Solar Radiant Floor Heating
Unsurpassed in Comfort and Reliability
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The Radiant Floor Heating Renaissance We have come to expect that heating a home means putting up with high electricity bills, with the noise of a fan or creaking baseboard heaters, the recirculation of dust and pollen, fluctuations in temperature between on and off settings and the need to rearrange furniture around baseboard heaters, register and radiators. We simply accept that temperatures will differ considerably from room to room, that our heating bill may rival the size of our mortgage payment, that our sinuses and skin will starve for moisture every winter and that our feet will be perpetually cold. We simply have learned to live with these discomforts - until now - Radiant Floor Heating!!
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What is Radiant Floor Heating Radiant floor heating is an ancient but elegant concept. Years ago the Greeks and Romans realized that heat rises and put the theory to work for them. They heated the floors of their baths with wood fires. Now, 2000 years later, the principle still applies: the best way of warming a room is to heat the floor rather than to try to make heat travel sideways from a fireplace, radiator, baseboard heater or air register. Radiant floor heating is simple. It works by using the floor as a giant radiator. Plastic tubes are laid out on the wood sub- floor and then embedded in a light weight concrete, or in the case of concrete slab-on-grade construction, the tubes are embedded in the concrete. Warm water supplied from a boiler circulates through the network of tubes gently warming the floor. The warm floor then radiates to all objects in the room.
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Unsurpassed in Comfort
Comfort is the aspect that homeowners with radiant floor heating systems continue to remark on. Most heating systems only raise the temperature of the air (convective temperature) near the radiator and rely on air circulation to heat the room and the objects in it. Radiant floor heating deals with the temperature of objects in a room (mean radiant temperature) and radiates heat directly to them.
These two kinds of temperature have a surprising relationship: For every degree you raise the mean radiant temperature , air temperature can be lowered two or three degrees and the room will remain just as comfortable.
To appreciate how effective radiant floor heating is, think of the way the sun warms you on a cool, windless day. Conventional heating systems depend on circulating warm air, radiant floor heating (like the sun) radiates heat directly. Radiant floors emit much more heat by radiation than by convection. The result is even heat with little or no temperature difference between the floor and ceiling. There are no drafts that tend to cool rooms and aggravate allergies... just a pleasantly warm floor silently radiating heat.
Because radiant floors heat homes from below, the air temperature is always highest at the floor level and decreases steadily towards the ceiling. And as everyone knows, we all feel more comfortable and alert with cooled heads and warm feet, than with hot heads and cool feet. Yet the floor also radiates heat all over so there are no hot and cold areas, just a consistently comfortable indoor climate all over the room and all over the house.
A system that doesn’t limit interior designs.
With radiant floor heating, the thermostat is the only visible sign of your heating system. The distribution piping is hidden away below the floor while your house is being built. There are no baseboard units along the wall, no warm-air registers and no cold-air returns. There’s nothing in the system that interferes with the placement of furnishings.
RADIANT FLOOR HEATING
Keep a cool head - Warm your feet
New reliability.
The advent of high-efficiency heating equipment, well insulated homes and electronic controls has made radiant floor heating a viable alternative to other hydronic and forced-air systems. Europeans have already made this discovery - nearly a third of their new homes are radiant heated.
Savings!!
Radiant floor heating is also less costly to operate because it creates a comfortable environment with less heating. Radiant floor heating saves on heating costs in two ways:
- Conventional systems allow heat to collect where it’s most likely to escape at the ceiling and along outside walls. With radiant floors, the temperature throughout the room remains nearly constant.This factor alone reduces heat loss by up to 25% when compared to similar homes using conventional heating methods.
- Radiant floor heating systems warm people not just air, so occupants are comfortable at lower thermostat settings.
Heat source
One of the great virtues of radiant floor heating is its independence from its energy source. Any source will do: boilers fired by fuel oil, propane, electricity or gas and/or solar. Should energy economics change in the future, the source of hot water can also easily be changed.
Use free solar energy!
Because radiant floor heating operates at such low water temperatures, it works especially well with active solar collectors. Typically the solar collectors can provide up to 50-60% of the energy required to heat the home.
Finish flooring
Because radiant floor
heating operates at such low temperatures, you can use almost any floor
covering: wood, carpet, tile, marble, granite or vinyl. With carpet, the
response time and efficiency of the floor will be slightly reduced, but the
radiant floor will deliver the heat required to maintain a high degree of
comfort.
Solar Radiant Floor Heating - For estimate contact us at info@islandearthsolar.com
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