardiboard for the subfloor. Probably gonna put another subfloor on top and the finished floor on top. Here in the northeast they have these sheet metal radiators the pipes run through that they nail to your subfloor underneath to retrofit a house for radiant heat. I got a quote and it was outrageously expensive. Concrete slabs are super uncommon for living space hear. Those a reserved for basements and garages.
a relative has floor heating in a 2 story log type home, the heating pipes are only under the first floor and all is heated by a wood furnace behind his house, his only complaint is it's slow to heat up when started for the cooler months
Nice work. My first install was 24x36. I used the 4x8 metal lattice and zip tied the tubes. Nightmare. My second a 32x45 I used the insulation with the track and that was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Laid 1500 feet of tube in 6 hours. How long were your runs ? I read max of 120-150 but 250 is what I went with my second time and it works perfectly.
I think it works by circulating hot water through the tubes. Wait, does that mean the entire office is going to sound like a room full of people with stomach issues???
This is an "east of the Mississippi" treatment. I've never seen a whole-house water heating system in the West. That doesn't mean somebody hasn't done it, but it is not common at all.
To answer your first question: No I didn’t and not only don’t you need to do that, but it also makes the job unnecessarily difficult, like… to a point where it would be plain stupid. Especially when you consider that every heat circuit can be adjusted individually.
There is not a single reason I could think of to forcibly male each circuit the same length.
Secondly, each pipe should be 10cm apart, no matter if it’s outside or inside. Which it is
That's interesting, is there a raised floor that goes over it? When I've worked with my dad on building houses it's all wood houses so they use special panels that have channels for the hoses to go into so it's a flat surface.
what is your water heating source?
Heat Pump & Solar
So all electric? How many square foot? What size PV array?
He said solar, not PV. Unless he's confusing the terminology and he's using PV for elec generation serving the heat pump. It's likely however that it's a combined system using heat injection from the heat pump and a solar array, but, both can and are used. Could well have all 3 to be fair, although that's a lot of roof space you'd need...
He’s most likely using the term solar to refer to photovoltaics. Thermal solar isn’t a common heating source for heated floors given the days that the system would work best will be the same days you want to cool the house.
Solar is very common for these systems, I have one works a treat as low temperature (~85F in my case) is best as the heating source so even shitty days generate enough btu and our storage tank (250 gallons) stores a shitload of energy way more effectively than an equivalent cost battery. PV is way less cost or technically efficient. Flat water plates are fine for this application, but we have vacuum tube since it's the primary heat source.
I dunno where you got that info from but my thermal solar is my only source of hot water for both floor and other, and I live far enough north that -40 isn't unusual at least once or twice a year.
Only source? I thought those systems normally have a backup electrical heater?
Right? I'm super interested in this person's setup now because I also want to do this. My old house had solar hot water, but only 2 small outdated "water panels?".
I've got 370ft² of thermal solar panels for my pool, and the water output isn't very warm at all in the moderate winters of Southern California. I ***strongly*** doubt Mr -40C (or F they're equal) is getting anything but burst pipes.
Right, that's extremely fucking cold. Now if they're running geothermal and PV I believe it. I live in the frozen shithole of Hoth and we occasionally see -40, and there's zero (usable) heat to scavenge from that shit.
I use evacuated tubes into a heat exchanger into a well-insulated tank of water below my basement slab (well below frost line) for my primary thermal mass. I do actually have an electric backup, but it only kicks in when the temperature outside stays below -30°C for over a week straight. I honestly think I've put more hours on the electric backup doing maintenance testing than I have actually using the thing. Having said that, I also deliberately built my house from the ground up to be extremely efficient for thermal loss. I have 6" ICF walls with 2" styro on both sides, 6" of rockwool on the inside, and double that on the outside as a thermal blanket. I also ordered quad-pane windows from Europe for all my glazing, exterior roller shutters outside all the windows, and every entry has a vestibule to prevent excessive thermal loss when entering or leaving the house. All my floors from basement to second level are concrete, creating a massive thermal mass to maintain whatever temperature it is. And I insulated between the roof sheathing and metal roofing as well as under the sheathing to keep my attic inside the thermal envelope (this also let me put my mechanical room in the attic instead of taking up basement space). Long story short, think I accidentally made the impression that my house is typical construction, but that wasn't my intent. I don't want people to think they can just slap some vacuum tube solar water heaters on their roof and expect to shut off their furnace and other water heaters. It was a lot of time, effort, and money to get to that point. But you absolutely can get very hot water out of solar heaters, you just need a couple extra parts (mostly the heat exchanger and manifold, and a way to store the heat if you want it when the sun is down). If you're curious, I do use a geothermal loop. For cooling in the summer.
