Tag : heatwave

Toasty Toes Floor Warming

Toasty toes: Radiant Floor Heating Warms Tiles from Below

Northern Virginia Daily
by Sally Voth, Daily Staff Writer
28 September, 2007

There’s nothing like a hot bubble bath on a frigid winter’s night. And, nothing snaps you back to reality faster than stepping out of the tub and onto a cold tile floor.  These days, fewer people are experiencing the discomfort of cold feet. That’s thanks to floors being warmed with radiant heat.

A room at the Old Waterstreet Inn, at 217 W. Boscawen St. in Winchester, with heated tile floors in the bathroom, is especially popular in winter, innkeeper Jeannie Faith said.

“They love it,” she said. “It’s very nice when you step in in the morning or the evening, and it’s warm under your feet. It’s very efficient. It actually helps with the heating bills to have it. We’re actually considering building a house in the next five years, and we will definitely put the radiant heat in when we build.  “It gives a whole coziness to the room that you don’t have otherwise.”  Faith and her Norwegian husband have a cabin in Norway with radiant heat in the bathroom and kitchen.

“In Norway, they would never put a tile floor down without radiant heat,” she said.
WarmQuest, based in Salt Lake City, sells two types of radiant heating systems, Tuff Cable and ZMesh, said Ryan Bench, the company’s Web master.  ZMesh is a 12-inch-wide bronze screen heating element that is no thicker than screen-door material, he said. It can go underneath carpet, hardwood floors and tile.  The Tuff Cable is for tile and cemented floor coverings and causes a little floor buildup, Bench said.   According to heatizon.com, Tuff Cable uses a 10-gauge coated copper cable. Heatizon manufactures Tuff Cable and ZMesh.

With the ZMesh there’s virtually no buildup, he said, and it’s nailed or stapled in place, so long as there’s no conductive material where the nailing or stapling would go.  “[Radiant heat] heats up the floor, and then it starts heating up the objects that are on the floor,” Bench said. “So, it’s not heating up the air. It’s heating up the objects instead. Also, objects radiate out the heat. 

“All the power that goes in, goes back to the transformer and makes it pretty much a loop.”
Both of WarmQuests’ systems are low-voltage, he said.  “It has a step-down transformer with a control box that converts high-voltage to low-voltage,” Bench said. 

About 12 to 15 volts are put out per square foot.  Putting in radiant heat is popular in remodeling jobs, Bench said. The company also uses it for de-icing and snow melting in roofs and driveways. The Tuff Cable goes in driveways and ZMesh under asphalt roof shingles.

The spaces they are used for vary. “We have systems for small bathrooms 110 square feet and less,” Bench said. “We also have systems for as big as you want to go. Some people put it in their entire house for their primary heat source. Some people supplement their heat source with it. A lot of it’s new construction as well. It’s starting to get really popular.“It’s economical to run, depending on what your kilowatt hour rate is. [It] usually cuts down on utilities, especially if it’s supplementing the heat source.”The larger the area of the house being heated with radiant heat, the cheaper the square-foot price, he said. For instance, a 110 square-foot bathroom might cost $10 to $12 per square-foot, compared to $8 per square-foot for larger areas.A different style of radiant floor heat, hydronic radiant heat, is used by Whittington Construction Co. in Front Royal. Water is used either from the home’s hot water heater or a separate boiler system, Steve Whittington said. It runs through tubing in the flooring.

He said this system has been installed in two or three of the custom homes the company has built.  “It’s just coming to this area,” Whittington said. “It’s been slow-moving up here because the cost is quite a bit more. It’s the initial installation cost.”

He said the system was installed throughout an entire house that had concrete floors, while another house just had it on the first floor, in the great room, kitchen and bathrooms.

“The one that I’m working on now is going to be in the bathroom, kitchen and eating area,” Whittington said. This latest home has piping that’s already integrated into the subfloor when the panels are bought. It is known as warmboard, Whittington said. There are several benefits to radiant floor heat, he said. “When you get up in the morning, if you have hardwood floors, or if they’re [a] non-carpet surface, these are really more comfortable, and really, it’s more even heat,” Whittington said. “Radiant heat heats up the whole mass, and it radiates from that point to heat the entire mass up. With forced-air heating, you have hot spots and cold spots.”

R Contact Sally Voth at svoth@nvdaily.com

WHY ETL & CSA? UL vs. ETL

OSHA the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the US government’s enforcement arm for safety and health issues has been tasked with overseeing professional independent testing laboratories. The best known of all independent testing laboratories is Underwriters Laboratories, UL.

UL was established by insurance underwriters to find ways to reduce unsafe hazards in the marketplace, thereby reducing dramatic insurance claims. Since its inception, UL has, been involved with writing standards of safety acceptability in the United States. They have been one of the premier developers of safety standards but they have not been the only group to write standards. Groups like NEMA, IEEE, and ANSI have also contributed to the development of standards. Similarly UL is not the only independent testing laboratory.

