Tag Archives: Radiant floor heating

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The Benefits of Radiant Heat

Radiant heat is thought by many to be a fairly new technology that is just now beginning to take hold in Northern America. While radiant heat was initially more widely used in Europe, it is rapidly being adopted by businesses and homeowners throughout the U.S. and Canada. But did you know that radiant heat technology was actually being used as early as 10,000 B.C. in China?

The ancient Chinese drafted smoke from fires through stone covered trenches in the floors of their subterranean dwellings. The hot smoke heated the floor stones, radiating warmth into their living spaces. Evidence of radiant heated floors based on this principle were found throughout China and Korea. Radiant floor heating was also utilized by the Greeks and Romans as early as 500 B.C.

Heated bathroom floor

Radiant heating systems have evolved considerably since then, and consequently are becoming more commonplace. Some of the benefits of radiant heat include:

Efficiency: Radiant heat is a remarkably efficient form of heating. Compared to furnaces and other methods of heating, radiant heat requires significantly less operating time to maintain the desired warmth, keeping your costs to a minimum. High efficiency boilers (for hydronic systems) or electric radiant floor heating systems make radiant heat one of your most efficient ways to heat your home. Coupled with a well insulated home, radiant heating systems can quickly warm your home, and each room can be operated independently, further adding to the efficiency of the system.

Luxurious Comfort: Similar to the rays of the sun, radiant heat warms objects rather than air to create a more even heat throughout your home. Starting with the floor, objects are warmed giving your home a more inviting feeling as your furniture and other fixtures lose their chill.

Custom Design: Radiant heat systems can be easily customized to suit your specific needs. From small floor heating projects to large snow melting applications, radiant heating systems can be designed to heat just about any shape, space or surface type.

Clean, Quite Operation: Radiant floor heating systems inherently offer a superior living environment compared to conventional forced air. Since there are no furnaces or blowers, the system operates silently and dust and allergens are not blown through the air, keeping your home cleaner and more peaceful. For those who are especially susceptible to allergies or respiratory ailments, radiant heat has proven to offer significant health benefits.

To learn more about the benefits of radiant heat, contact a Warmzone representative and see what options are best for you. Call 888.488.9276 today.

Submit your project information and receive a FREE radiant heat quote.

Radiant Heat – A Wise Investment

Installing a Radiant Snow Melting System

A cost-effective investment and smart way to add value to your home is by installing a heated driveway (radiant snow melting system). Once installed, an affordable radiant heated driveway provides low operation costs in the long run, helping you lower your bottom line on home expenses. A heated driveway with an area of 300 square feet operates for under 50-cents per continuous hour of operation. Snow melting generally only takes a few hours to clear your driveway when a storm hits.

Driveway heating is an investment that has demonstrated and visible results. Not only does it allow you some free time with your family – not to mention saving your back from shoveling duties – but it is a proven way to protect the life of grass and surrounding vegetation by eliminating the use of salt and harsh snow melting chemicals. It also extends the life of your driveway by defending it from chemicals and other traditional abrasive snow removal methods.

Radiant heated driveway

Radiant snow melting systems are fully automated so you can stay inside where it’s warm and enjoy your coffee or hot chocolate as you watch the snow melt as it hits your driveway. An automatic snow sensor signals the snowmelt system’s controller when precipitation is detected and temperatures are below 39° Fahrenheit. The controller then sends power to the embedded heat cable, rapidly warming the driveway and keeping it clear of snow and ice. The system shuts off automatically after the storm. Electric radiant snow melting systems have an extremely fast response time, operate silently, and are maintenance free – and there are several options to choose from when considering a radiant snow melting system. There’s really no better, or easier way to keep your driveway clear of snow and ice during the winter than with a radiant heated snow melting system.

The peace of mind that comes with making a smart purchase is invaluable right now. We are all looking for ways to ride out this recession and worrisome economic climate, but you can still enjoy some of the finer things in life, and invest wisely in products that will benefit you for years to come.