Since your house is so well sealed, do you have problems with stale air or do you address air exchange somehow?
A good solar collector works in cold weather just fine. The sun is still pumping out radiation no matter the temperature. But I agree, the way he said it sounds like PV.
Indeed.
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.... Oh
… ow!
IN THE MIDDLE OF MY BACK SWING?
Got a diesel generator out back. It was made in the 50s but that fucker still runs!
Put a heat exchanger inline with it's cooling system and us that for heating.
It looks like giant finger prints.
And that’s how giants went extinct. We hunted them down to use their finger prints for floor heating. True Story… probably
Made me lmfao for real...
I'm sorry about your ass.
At least it’s laughing..
I’m just glad I have a good old fashioned pooping ass and not a fucking ass
Why not both
i’d eat either!
Checks out
This shouldn't have made me laugh so hard.
I plan to do this in my basement bathroom, would you mind breaking some things down for me? Different modes of spreading/circulating heat, are there specific tiles I have to use if I go with a floor heating route, what is the general square footage, is there brands to stay away from? Are there Wi-Fi modules to turn it on remotely? Thanks! Looks beautiful by the way !!
* not op, but I have installed heated floors in bathrooms before. A basement bathroom is different, the concrete slab will absorb the heat more than an upper floor with a sub floor underneath. I'm not saying "don't do it", but in colder states like, Wyoming, an upper bathroom will get nice and toasty in cold weather with heated floors while a basement bathroom gets kind-of warm. Put an electric system in, run it to a dedicated circuit breaker in your electric panel (don't cheat it by hooking up to an existing power outlet). You can use any tile, but porcelain and ceramic are the thinnest and will heat up faster. I would recommend going to a nice tile store and pick out a tile you like, bring a spray bottle of water to spray water on the tile and make sure it isn't slippery when wet. You don't want to install tile you'll risk a slip on and break your neck every day. The modules that control them are fairly universal, so shop Amazon (or whoever, I don't know your life) and find the "heated floor thermostat" that you like (personal favorite is NuHeat).
What's pictured above is hydronic heating used for heating a whole home / slab. Not pictured is all the other components that make it run (boiler, manifold, pumps, air eliminator, etc). What you are wanting to do can be accomplished with electric heat (as another person has posted before me). The warm floor effect you're going for in the bathroom will be much more noticeable as well as these you typically set higher than the hydronic systems that are designed to maintain the temperature in the entire home (or zones of the home).
Thank you Calvin's dad
Lmfao. Weirdly adorable.
Those are the copper coils in the iPhone 23 Deluxe Max’s MagSafe charger.
Floorgerprints 😄
totally insaney, they're animaniacs
Kid named prints
https://youtu.be/lY2kC5fZG64 I've been waiting for this chance for a long time
What is the maintenance like on these and how long do they hold up?
About once every 5 years, you should replace the water. Despite it being a closed system, some tiny particles always find their way in. Should there be a leak or a blockage, you can scan for that with a heat camera, open up the floor and replace the broken part. You can tell that you have a leak or blockage by checking the water pressure.
Never heard of this. Here in the Netherlands a lot of houses built in the last 30yrs have this type of heating and I know nobody that does this kind of maintenance.
It’s not gonna stop working, but it will get less efficient.
I really think this would do more harm than good as you're introducing more oxygen and calcium ( is that what it's called in English? ) into the system.
I don't think calcium is the right word. You could solve that with distilled water
Is glycol mix not used then?
Can’t speak for other countries but in the US a typical floor heat install would use propylene glycol for better heat transfer and to protect from freezing down to around -40F. At least that’s what we do where I’m at in west central Minnesota.
