Forced Air vs. Radiant Heat

[River Wood]

Anyone have Radiant Heat? I was wondering how you like it??

 

[coopermini]

We've installed radiant in a couple houses we built. It has some advantages and some disadvantages. The biggest issue we saw was the response time if you change the temp setting. Slow to warm up and slow to cool down. Works best if you set thermostat and leave it. Advantage is it is quiet and gives you warm floors. As the heat rises you do not get drafts or cold spots that you can with hot air. Also less dust circulating in the air than with hot air. A disadvantage is you have aheated floor which is bad for certain health conditions. Not sure exactly but several businesses had issue with workers standing on heated floors all day causing circulation issues with workers. A good compromise might be hot water baseboard. Radiant is also the most expensive to install.

Good luck

Mark

 

[SampleMM]

I have a combination of baseboard hot water and radiant. The radiant is in my rooms that have tile which is my mud room, laundry room and baths. The rest of the house is hardwood flooring and so I had to use the baseboard hot water. I prefer the baseboard hot water because I like to turn my heat down at night or during the day when I'm gone but like Mark said that's not a good idea with the radiant. My rooms with the radiant never feel warm. Possibly because we have the heat set to turn up or down depending on the time of day but I also wonder if my plumber is to blame. My master bathroom gets so cold in the winter. It is the room that gets all kinds of wind and even with the radiant temperature set at 70 it sometimes will only get to 60 degrees. Another problem that I keep having with the radiant is that something and I'm not sure what it is some kind of pump maybe, keeps going bad and I have to replace that every so often. I am very disappointed with my radiant heat or maybe I should be disappointed with my plumber?

 

[coopermini]

SampleMM I would check to see if a valve is partially turned off or all the way off for the bedroom. The circulator could be bad especially if you have been having issues with them. If your plumber can't fix the problem try another with experiance in radiant heat. With the bedroom that is always cold it is possible that the loop for that room is not plumbed into the manifold correctly (is there another roomwith same issue?).

We have put radiant under hardwood floors. It can be done but you have to be carefull.

Mark

 

[Cathy_H]

This house had it in the ceiling before we installed a new heat pump which had a heat strip in it......... We no longer use it and it is not good if you have an unheated crawlspace - water lines will freeze.... Pain to remember to leave a faucet dripping when it gets below freezing.. Expensive also.

 

[River Wood]

Thanks for the input!!

 

[Margo_C-T]

My 30+ year-old house is all electric; had hot water baseboard heat, but to save on the then high cost of electricity, we installed a fireplace insert (a 'free-standing' Orley), and heated ENTIRELY with wood for 18 years.

Several years ago, my electric co-op began offering ETS (electric thermal storage) heating units, both single room and whole house, along with TOU (time of use) electric rates, where if you could 'tailor' your usage to the lower rate hours, you could save a LOT on electricity, yet still afford to heat/cool with it.

Steffes(they are based in ND, I think) is the Mfg. of the unit; when they began offering one that would work w/ radiant heat(hot water baseboard is a 'form' of that, in effect), I got a 'whole house' unit.

Mark is correct; it is slow to heat up, so best left at a reasonable thermostat setting. My house has three heating zones; only the one where I spend most of my time is kept a bit higher, night and day...winter TOU rates are highest in the early AM and throughout the evening, so I DON'T turn the thermostat down much overnight, then can get through the early AM. If it is REALLY cold in the evening, I will still build a fire, let it 'die out' in the night, so the ETS will still run before I get up.(The ETS units are set NOT to actually HEAT during the higher rate hours; they contain ceramic 'bricks' which store heat generated during low rate hours, then 'release' it by circulating the water through the hot bricks, basically...supposed to be enough for about 16 hours of heating!

It is a comfy heat, but as stated, it will NOT 'bring up the temp' quickly....

(Of course, if the new Prez has his way,MANY of us are going to be paying a lot more for electricity....read up on it)

Margo