Hydronic Heating With Concrete
As radiant floor heating was initially unveiled into brand new homes, back in the 1950’s, it relied on making use of a relatively small water boiler in the house, and a system of copper pipes that were laid into a slab of concrete, that made the floors of the house. Unfortunately, the copper pipes failed to have a lengthy life span, and when they deteriorated, split or broke, it was a complicated and time consuming process to repair them.
Today, science has refined this hydronic radiant floor heating into one of the most efficient and comfortable heating solutions in the market. Today plastic tubing is used instead of copper, for its stability and heat transfer in concrete. Then each room is divided into a section, and each zone can be individually connected and managed by a single boiler, which again are much more efficient and less noisy than their fifties equivalents.
The grounds that radiant heat concrete floor is so efficient is because of the thermal mass of concrete. The thermal mass of a particular object is its capacity to retain heat, and its capacity to store that heat during various air temperatures around it. With concrete, it is slowly heated from the water inside it, but once warm, it radiates its heat over a large surface area, and even when the hot water supply has been turned off, the concrete slab retains its heat for many hours, continuously warming the air in the room, even though the supply has been turned off, and you are not adding to heating bills. This has evident advantages over forced air devices, that to keep a room at a consistent temperature involves the continuous use of the fans and airflow.
Many people often consider electric radiant heating as a practical alternative to this method, because 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 as a result require more constant heating, and consequently larger heating bills. Another alternative to changing your entire floor is to have hot water flowing through the joists of your home, but this approach relies on heating the air beneath the floor, which is not as beneficial as heating concrete, and does not retain its heat once the power is off.
So there are a number of options and variables to take into account, but if you have the option, using concrete floor radiant heating is the most cost effective and efficient heating solution currently on the market.
