What you need to know about underfloor heating

The recent years Underfloor heating is considered an important innovation and more and more people are installing it to their new houses. Along with a long list of benefits, this heating system permits more free house space because radiators and air condition units are not needed anymore.

What you need to know about underfloor heating

Underfloor heating operation is based on the feed of low temperature hot water in existing pipes (polyethylene, coated copper or polyethylene coated with aluminum) the floor. The hot water transfers heat to the special cement that surrounds these pipes and the floor in turn radiates this heat.

The installation cost of the system can be more expensive than others, but payback is achieved in one to two years. So we are talking about a very low operating cost, which is one of the biggest advantages of this system.

More specifically, for a specific targeted room temperature, underfloor heating water flows in pipes at 30^˚C -40^˚C, while the equivalent water temperature in typical radiators climbs at 70^˚C - 80^˚C. This difference is translated into fewer operating hours for the boiler and consequently lower fuel consumption.

Other advantages are: immediate and uniform distribution of heat in the rooms, house walls free of radiators, flexibility that permits combination with other types of heating mediums and healthier living conditions.

The latter arises from the fact that the heating system with underfloor tubing achieves perfect distribution on the human body, (hot legs, cold head). Air streams generated by the classic type of radiators are prevented, resulting not only in the absence of dust but also in the air moisture maintenance at normal levels.  

Despite the rumors that the underfloor heating disorganizes blood circulation, it must be stressed that after a proper study and application, that is vital for all underfloor heating projects, we ultimately reach the desired temperature of the floor around 26 ^οC to 28 ^οC.

People usually fear that the tiles will break or an inner tube will puncture. This happens only after building misconstructions. On top of that, there is now a special device that restores local damages, at the cost of one or two tiles.  

Finally, the underfloor heating is the most appropriate heating system, which can be combined with environmentally friendly and energy-efficient heating sources, such as geothermal, solar thermal, etc.

 Source: Messenger - Property (Interview of a member of Technotec)