Heating and cooling your residence
Radiant heating
Hydronic heating applications, which uses steam or hot water to heat a building, became widespread in the 1940′s with the development of hot water radiators, while hydronic cooling technology, using cold water to cool a building, has only recently become popular. Unlike conventional heating systems, radiant heat warms up the contents of a room directly instead of merely warming the air around those objects. The application of radiant cooling is more involved than radiant heating, and requires cooler surfaces to absorb the heat produced by a heated body. Through a network of pipes installed in the floor, wall, or ceiling, both hydronic radiant cooling and heating systems pump water to heat or cool those surfaces, and then the objects or people in the room. The fact that heat will always rise tells us why hydronic radiant heating systems are more efficient when installed in the floor, and conversely, radiant cooling systems operate better when installed in the ceiling to take in the rising heat. Hydronic radiant cooling systems call for more elaborate installation because you need to deal with ventilation issues, handle humidity, and let fresh air into the room. Traditional heating and cooling systems, which force cold or hot air into the room through ducts, are not as energy efficient as radiant systems, which will warm or cool you directly. As a home do-it-yourself project the installation of radiant heating or cooling systems are probably too difficult to accomplish, so you would be wise to contact a professional for the job.
Electric radiant flooring
Probably the most energy efficient heating system is electric radiant floor heater made up of a series of slender cables laid down below the floors. Radiant heat involves heating objects in the room rather than heating the air around them, and heated flooring provides an even distribution of energy in a room even if the air temperature is lower. You might see a reduction in heating costs by more than 30% due to the steady room temperature and greater retention of heat. You won’t have any upkeep problems with this system since there are no valves, filters or ducts to clean out or replace. Traditional systems using forced air bring pollens and dust in from the outside, and with floor vents a lot of dust gets blown around. There are no noisy fans or rattling pipes with this system, and in time you may forget its there, until you walk around in your bare feet, that is. Because radiant heat can change the amount of moisture in flooring you should stay away from hardwood floors and choose ceramics, porcelain, or stone instead.
Radiant floor heating system
Environmentally sound, easy on the budget, and safer for families and pets, radiant heating systems should be seriously considered by all homeowners. The idea behind radiant heating systems is to initially heat the walls, ceilings and floors of the home which in turn heat the items nearby, and eventually radiates out to heat the air. Conventional forced-air heating systems function in a different manner by blowing hot air into an area, but this heats the air up by the ceiling far more than the air just above the floor. The two most common types of radiant heating are electrical systems which use a series of cables, and water or oil based systems in which the hot liquid is pumped through a series of pipes. Usually called hydronic heating systems, hot liquid radiant systems are built using a network of tubes spread out over cement floor slabs, or can be sandwiched between sheets of plywood. Another method, hot air radiant systems, was widely used initially by the Romans, and is obsolete because as a medium air simply cannot contain large amounts of heat.
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