Your better half got up in the dead of the night and now those frozen toes are attacking your personal space with the persistency of a heat-seeking missile. Good for you, the new house will have radiant floor heating - a sure cure for confrontations with frozen feet at 2 a.m. or a midwinter chill that gets to your bone marrow.
Under-floor heating has been used since the Roman Empire when it existed in its prime in public constructions and the villas of the well-off. Hot air was circulated beneath tile or brick, offering a radiant heat - energy that transferred warmth through the floor and on to cooler furniture like Roman reclining chairs, statues, marble-topped desks and frosty centurions.
With the advent of flexible PEX pipe in the United States in the 1980s, application has jumped as more products have been created for the construction industry - among which have been water arrangements to provide radiant floor heating. Unlike forced-air furnaces, modern-day hydro floor arrangements utilizing PEX plumbing products offer more uniform warmth to a room, are less drying, more economical and a whole lot quieter than older furnaces or metal steam pipes.
PEX tubing is made of cross-linked polyethylene, which grants these modern tubes endurance, chemical resistance, higher mobility, a cost-efficient installation profile and bigger temperature adaptability. This polyethylene piping can be exposed to water as hot as 200° Fahrenheit in heat arrangements.
There are various ways of putting in radiant floor heating. Some use electrical line voltage systems, but easy-to-use PEX piping products have made hydronic under-floor heating popular with both home constructors and house owners. Because the piping is so elastic, its rolls can be used in a continuous distance, getting rid of the need for multiple joints and fittings.
Numerous radiant floor heating systems employ oxygen-barrier PEX radiant hosing employed in gypsum concrete. Others integrate low-mass underlay - wood boards with recessed niches for flexible piping.
Each remodeling or new-construction plan is well suited by one method or another, so investigate your hydronic floor heating alternatives fully. Do your preparation!
