One of the hottest concepts in home building right now is the installation of radiant heating. The theory of radiant heating is that heating the entire surface of an object in a room will radiate heat outwards throughout the room. Because heat rises, radiant heating is most often installed in the floors of rooms. However, it can be installed in or underneath any surface. Floors, ceilings and even mirrors can be sources of radiant heating.

While it is a hot trend in the early years of the 21st century to install radiant heating, the concept actually dates back thousands of years. The Chinese, Koreans and Romans were all using radiant heating long ago to heat their buildings. You can harness the power of radiant heating in your home where it makes sense. Here is a guide to radiant heating and whether it makes sense in your home.

Bathrooms

One of the areas of the home where Alair Homes London highly recommends that customers have radiant heating installed is in their bathroom floors. This is the room in your home where you are most likely to be barefoot. There is nothing worse than stepping on a cold bathroom floor when you get up in the morning. Installing radiant heating in your bathroom floor will feel like a genius move when you feel warm tile under your feet on a cold winter’s morning.

Whole House

If you are thinking about installing radiant heating throughout your entire home, you first need to consider whether it is an economical way to heat your home. If your home is not well insulated or too insulated, then you may waste money by getting radiant heating installed. If your home leaks climate-controlled air at a high rate, then your radiant heating system will never be able to efficiently heat your home.

On the other hand, if your house is highly energy-efficient and leaks out almost no climate-controlled air, then it is silly to install a radiant heating system. Because it is expensive to install radiant heating throughout an entire house, it would take a very long time for you to recoup the costs of a radiant heating system when a regular central heating system would do the same job for much less money.

In these two extremes, you will do best to just consider installing radiant heating in specific rooms of the home like your bathrooms and bedrooms. If your home is somewhere in the middle when it comes to insulation and energy efficiency, then you may find that installing a radiant heating system throughout the entire home can be cost effective.

How Much Time You Are at Home

One of the important considerations you need to make when considering radiant heating is how much time you are in your home. Radiant heating works best when it operates for long periods of time at low temperatures. It does not rapidly heat a room. Therefore, radiant heating is best installed in homes where you spend a lot of time. For example, it would be silly to install radiant heating in a vacation home where you only spend a few weeks a year.

Flooring

One final consideration you need to make is the flooring options for radiant heating installation. Radiant heating works best when it is underneath materials that radiate heat well like tile and concrete. It can work okay under laminate and wood flooring as well. However, you would never want to install radiant heating under carpeted flooring because the insulating effect of the carpet would make it ineffective.

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