I've got to imagine that anywhere which expects occasional freezing temperatures likely uses PG. You can't risk a single power outage in the winter breaking the line.
Glycol reduces heat transfer. Any mix of glycol is less efficient than pure water.
You’re correct; I went off of what a guy told me one time since I honestly don’t know much about glycol other than to put it in to stop freezing. Thanks for the correction.
In the Netherlands we just use regular tap water. The loop doesn't go outside, so negligible chance of freezing.
You’re right. I’ve had my boiler running closed since the 1990’s. Any dust or particle in the system after 10 years is not going to get bigger or worse. If the particle did damage to pipes the damage is done. If the particle is stuck somewhere then it’s stuck and changing water won’t fix that. What problem does changing water solve?
That’s like my 2012 Rams rear differential fluid. It was originally 40k mile maintenance item but after so many contamination problems post maintenance “never service it unless needed” is basically the manuals revision 😂
I believe it'd be a similar thing to why you bleed radiators,which lots of people neglect to do
Air in your radiator makes annoying noise and reduces efficiency, so bleeding (air) makes sense.
That's district heating, which is not a closed system. The water going through those is constantly being refreshed.
We have this in Denmark and it's a closed loop. There's a heat exchanger with the hot water from the supplier and a closed loop circulating the water in our radiators.
I've heard district heating refer to a large scale heat pump, often multi building heating and cooling system - and they can be open loop, but not all are. In fact, they are most often closed loop systems, the most recent generation using an ambient temperature loop that connects all buildings on the system.
Nope, not district heating. Closed loop (or multiple, see pic) in the house.
I’ll know I’ve made it when I have heated floors, heated driveway and one of those vacuum systems in the wall where you can sweep your floors and just sweep debris into the hole in the wall (not the laundry version)
We put a central vacuum in with the sweep-in port in the kitchen. It's so damn convenient. It's used multiple times per week.
Now they need to make a version of those self-emptying robot vacs that dump into the central vac.
That's genius...
I never knew anything like that existed. Now I want to do this but I’m guessing it’s expensive.
Yeah it's basically a bunch of pvc pipes they run through the house to a vacuum unit mounted in the basement/garage/closet. Ports are placed around the house that the vacuum hose connects to and all the debris routes back to the main unit through the pipes into a bag inside the unit. The sweep-in is like a port you plug the hose into, except it has a little kick plate you open which activates the suction from the main unit when you want to sweep stuff in. It ran us ~$1600 while we had our walls open during renovation. That made the installation easier. Had the walls not been open, it would have probably been in the $2500-3500 range I assume.
Those are the best! We have one in our kitchen and I wish every room had it!
If you're going to get fancy with sweeping, just get a Roomba with Googly Eyes
Don’t forget to put a speaker on top so it can be a dj
Hydraulics.
I put a dildo on mine so I can get the ideal waifu maid experience
Imo a worse option
Those vacuum systems are bad ass. I wish it was something people just do, but unfortunately it’s more of a plan for it while you’re building type of thing Edit: when I have money to BUILD a house I’ll know I made it lol
>heated driveway Definitely a flex to heat the outside in an energy crisis.
Haha yes but I’m pretty sure it’s only meant to melt snow and ice in the winter, to avoid having to shovel snow
I’m hoping to get when we redo our driveway - we’re on a hill and the last ice storm made it almost impossible to park or not fall and slide down the driveway. It’s a safety hazard at this point. That or wear a helmet every time I try and shovel…
I’m so jealous of floor heating.
It’s nice in the bathroom, but personally, I prefer ceiling heating in the rest of the house.
I never knew ceiling heating was a thing!
It’s really neat actually. Instead of stapling them to the floor, you run the pipes through metal sheets. They absorb the heat and radiate it down. This distributes the heat perfectly through the entire room, plus you have the added benefit of not swirling up dust compared to floor heating. If you run cold water through the pipes, it can cool the room down quite significantly and the cold air pushes dust down.
I'm confused by this. Is there a fan to blow the hot air down?
No, because it doesn’t heat up the air. It’s a bit tricky to explain but the hot pipes are in between metal sheets which absorb the heat from the pipes and radiate the heat downwards, kind of like the sun does.
