How To Heat Concrete Floors

While it was done as a new house was being built in my last house i poured a concrete floor on top of a wood framed floor system and could have put radiant heat in that as well.

How to heat concrete floors. The first thing to consider when looking into different types of concrete floors is why it s so important to insulate the floor slab. With concrete floor radiant heat your home will no longer have hot or cold spots just even quite draft free heat. While hot water and air based radiant. Unlike heat from a forced air system which quickly rises to the ceiling the heat from a radiant floor is distributed evenly throughout the room and is concentrated at floor level where people are.

Due to it s density and low conductivity concrete retains heat very well. Instead of blowing hot air through a vent or pumping hot water to a baseboard radiator along the wall radiant heat warms up the entire floor. The most cost effective system for medium to larger homes is hydronic since the amount of power it would take to heat a whole home with electric would be substantial. There s two basic types of concrete floor heating hydronic and electric.

For concrete floor radiant heating systems the warm water tubing or electric heating elements can either be embedded within the slab on grade anywhere from the bottom of the slab to within 2 inches of the surface depending on the design and installation technique or fastened to the top of a concrete subfloor and then covered with an overlay. Check out this article for a list of slab edge insulation solutions and episode 125 for my interview with henry edney of maxraft. Radiant floor heating concrete slab insulation. This is about installing hydronic radiant floor heating in a slab floor system.

The heat is made possible in two ways. How to add floor heating over existing concrete. Cerazorb is a 3 16 inch 5 mm thin synthetic cork underlayment that is highly recommended when installing a floor heating system over an existing concrete slab or under tile and stone. The system works via pex pipe a small pump a water heater and a thermostat.

For example a bathroom on a slab would feature a layer of cork or synthetic cork underlayment on top of the concrete subfloor followed by the electric heating element and topped with the flooring substrate. The most common application however is an in floor heating system installed between the finished concrete slab and the flooring above. Cerazorb acts as a moisture resistant barrier that does not absorb water or swell under the effects of heat. You can step onto a warm and inviting floor even one built on a concrete slab by adding in floor heating.