Radiant Heating And Concrete
After radiant floor home heating was initially launched into new houses, back in the 50′s, it relied on making use of a small water boiler in the property, and a system of copper pipes that were laid into a slab of concrete, that fashioned the floors of the house. Sadly, the copper pipes failed to have a lengthy life span, and when they deteriorated, split or broke, it was a troublesome and costly procedure to repair them.
Today, science has developed this hydronic radiant floor heating into one of the most efficient and comfortable heating systems in the market. Today plastic tubing is used instead of copper, for its durability and heat transfer in concrete. Then individual rooms are divided into a zone, and each zone can be individually connected and handled by a single boiler, which again are much more effective and less noisy than their fifties equivalents.
The reason that concrete floor radiant heating is so efficient is due to the thermal mass of concrete. The thermal mass of an object is its capacity to retain heat, and its ability to retain that heat during changing air temperatures around it. With concrete, it is gradually heated from the water inside it, but once warm, it radiates its heat over a large surface area, and even when the hot water source has been turned off, the concrete slab retains its heat for many hours, continually heating the air in the room, even though the supply has been turned off, and you are incurring no heating bills. This has evident benefits over forced air devices, that to keep a room at a consistent temperature involves the continuous on and off of the fans and airflow.
People often consider electric radiant heating as a practical substitute to this method, on account of its advantages of being simpler and cheaper to install, and also that the pads that this system uses do not hold their heat for long, and therefore require more constant heating, and subsequently larger heating costs. Another option to replacing your entire floor is to have hot water flowing through the joists of your home, but this method relies on heating the air under the floor, which is not as beneficial as heating concrete, and does not retain its heat once the power is off.