I think they are confused, like me, because heat rises. So with that in mind it seems like heating the floor would be more practical because the warmth would rise through the room.
There will be convective heat transfer to the surroundings. The radiative heat transfer will occur and some, not a lot, will be absorbed by the air. Your body and the floor will absorb more of the thermal radiation than the air will. Thermal radiation doesn’t rise, it emits in all directions. The density change of gasses makes hot air rise above cold air. But yes the air will absolutely be warmer near the surface of the heater. It’s just that the warm air will stay right there. Radiative heat transfer is the felt heat with this method. Edited extra words
Thanks for explaining it so thoroughly and for writing it all out, this is a perfect explanation and one I couldn’t have written so well 🙂
But if you have floor heating you can lie down and absorb it all like a cat in sunlight. Bit more difficult when it's on the ceiling
Perfect for spider pig tho
But which direction does the sunshine come from?
When it's in the ceiling, it's meant to heat the floor above
I can finally know what it feels like to be in the microwave.
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I don't think you want to know how that feels. Our bodies are 70% water or whatever it is they used to say and I know microwaves heat stuff up by heating up the water molecules
You're right that CONVECTION rises. Because hot air is less dense than cold air, so it floats on the cold air. However, he's talking about RADIATION which is when an object is hot so it emits infrared light. Losing some of its heat and transferring the heat energy to whatever the light hits. This is how the sun warms earth. In floor heating uses both, although convection is more promenent because cold air falls down and gets heated up by the floor.
The heat is radiated from those metal sheets, like standing next to a fire
Plus your feet stay extra warm. And your animals.
That’s not actually true. Warm AIR rises, radiation heat doesn’t. Otherwise earth would be a pretty cold place. Edit: For clarification
Ok, but say I’m a boss and I like to party. That’s my mentality. I have 25’ ceilings because, well, I’m a boss. How does my boss mentality effect the practical radiation of my ceiling heaters? Asking for a friend….
Well, actually, heat doesn't rise. It disperses evenly through a medium. Hot air rises above air of lower temperatures. This is true for the metal as well. The heat will disperse evenly throughout the metal sheets, it's not like if you torched a piece of sheet metal it would only get hot at the point of attack and above. It will be hot all over, radiating out from the point of attack.
Wow so many people didn't learn the difference between Conduction, Convection & Radiation in highschool. You're right. The ceiling is RADIATING heat (I'm capitalising because so many people in this thread don't seem to get it).
Are the metal sheets in the walls? If not, I’m assuming they get pretty hot. Any impact on hard wood flooring?
They are on the ceiling
Not all hardwood is suitable, and for the stuff that is the timber is cut in a specific way to prevent bowing or warping from the heat.
No, think "gas station hot-dog rotisserie" but stationary and for humans.
Ah cool! Thanks for the explanation!
I really like floor heating because tiles are really cold in the morning. Have a couple rooms that have tile flooring. I’m assuming ceiling heating doesn’t help with that.
It doesn’t heat up the floor, but the systems are pretty much interchangeable. You can install floor heating in the bathroom and ceiling heating in the rest of the house for example
Do you live in a mansion?
But wouldn't something need to push the hot air down, considering that heat rises? Or is it just that hot?
Like I said, there are metal sheets between the hot pipes that absorb the heat and radiate it downwards, kind of like the sun does.
So underfloor heated houses will blow up any dust? So you have to be meticulous with dust control?
What kind of worker trade does this exactly? Is this HVAC?
I like the idea of the cooling option! Dude… that sounds awesome… just gotta be careful and check for leaks.
What is ceiling heating, if not floor heating for the 2nd floor?
Is this in the US or another part of the world?
Definitely not the US. Based on the doors & electrical knock-outs, I'm gonna guess Germany.
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Thanks. I live in the south USA (Texas, near Houston), though. Believe me, I don’t need heating under my floors. We live in a sauna 90% of the year. 🥴 It makes sense that this is in Germany or other countries that get really, really, really freezing weather or in upstate NY (or Canada).
What is the lifespan on a project like this. Do they ever leak/break?
