Friday, March 5, 2010

Floor Radiant Heat For Saving Energy For Concrete Floors

Floor radiant heat is one of the best heating technologies ever invented. With floor heating, walking inside your home in winter feels like walking on a sandy beach that's been soaking up the rays of the sun all day with the warmth that is emanating from the floor.
With this technology, there is a transfer or heat from a warm surface giving up its heat to a cooler surface. This technology is simply heat radiating upward from the floor providing you with optimum comfort.
This is best for concrete flooring as concrete is an ideal carrier of radiant heat due to inherent thermal mass of the concrete. The warm water that circulates through the tubing turns your floor into an efficient and inconspicuous radiator. Floor radiant heat warms your floor to temperatures of 75 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. This warmth slowly radiates upward into your living space unlike traditional heating system, which blows heated air into your home.
Other than the warm comfort that this technology can bring, this heating system can also lower your energy cost. Though installation can be expensive but this also runs more economically and can retain heat better unlike forced air systems. Though energy cost will also depend on the region where you live, severity of winter, fuel source, layout system and most importantly the insulation of your home. But with this technology, homeowners can save approximately 10 to 30% for commercial installation.
A floor radiant heat system can save you energy because it uses lower temperatures of around 6 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit, which is lower than the convective system like forced air and baseboard heat. This also uses a lower thermostat setting as compared to forced air system thereby lowering your energy bills.
This heating system also allows you to heat your home in zones. You can heat different areas of your house at different temperatures, giving you freedom to direct heat to chilly room or high use areas like bathrooms, bedrooms, basements and entryways. And you can lower the thermostat in rooms that are less used like your formal dining room.
Another way that you can lower your energy cost with floor radiant heat system is that you can actually turn off the heat during the day. This is because when concrete floor warms up, it can actually retain the heat and release this gradually thus maintaining the warmth comfort of your home for hours.
But, heating up a concrete floor depends on the thickness of the concrete. Thick concrete slabs, for example, can have high heat storage capacity but, they also have slow thermal response time.
Thus the thicker the concrete the slower it takes to heat up if the floor is allowed to cool down. This can limit the number of hours you can have to turn off the system to save operating costs. It is true that you can save energy cost by lowering your floor radiant heat system but take into consideration the characteristic of the concrete that your home has.
We provide information on under floor heat and other radiant heating systems. It's time to start lowering your heating bills. Visit our site for more information on this heating alternative!
By M. Applebaum

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