Radiant Heat News

Spring Unsprung with Radiant In-Floor Heating

The Cold is Fleeting but Your In-Floor Heating is Still Working Efficiently

The season we’ve all been waiting for is slowly starting to creep into our neighborhoods. Snow and cold temperatures are receding and spring is quickly becoming un-sprung. At last we can leave the house without seven different layers of warmth. There are still a few chilly days ahead for some climates, and the nights tend to still be nippy, so using your in-floor radiant heating system is still the best way to counter cold floors and keep your home warm. Radiant heat is an efficient way to take the edge off any frosty room or area of your home, and floor heating systems provide a luxurious warmth that spreads evenly throughout your home.

Each room – or zone – can operate independently because each zone has its own thermostat. There is really no better or more exact way to warm specific areas and rooms in your home. With radiant floor heating systems the heat initially caresses your feet before rising to warm the rest of your living area. Unlike forced air systems that require the furnace to operate at maximum level regardless of how many vents you close, radiant heat can be precisely controlled and no energy is wasted.

When spring blooms full force and the need for around the clock heating is no longer as pressing, using a lower setting on your in floor heating system will keep the chill at bay without needing to crank out large amounts of forced heated air. Radiant floor heating is a home heating system that can work for you year round and you won’t feel the sting of your energy bill working year round. The in-floor heating cables run radiant heat smartly from the floor to the ceiling so you don’t lose unwanted heat when it rises right out of sight. The heat will literally radiate all through your home and ease the stress of finding a cost-effective, energy-efficient means of heating your home. Check out the many different radiant floor heating and snow melting solutions available from Warmzone.

Radiant Heat News

Dream Big with In-Floor Radiant Heat

Don’t Limit Yourself When it Comes to Home Heating

Your mom and dad always told you to reach for the stars and to dream big. Now you are all grown up and it seems very little in life helps us actually feel like we’re achieving those big dreams. But when it comes to your home heating you can be a hero in your own right. You can dream of heating your house all the way to the sky, or at the very least from your floor to your ceiling. In-floor radiant heating can do that very thing. Radiant heat cables beneath your floor surface allow the radiant heat to permeate your home with comfortable warmth from the floor all the way to the ceiling.

Heated hardwood floor

It may not be feasible to send your heat all the way to the sky, but there’s no reason you can’t aim for at least the top of your wall paper. Home heating is simpler than ever with radiant heated floors. The heating cables coil quietly beneath the surface of your carpet and emit constant, comforting warmth throughout the room or the whole house if you are lucky enough (or smart enough) to install it in each room of your home. Each room can operate with its own floor heating thermostat, so you have precise control when it comes to efficiently heating only the rooms in your home that you choose. With forced air systems, you can close the vents the rooms where you don’t need the heat, but the furnace still operates at the same level. With radiant heated floors, you can choose exactly what rooms to heat so you don’t waste any energy. Now that’s a smart way to warm your floors and heat your home.

In addition to in-floor heating being an energy efficient method of home heating, radiant heat systems also cut down on unwanted dust and allergens as well, which are two notorious downfalls of forced air. Go big, dream big, and heat big – without the BIG utility bill. With in-floor radiant heating you’ll be achieving the best in home heating

Radiant Heat News

Change Your Mind About Radiant Heat

Nervous About Radiant Heat Being Tough to Install? Think Again.

We may not be able to change your mind about a lot of things. We probably can’t motivate you to switch your loyalty of a favorite sports team, eat sushi if seafood repels you, or read romance novels if you are a hardcore mystery reader, but we may be able to help convince you that do-it-yourself radiant heating projects are well within your grasp. Radiant floor heating is easier than ever to install by yourself or with your buddy as you cheer on that favorite sports team in the background.

Warmzone professionals design and can help you lay out the proper radiant floor heating system and make sure you purchase the proper equipment and right amount of heat cable for your space. There are easy to read installation manuals found online and instructional videos you can watch to help you change your mind about this home improvement project. If having a warm floor is always something you’ve thought sounded good, but you were always nervous to tackle the installation, there is hope for you and your cold floors yet. Having a heated floor will add value to your home and your everyday life. Contact Warmzone today and have one of the heated floor experts help change, or rather ease your mind about installing radiant heated flooring today.