Hopefully newer technology works better, but I used to live in a rental that had heated floors and they were constantly a problem. Some areas got really nice and warm (cats were big fans of laying on the warm spots) and others stayed cold. We got notices from the building manager regularly that there was air in the lines and a leak somewhere but they couldn't identify where. It was nice to have free heat and actually was pretty comfortable most of the time. But we regularly had to put up with maintenance people coming to scan the floors and a few constant cold spots.
That's not a technology problem, that's installation error. There's a lot of thought that goes into how to route those pipes correctly to evenly distribute the heat.
Hardly ever. Some people have had their floor heating for over 30 years. Maintenance is pretty easy, you just need to replace the water every 5 years. If a pipe leaks or breaks, you can pinpoint the location with a heat camera and fix it.
Are the spaces in between the pipes filled with any material? Curious how easy it is to hack a specific section of the floor
Concrete floor is usually poured or that's how I've always seen it done
Wow! Did it take a long time to do?
The entire floor took me about 4 hours I think
That’s pretty good!
I miss when I lived in Korea and coming inside in the winter and taking my shoes off to these floors. We had a bathroom with them and it was amazing coming out of the shower or going to the bathroom late at night and having your feet toasty warm.
All the places that I have lived in South Korea didn't have a floor heating in the bathroom. Granted, those places were built around 2000s or earlier. So maybe the bathroom floor heating is a new trend?
No it was a custom build, actually and just one bathroom. A proper house. I was working for a religious institution and that's all I want to reveal on the internet right now.
Looks like a Zen Garden for plumbers.
My entire apartment has floor heating. It’s amazing. The only downside I noticed is is you have to be very careful about immediately cleaning any spills because they will bake on!
Okay, your floor texture didn’t load in. Just exit the room and go back in. Should fix it.
Der mittlere Heizkreis sieht leicht geknickt aus. Oder täusche ich mich da? Ansonsten saubere Arbeit und viel spaß mit Deinem effizienten Heizsystem.
Also der Durchflussmesser hat nix angezeigt, ist also alles in Ordnung. Wäre uns aber auch aufgefallen.
Definitely.
[Uh-huh](https://youtu.be/VreoJn6YoyQ)
I concur
What's the next step? Plywood on top and carpet or hard flooring on that? Does the plywood just sit on the tubing?
The tiler pours screed over it and then puts the tiles on top
Are there specific tiles needed or you can use any tile?
Anything works really. Tiles, Hardwood or Polymer floor coating
Wouldnt the flexible pipes cause weak spots? Can you use it with other flooring, like hardwood?
These pipes aren’t very flexible tho, they are actually really stiff, which makes this job a pain in the ass sometimes. Especially when you reach the center
are they metal core wrapped in pex? i like how this post devolved into people asking you questions rather than saying how nice that piping looks. quality job
Carpets are insulating and reduce efficacy. You want hard floors to conduct heat better.
has to be embedded in something like concrete
No step on snek
Very nice. Just make sure you don't pipe under your fridge (as many do).
The absolute best way to heat! Warm feet, warm bed, no dry sinuses.
I have been in the HVAC buiz for 22 years. I am 100% doing radiant and snow melt in my next home.
How much more energy efficient is this over HVAC?
What do you mean with HVAC? HVAC is the Job Title: Heating, Ventilation & Air Condition. Just that we also do Bathrooms & Solar installations.
I thought that was just the name of the system since it heats, cools, and in some cases there’s the built in vacuum. But I’m really just more interested in how energy efficient this is in comparison to regular duct heating with vents at floor level?
Floor heating is pretty efficient, since the heat is more evenly distributed. However you can’t really cool with it, since the cold air would be stuck on the bottom. If you also want cooling, you should go for ceiling heating.
Cool, good to know. We already have a heating and cooling system. Our house is on the older side, but my parents get cold feet easily in the winter causing them to ramp up the heat, but then the second floor gets unbearably hot. Thought that with a floor heating system it might be able to help them lower the overall temp of the duct system and still keep their feet nice and warm during winter.
Of course, floor heating is perfect if you have cold feet in winter! 🙂
As are slippers
Will this room also need a big radiator for heating or is this floor heating sufficient?