OSHA has become the certification agency for independent testing laboratories in the United States. A group of engineers who decide to do testing as a business must qualify through OSHA to function as an independent test facility. Further-more, they must show competence in specific areas, fire testing, for instance. Once they have demonstrated competence in the area of fire testing and have shown that they possess the facilities and equipment to do fire testing, OSHA will certify them as a Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL) to do fire testing. Factory Mutual, FM, is one such NRTL for fire testing, Southwest Laboratories is another.

Many independent testing laboratories have NRTL status. Most are relatively specialized and limited in their scope. The three major testing laboratories that operate in the United
states that have a wide scope of testing qualification are, UL, CSA, and ETL. They are certified by OSHA as NRTLs.

NRTL status tells all customers that the services performed by these companies, to list or to label products, is reliable and legally binding throughout the United States. ETL, originally known as Edison Testing Laboratories, is an old, respected, nationwide testing group with credibility equal to UL or CSA. Therefore an ETL listing label is legally binding nationwide and should instill equal consumer confidence in the manufacturer that they have cared enough to submit their products to the rigorous safety compliance process and achieved the right to apply a Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory label that certifies compliance assurance.

Benefits of Radiant Heating

The Benefits of Radiant Heating:

How Do They Compare With Other Heating Applications

Some of the benefits of radiant heat:

Comfort: Let your bare feet soak up the warmth of soothing heat without the dust and noise associated with other heating sources. Enjoy evenly distributed heat throughout your home kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and basement.

Custom Designed: Whether for supplemental floor warming, or total space heating, every system is custom designed to fit all rooms independent of their shape or size. These systems will heat under any surface including marble, slate, carpet, hardwood and tile. The compact Control Box will hang on the wall of your garage or in a utility room. No heating vents or ducts will be seen, and no furnace or boiler is required.

Perfect for Remodeling and Additions: The simplicity of the low voltage heating element makes this system incredibly easy to install in your remodeling or room addition application. No floor buildup is necessary and no additional construction costs are incurred. The unique heating element can also be installed in between floor joists to heat an existing floor or room.

Safe: So safe, in fact that nails, water, and even touching the heating element during operation will have no harmful effect! You will have peace of mind while loved ones play as the systems are tested to UL standards and run on worry-free, low-voltage energy (8 to 32 V.).

Reliable: The solid-state heating systems are virtually maintenance free and the heating element is backed with a 25 year industry-leading warranty. With no moving parts and advanced self-diagnosing technology, there is no need for yearly maintenance or service checks.
Efficient: Radiant heat is the most efficient form of heat available. Significantly less operating time is required to maintain the desired warmth compared to furnaces and other radiant heat systems, keeping operational costs to a minimal. Low-voltage radiant heating systems run 98% to 100 % efficiency at any elevation as they evenly heat every area of the room.

Convenient: Our accurate thermostats allow you to easily adjust the floor or air temperature of your space heating or floor warming system. You also have the option of programming the exact time of day you want your system to operate. Simply relax, enjoy the comfort, and know that your system will work for decades to come.

So lets compare to other heating applications. Radiant Heat versus other applications:

Radiant Heat vs. Hydronics at a Glance

Both electric and hydronic radiant heat systems have certain advantages for specific applications. The following highlights the advantages low voltage radiant heat systems have:

A Boiler Room is required to run a hydronic radiant heat system. A 17″x12″x7″ Control Unit is required to run low voltage radiant heat system.

Gypsum or concrete slab is required for installing a hydronic system. It is estimated that it costs approx. $4.00 or more per square foot to install a hydronic in-floor heating system than it does to install a in-floor heating system.

The ZMesh heating element is installed directly under the floor surface without any floor buildup. The 12″ wide ZMesh is rolled out over the area to be heated then nailed and/or stapled to the wood subfloor.
Electric radiant heat warms your floors evenly because it uses 100% of the system’s energy. A hydronic system, however, heats the floor less the further away the hot water gets from the boiler (see illustration below). Hydronic systems use only 65-85% of the system’s energy. At higher elevations, electric radiant heat still is 100% efficient, where as hydronic systems are even less effective than at sea level.

Radiant Heat vs. Forced Air at a Glance

A room with floor Radiant In-Floor space heat will have a very uniform temperature from the ceiling to the floor. Heating a basement floor is the ideal application for our radiant heat systems. If you’ve lived in a house with forced air, you can crank the heat up, but the basement floor is still chilled. Installing a floor warming system will add comfort and warmth to your lifestyle.

A room heated with a forced air furnace will have cold floors and the warmest air at the ceiling. Although the air may be heated, the floors will be chilled and uncomfortable, especially for children playing on the floor.

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