Floor heat / water heat / whatever you call it ... why did it go away??

[bassman]

years ago most all if not every big building used to have a boiler .
Now we don't see all that many boilers and more if not all new buildings have a gas forced air unit burning up big dollar gas.
I see a drawback when it comes to control and ac in the summer but the core heating months can be warmer and cheaper with water heat .
what do I know....

shayne

 

[mga]

a simple forced air unit was much cheaper to maintain and operate than steam boilers and gas wasn't as expensive as it is now. hence, the change over.

no matter what the source is, until there is some big technological break-thru with an energy source, heating and cooling are both going to be expensive.

and, on that subject, i'm going to predict that heating with firewood is also going to become just as expensive. i'll predict we'll see more legislations on cutting and selling and burning of wood due to enviromental reasons. nothing escapes the government. as firewood becomes used as a heat source by more and more, insurance companies will lobby for tighter controls, we're already witnessing the controversy over OWB's in many areas, some even banning them. enviromentalists will complain about too many trees being removed and the polutions from burning wood. the cost of gasoline will also add to the price of wood.

(the latter just my opinion)

 

[spencerhenry]

i dont think gas has much to do with it, boilers and forced air units are run by the same fuel, natural gas. in the town i grew up in, the high school was heated by steam. it was piped from the paper mill. i would imagine that alot of old buildings were heated by steam because that is what industry used for alot of things back then. where i live in colorado now, i would guess that most homes are heated by radiant slab, or by hot water baseboard. but anytime a customer wants to have A/C, they have to run duct work anyway, so why install 2 systems.

 

[mga]

i dont think gas has much to do with it, boilers and forced air units are run by the same fuel, natural gas. in the town i grew up in, the high school was heated by steam. it was piped from the paper mill. i would imagine that alot of old buildings were heated by steam because that is what industry used for alot of things back then. where i live in colorado now, i would guess that most homes are heated by radiant slab, or by hot water baseboard. but anytime a customer wants to have A/C, they have to run duct work anyway, so why install 2 systems.

keep in mind that steam heat and hot water are two types of heat.

steam heat requires high pressures and much more sophisticated equipment, therefore making it more expensive to maintain.

hot water baseboard heat is just heating the water as you would do with a simple hot water tank. it requires very little maintenance as compared to a boiler unit.

i have hot water baseboard heat. and, when i installed my central air unit, i installed it in the attic and ran all my duct work up there. would it have been worth it for me to rip out all the plumbing and run all new duct work and replace the furnace? i really don't know, but i wasn't about to do it. we had the a/c up and running in about 5 hours.

 

[blis]

keep in mind that steam heat and hot water are two types of heat.

steam heat requires high pressures and much more sophisticated equipment, therefore making it more expensive to maintain.

hot water baseboard heat is just heating the water as you would do with a simple hot water tank. it requires very little maintenance as compared to a boiler unit.

i have hot water baseboard heat. and, when i installed my central air unit, i installed it in the attic and ran all my duct work up there. would it have been worth it for me to rip out all the plumbing and run all new duct work and replace the furnace? i really don't know, but i wasn't about to do it. we had the a/c up and running in about 5 hours.

Over here in finland around 90% of new houses have floor heating, in most cases it is done with hot water becouse it allows us to use any means we want to heat the water, so we arent stuck to single energy source. It also is one the most efficient way of heating a house, on some occasion also electric floor heating is used but it isnt that common...

Also, in 70-80's there were some houses built with air heating but it failed totally and hasnt been available for almost 30 years by now....

 

[trimmmed]

.......... but anytime a customer wants to have A/C, they have to run duct work anyway, so why install 2 systems.

I think you are right on the money.

 

[stipton]

As an appraiser, I have seen hot water floor systems in new construction. It seems to work well but when the tubing is under 3/4" floorboard, 1/4' of floor padding and 1/2" carpet, it doesn't seem to make sense. I like the idea for the bath and kitchen, typically with vinyl, ceramic or hardwood flooring. But with w/w carpet throughout, I have heard horror stories from homeowners that use natural gas ending up with insane heating bills due to pi$$ poor installation.

 

[mga]

As an appraiser, I have seen hot water floor systems in new construction. It seems to work well but when the tubing is under 3/4" floorboard, 1/4' of floor padding and 1/2" carpet, it doesn't seem to make sense. I like the idea for the bath and kitchen, typically with vinyl, ceramic or hardwood flooring. But with w/w carpet throughout, I have heard horror stories from homeowners that use natural gas ending up with insane heating bills due to pi$$ poor installation.

often wondered about that myself. even embedded in concrete, it would seem that it would take extra energy to heat the concrete as well as the air in the room. but, i guess that's why they call it radiant heating. after the heat is turned off, theoretically, the flooring is supposed to remain warm.

i have baseboard elements and have wondered if the cost and labor/time of installing floor tubing would be worth it.

for now, i'll keep burning wood.

 

[goblin]

Right....I think the radiant hot water floor heating works best in a concrete slab where there is some thermal mass to heat up and hold/radiate the heat....much like a massive stone fireplace does. Simply stapling tubing to the underside of wood floor joists seems like an extremely inefficient way of doing it.

Designing buildings with more southern facing banks of windows combined with thermal mass in floors and walls to store the heat to utilize passive solar heating seems like one way to help heat a home.