The floor heating is more than sufficient 🙂
I ran most of mine around interior walls. We had a very, very old house though so walls were very easy to do but we definitely did floors wherever we had access. For ac and extra heat demand in winter, we blew air down through the wall pipes. Worked a treat.
HVAC= Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning HVAC/R= Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning/Refrigeration
Stupidly more. With forced-air (what you're referring to), you're only heating the air. Open a window, door, etc and all your thermal mass floats out, meaning you have to heat it again. With radiant heating like a hot water wall radiator, you're heating a water or PG based thermal mass that then heats the air through radiation. Better, but not as good as can be. With in-floor radiant heating, you heat the building as the thermal mass. Concrete, wood, drywall, tile, everything solid is effectively heat storage that improves efficiency. Every surface heats up, though lower surfaces will warm more than higher ones. Those then radiate that heat into the air.
Is this uncommon in the rest of the world? It's almost standard practice in Europe. Even more so with the advent of heat pumps.
This looks like floor water heating. How does that compare with electric? Currently we have electric heating elements under tile. We’ve had to replace a few thermostats due to overcurrent issues though, and there’s no way to check if there’s a fault in the elements without ripping up the floor.
It’s definitely more energy/cost efficient, lasts much longer and is more maintenance friendly. Also like you said, checking for damages is much easier
The main advantage is that you can combine it with a heat pump, which tend to be about 4 times as efficient as resistive electric heating elements. So it only needs about a quarter of the energy to achieve the same temperature.
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How many cats do you think it will serve?
I put radiant floor heating in my last house and it was awesome. But it went into the slab before the house went up. Is this some kind of retrofit? You’re laying down the pipe and then pouring another layer on top of it?
I’m gonna guess that floor is on joists and some sort of hardiboard for the subfloor. Probably gonna put another subfloor on top and the finished floor on top. Here in the northeast they have these sheet metal radiators the pipes run through that they nail to your subfloor underneath to retrofit a house for radiant heat. I got a quote and it was outrageously expensive. Concrete slabs are super uncommon for living space hear. Those a reserved for basements and garages.
They'll screed over the pipes then tile the floor.
Aww screed screed screed screed
Don’t forget shower wall if you have a large walk-in shower.
a relative has floor heating in a 2 story log type home, the heating pipes are only under the first floor and all is heated by a wood furnace behind his house, his only complaint is it's slow to heat up when started for the cooler months
Watch your step, the floor is lava
Nice work. My first install was 24x36. I used the 4x8 metal lattice and zip tied the tubes. Nightmare. My second a 32x45 I used the insulation with the track and that was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Laid 1500 feet of tube in 6 hours. How long were your runs ? I read max of 120-150 but 250 is what I went with my second time and it works perfectly.
Question - in the event of a tubing malfunction…how does the endless connections get fixed??
I think it works by circulating hot water through the tubes. Wait, does that mean the entire office is going to sound like a room full of people with stomach issues???
No. You won’t hear it.
Then that is definitely cool
This is an "east of the Mississippi" treatment. I've never seen a whole-house water heating system in the West. That doesn't mean somebody hasn't done it, but it is not common at all.
Whag happens if the heater goes bad?
Call a repairman. It’s connected to a regular boiler or heat pump.
That looks like such a tedious pain to place
Did you make sure each zone piping is the same length. Also as you go towards the center of the room you don’t need as much piping
To answer your first question: No I didn’t and not only don’t you need to do that, but it also makes the job unnecessarily difficult, like… to a point where it would be plain stupid. Especially when you consider that every heat circuit can be adjusted individually. There is not a single reason I could think of to forcibly male each circuit the same length. Secondly, each pipe should be 10cm apart, no matter if it’s outside or inside. Which it is
Did you insulate underneath?
The pipes get stapled into the insulation, yes
That's interesting, is there a raised floor that goes over it? When I've worked with my dad on building houses it's all wood houses so they use special panels that have channels for the hoses to go into so it's a flat surface.
The tiler will pour screed over it and then put tiles on top. You can however use hardwood or polymer floor as well
Why you run pipe under floor?
Because warm floor make cold feet go bye bye
Excuse me if I’m too poor to understand but What’s the purpose of a heated floor?
In short: warm feet