Anyone have radiant heat under tile floors in their home?

The only one I knew of was a contractor that put it in his garage. He said if he was going to work on his equipment he was going to be warm. He also fell asleep under the equipment at times.

@Adirondackwannabe I never thought of it in a garage! Was it imbedded in the cement? It was worth asking this question just for that idea.

He laid it under the concrete flooring. It was warm to the touch. I could have slept on it. I wish we had it when I was growing up.

I knew people who had it in their huge home (7500 square feet). It was under the tile on the main floor. You could walk barefoot inside with toasty toes while a blizzard was howling outside.

My brother has that in his bathrooms. When I visit in the winter I notice that the floors are “room temperature”, not cold (and not hot).

My Dad installed it in his house,it is very nice, and in the summer can run cold water through the floor to keep it cool as well.

I had the electric ones in my last house and hydronic ones in this house. I think the electric ones were called Nuheat and the hydronic is called Warmboard. I love them both!

My neighbor has it and her floors feel nice and toasty when I walk there with just socks on. Gives a really nice homey touch to the house and the whole environment inside the house (along with her casual, folksy decor).

I forgot about the water one. I didn’t realize that can cool the floor too. Although, I live in FL and even here the floor is always cool without any special system installed. If something goes wrong with the water system I assume the water is more difficult to fix than the electric. Is that the case?

I thought about it when building a previous house. Never did though.

It always worried me that if something broke (on the ones that use water) they would have to tear up the entire floor to fix it. Seemed like a bad risk.

I also wondered how much it cost in energy.

Can the water one be heated with solar?

You don’t want to consider radiant heat if you’re going to install good quality carpet.

I had no idea there were so many options and things to consider..

They are nice. They create a different rhythm in a house, because (assuming all systems are similar) you fire them up for the winter and leave them at a constant temperature. So you’re not adjusting the thermostat for when you leave the house (unless maybe you’re traveling). You also don’t have air blowing around like you normally would, so if you need to circulate air, your mechanism for that will be different. If your area is particularly cold or if you want a particularly warm room, you can also double up on the hosing in an area. Oh, and your thermostats will control zones, so you can set some zones higher or lower than others.

This probably doesn’t apply, but when my gf purchased her house, the inspector did not catch the problems with our radiant heat, which was uneven. When we finally had it looked at, it turned out the valves that control flow to various zones were broken. What I think happened is the fuck-up who installed the valves broke them when he installed them and then just tucked the problem into the wall. So we got the upstairs fixed at considerable cost and that triggered a problem where the downstairs valves would not shut off and made the downstairs unbearably hot. Once we got both fixed, things were fine.

Others may chime in to the contrary, but there can be a trade off in climates where you might have warm days in winter, because the system doesn’t respond as quickly to thermostat changes. It’s like a 24h thing to get to the desired temperature instead of more immediate.

I lived in a Victorian home that had hot water heat and the comfort level can’t be compared to forced hot air. Everything in the house was the same temperature, compared to now I have hard butter on the counter in winter and near liquid in summer.
That said, as @kevbo points out, the system is slower to respond to thermostat changes, if you’re in that habit.

I’m a little confused. Won’t I be able to turn it off at night and in the summer?

When it warms up in the spring or summer, you’ll shut it down. (So again, if you get cold days late in the season, you may suffer a little if you shut it off early.) You can move the thermostats, but the ambient temp won’t shift immediately. It’s radiant heat, so imagine what the cooling and warming timelines would be for an object that is set up to radiate heat.

I think I still don’t really get it. I just want it mostly for my feet to be warm. The side benefit that it warms the room is am added bonus. If I turn it on, how long does it take for the tile to warm up?

There is a couple in Saratoga Springs , NY, who noticed an historical home in the adjacent lot. They knocked down the house after purchase of course, then heated the entire lot which was grass. They have a doggie door leading from their home’s doggie room to the lot which is entirely heated all winter so the dogs’ feet don’t freeze. They have at least forty dogs now. In other words, the lot is now a doggie bathroom. It’s all fenced in.

The water one CAN be heated with a solar thermal
System but I would suggest a gas back up.
I think the water (actually it’s glycol) system would be easier to work on. Very doubtful it would leak unless you ran a nail through it and all the components are outside. If the electric one shorts out you could be up a creek.

I had it in my dorm room when I went to school in England and it was lovely. I would consider it if Iwere building a home but don’t think I would retrofit a home with it.

It seems to me like it would be overkill if you lived in Florida.

Not for FL. My husband is interviewing with a company in OH right now. I don’t want to jinx anything by thinking ahead, he is in the middle of the process, but we looked at some real estate listings a few days and I started thinking about house related stuff.