 

[mga]

Right....I think the radiant hot water floor heating works best in a concrete slab where there is some thermal mass to heat up and hold/radiate the heat....much like a massive stone fireplace does. Simply stapling tubing to the underside of wood floor joists seems like an extremely inefficient way of doing it.
Designing buildings with more southern facing banks of windows combined with thermal mass in floors and walls to store the heat to utilize passive solar heating seems like one way to help heat a home.

true. they try to reason it by adding aluminum heat shields between the tubing and the flooring. supposedly the shields absorb and disperse the heat in a wider area. again, i question the efficiency of those.

as you stated, in a concrete floor, they seem to work best. the problem is when they get covered with padding and carpeting....like stipton stated. don't these act like an insulation barrier?

 

[stipton]

I agree. The best use of this system is in concrete. I have seen it used in large commercial buildings like a fire station and in newer carwashes, to prevent ice on the ground.

Simply stapling tubing to the underside of wood floor joists seems like an extremely inefficient way of doing it.

The exact example of the poor installation/high gas bill homes I have seen.

 

[blis]

true. they try to reason it by adding aluminum heat shields between the tubing and the flooring. supposedly the shields absorb and disperse the heat in a wider area. again, i question the efficiency of those.

as you stated, in a concrete floor, they seem to work best. the problem is when they get covered with padding and carpeting....like stipton stated. don't these act like an insulation barrier?

they work fine with wood floor too IF the floor is properly done, as in minimum of 200mm of wool insulation, on top of that crossing planks or in some cases 2x2 planks between them with 50mm extra insulation. and in that space, between final floor and insulation the piping should be installed with the aluminium heat spreaders. If done like that then it will heat really well...

No idea about how that works with carpet thou since those have never been used here becouse theyre pain in the ass to clean, dont like moisture, are ugly and generally just pain in the ass. Common floor over here would be concrete slab with 15mm laminate flooring on top of that (there's a foam "noisekiller" between them) or 22mm particle board and laminate flooring on top of that...

 

[kellog]

I lived in Germany a while and had floor heating in concrete floors with ceramic tile over them. Absolutely wonderful heat. Very consistant heat in the room and the feet are always warm.

However I would not want that heating system my current house. Germany has a very temperate climate that does not change temperatures very quickly. Here you can have 25 deg F in the morning and 70 Deg F in the afternoon. Floor heating in concrete floors will not change temperatures fast enough to keep up with temperature changes here.

Also I agree that wall to wall shag carpet may not work well with floor heating. That said, I have heard more and more people putting floor heating into their homes. I'm not sure how it is working out for them but it seems more installs are happening.

 

[spencerhenry]

i like hard floors, my lower level is slate over concrete, my baths upstairs are tile over gypcrete, wood floor in living and master bed. i like them because i cut timber literally in my back yard, the mill is 50 yds from the house, the road is dirt, i have a shop in the garage, etc...
but i have a room with carpet also, the heat works fine.
for the heating bill to be bigger than some other type of heat, the heat would have to be lost somewhere. while carpet and pad does insulate, it doesnt stop heat, or lose it. it just means that when the water gets back to the boiler, it didnt lose as much heat, so the pump runs until the water has put heat into the room, and then the boiler fires up again.
radiant heat is not instant heat, and it is probably a little slower with carpet and pad, but there should not be an efficiency issue.
my shop is 2000 sq ft downstairs, a 4" slab. i have 1500 lineal feet of 5/8 hepex in the floor. i havent got the power hooked up yet for the pumps, but when i do it will be a wood fired high efficiency boiler with gas backup. no ducts, no air blowing around, the machines come in covered in ice, melts to the floor, and runs down the drain, the remaining moisture is evaporated quickly. and oh it is so nice to be under a machine and be warm.

 

[redwing2]

You also have the option of forced hot air with a boiler. this works great for me as I have a pond in the back and I bring water in at 55deg. heat it to 140 run it through a coil in the duct and the blower put's out the heat
and it works just as good in the summer, pull in the 55 deg. water and run it through the coil (no boiler) and air cond. really efficient.

 

[Al Smith]

Tubing inbedded in concrete works very well if installed correctly.

The wood heat comes and goes with the times.The last resurgence was in the late 70's early 80's when energy prices shot up faster than inflation.Everybody and their brother that had the means became a builder of woodstoves,furnaces etc.People bought chainsaws like they were going out of style,pick-em-up trucks,wood splitters,you name it.

I sold firewood at that time and it was a nice suppliment to my income.When the ecomomy got better towards the late 80's the interest in burning wood kind of dwindled .All those woodstoves and chainsaws started showing up at garage sales.

By late 90's the old fever was back again,this time with outdoor woodburners,some using under floor hot water heat.How long this lasts this time is anybodys guess.More than likely it will run the course as did the last go around and start over once again.

I find it amusing because many of those fence rows that were cleared to get the firewood in the late 70's have grown back up and are getting cut once again for the wood .When you look at it like that,wood really is a renewable source.

 

[mga]

By late 90's the old fever was back again,this time with outdoor woodburners,some using under floor hot water heat.How long this lasts this time is anybodys guess.More than likely it will run the course as did the last go around and start over once again.

as soon as HGTV and bob villa show yet another "great new and improved" means of heating the home, usually with a higher paying sponsor.

i remember those days back in the late 70's. that's when i got interested in heating with wood and never stopped since then.

the old oil embargo days...back then the "experts" predicted we'd be completely out of oil by now.

oops.