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Floor heating is a luxury many think they can't afford.
Instead, they get out of bed, placing their feet onto a cold, unwelcoming floor.
Floor heating is something that adds value to a home as well as enjoyment for the residents which can be fit into your home improvement budget.
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Underfloor Heating Systems For Winter Coziness
There are several ways to go about incorporating heating floors. One way is to place electrical circuits into the floor to radiate heat. For those who use solar water heating systems, the addition of narrow water pipes into the floor is usually the best choice, but this method also works well for many who use traditional water heating methods. Air channels can be built beneath the flooring covering to circulate warm air for heating the floor but this is the least used method of floor heating.
The most common underfloor heating system or method is the water circulation technique. It's easy to control the temperature of water and, depending on the utility used to heat water, whether natural gas, oil, electricity, propane, or solar, the cost of heating the water circulated for warmth can be the most affordable of the choices. Naturally heated water using solar panels is quickly becoming the method of choice because of the rising cost of some of the other methods of heating the water used for floor warmth. This method of floor heating is also called "hydronic" and is the method used to heat millions of square feet of flooring in the United States today.
If you are building a new home, it's quite easy to have tubing placed into the concrete used beneath the floors in areas which you wish to have heated floors. However, that doesn't mean that you won't be able to add an underfloor heating system to an existing structure. Because the tubing or piping added beneath the flooring are quite small, when remodeling or changing floor coverings, the capability can be added to the sub-flooring without too much expense.
Floor heating is extremely popular for use underneath floor tiles, especially ceramic tile, because tile floors are known for being cold in winter. Hardwood floors are another popular type of floor to use under-floor heating for warmth. The welcoming feel of warm wood underneath one's feet makes the investment of installing floor heating a very smart investment.
While floor heating for winter warmth is a wonderful way to increase your enjoyment of your home and add equity to your home investment, there is another major advantage which is all too often overlooked. If you live in an environment which is hot in the long months of summer, you know too well the cost of cooling a home, especially a spacious dwelling.
If you elect water as your source of floor heating in winter, during the heat of spring, summer, and fall, the same system can be used to cool your home by circulating cool water through the under-floor circulation system. This can make a huge reduction in the cost of traditional air conditioning costs. The water circulated beneath the floor during hot weather does not have to be chilled below normal tap water temperatures in order to reduce the temperature of the rooms significantly. So give underfloor heating systems a try! You might just save a bundle of cash on energy expenses from your new floors and will probably pay for themselves in just a few short years.
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