Radiant Heat News

Even When the Four Winds Blow, You’ll Have Heated Floors

Colder Temperatures Outside Don’t Have to Mean Colder Floors Inside

The winds can be howling, the temperatures dipping, the ice forming, and the dogs barking and yet you can escape it all just by walking inside to find your cozy, comforting, warmth providing radiant floor heating hard at work to keep your home steadily warm. Heated floors are the newest craze sweeping new home building, but it’s not just reserved for new construction. Radiant heat can be installed beneath your existing floors. Radiant floor heating works especially well for areas of your home that always seem to be chilled; even better if those floors typically have colder surfaces, such as tile, hardwood, or linoleum.

Radiant floor heating is masterful at maintaining steady, welcome heat throughout your floors. Even on the coldest days outside, you can walk inside and immediately feel the radiant heat hard at work touching every surface it comes into contact with. Heat rises, so it only makes sense that heat cables installed in your floor would make a difference in the way your home feels each day. Installing radiant heat can be done year round and the benefits realized as soon as the cold weather returns. Radiant floor heating is a smart choice for a smaller bathroom, or kitchen, or basement bedroom and also powerful enough to heat an entire home efficiently and effectively

Radiant Heat News

Now is the Time to Reflect on what Radiant Heat can do for You

Realize the Potential of Radiant Heating Technology

We’ve all heard the term to “unleash the power” of something. Athletes use it, business men use it, lovers of power tools use it, and now you too can throw it into your everyday vernacular when it comes to unleashing the power of radiant heat. Radiant heat can do so much for you personally and yet you may not yet realize the true potential magnificence of radiant heating technology.

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For example, did you know that the principles of radiant heat may now warm your entire home for a fraction of the energy costs your regular furnace can? Radiant floor heat is sweeping the home building world and for good reason. Radiant floor heating systems provide steady and even warmth throughout a room. The heat rises, as heat is designed to naturally do and it permeates all it comes into contact with. Radiant heated floors heat the entire room from the ground all the way to the ceiling. You’ll find your furniture casting a more warming glow, your flooring oozes warmth, and your family internalizes the warming glow and smiles a whole lot more.

Radiant heat can also be applied outdoors. Why heat the outdoors you ask? Well, that is a great question and if you live where there is significant snow fall ask yourself what you would give to never shovel another back-breaking pound of snow off your driveway. Chances are you would be willing to at least query the principles of a heated driveway. You’ll probably be talked into a snow melting system in a matter of minutes. The same theory applies to your roof, where snow and ice and quickly accumulate and cause damage. Radiant roof heating cables are yet another reason radiant heat is making a mark on consumer’s pocket books. Notice I said making a mark, not breaking the bank. If you investigate radiant heating technology in any of the above mentioned forms you will be pleasantly surprised that not only are they affordable but they can enhance your quality of life

Radiant Heat News

Radiant Floor Heating – Plain, Simple and Luxurious

Floor Heating Systems are Easier than You Think

When most of us think about our home heating system, we think of a complicated maze of air ducts, furnaces and vents. The installation of a central heating system is well beyond the expertise of the average homeowner, but what about a radiant floor heating system?

Installing radiant heat for heated bathroom floor

Advances in radiant heat technology have come a long way since radiant under floor heating was first introduced, and electric floor heating systems are environmentally friendly because they run more efficiently than the average furnace and run independent of harmful fossil fuels.

On top of all that, radiant heat provides unparalleled comfort and even-heating. Forced air cannot compete with the steady and efficient warmth put forth by radiant heated floors. A common misconception about radiant heating is that it can only go beneath hard surfaces such as tile. While heated tile floors are indeed great options for radiant heat, they are not the only option available.

Heated bathroom floor

Warmzone has several electric radiant floor heating solutions for virtually any type of flooring. You can even do most of the floor heating installation yourself. If you want to start small with a bathroom, electric radiant heating systems make it easy to heat small areas. Each room has its own thermostat, so you can heat only where you want, without having to waste in other parts of your home. Because radiant floor heating is so plain and simple, the plain and simple fact is that you’ll want radiant heat for your entire home!

Radiant Heat News

Are you Ready for a Heat Wave in Winter?

Radiant Heated Floors Mean You Enjoy Heat Year Round

About this time of year, we all start getting twitchy about the cold. The charm of white snowy fields twinkling in the afternoon sun, or snowmen in our neighbor’s yards is starting to wear thin. Sunshine and sand start to seem like a valid prescription from your physician. Sigh. Most of us still have a few months more to endure winter’s icy kiss. If you are like me and crave a heat wave in the middle of winter, read on. Radiant heated floors provide steady, comforting, soothing warmth all year long. It’s true, you can have a mini-heat wave in the privacy of your own home.

Heated floors once seemed like a concept reserved for the days of flying cars and honeymoons on the moon. Thanks to many advances in radiant heat and the common and practical uses of this efficient type of heating, homes are cropping up all over the place with radiant heated floors. Smiling people are waking up everyday to their private heat wave, dressed in nothing but a robe. Socks or slippers need not apply in these homes. Bare toes and skin to floor contact are all the rage. Stepping onto a ComfortTile radiant heated floor just feels good. Having a heated floor may not sound like a substitute to a week in a tropical location, but if you are lucky enough to get somewhere the birds are chirping and the waves are lapping the beach, then coming home won’t seem so bad. After all, you have heated floors now. Can’t you just see yourself smiling about that fact?

Radiant Heat News

Integrate Radiant Heat Seamlessly Throughout Your Home

Radiant Heated Floors May be Retrofitted Beneath Existing Floors

If you feel like it’s too late to jump on the radiant heating trend wagon, have no fear, the wagon is willing to slow down or even stop to allow you to leap for joy onto its willing heated floor. So many homes are being built with radiant floor heating in mind, and there are a number of different systems and ways to install radiant floor heating in your home during construction. That’s great for those building new homes but what about the rest of us living in our existing homes? Those of us who are fully aware that we would love radiant floor heating but also aware that we don’t want to build a new home to achieve the bliss of warm tiled floors.

Radiant heated floors are still within reach. You can retrofit your existing floor with a radiant floor heating system. If you can access the floor joists from below, tile, hardwood and carpet floors can all be fitted with radiant heat. If you are feeling supremely ambitious you can consider having heated floors throughout your entire home. Radiant floor heating provides soothing and efficient heat in whatever area is has been retrofitted too. Radiant heated floors are for everybody nowadays. If you wish you could be a part of this warming trend, call a professional today and find out how to design the proper floor heating system for your home and how to make the installation as pain free as possible.

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Solar Power for Radiant Floor Heating

Go “off Grid” and Go Green: Pair Solar Power with your Radiant Underfloor Heating System

Solar power is the perfect partner for radiant heat. If your plan is to live off of the grid, Warmzone has the best hydronic underfloor heating solutions for your solar system. Our radiant floor heat is compatible with solar hot water systems. A good set of solar panels, in normal sunlight conditions, can provide adequate water temperatures required to heat your hydronic heated floors.

How it works—a solar-powered radiant heated floor relies on two sub-systems: a common solar hot-water system, and a common hydronic radiant heat system. The type of solar panels and solar water system you’ll need varies with the climate you live in. You’ll also need a backup gas system to provide enough water to the system in bad weather or during peak demand times.

Pair your “solar system” with a hydronic radiant heat system and you’ve got warm floors. Hydronic underfloor radiant heat systems rely on a PEX network of lightweight, durable plastic tubing to circulate water heated by the solar panels from a tank or reservoir, much like a hot water heater to give you warm, even heat, “right off the grid.” And this is where Warmzone comes in. Warmzone offers different solutions for a variety of radiant heat projects, including solar radiant heat systems.

Because your situation and project needs are unique to you, Warmzone does not take a one-size-fits-all approach to hydronic underfloor heat. Our goal is to find the ideal hydronic radiant heated flooring system for each and every project that satisfies our customers’ requirements, and their budgets. We can do this, in part, because of our longstanding relationships with manufacturers. So you get the benefit of a wide selection of top-quality radiant underfloor heating products to choose from, at the lowest prices available.

Warmzone offers several hydronic radiant heat system options that are perfect for your solar-powered radiant floor heating system, whether you’re building from scratch or upgrading your existing home. There’s the more traditional hydronic floor heating system, in which PEX radiant tubing is installed in a concrete mass called Gypsum Concrete or “Gypcrete.” There’s also a new alternative that makes hydronic radiant heated floor installation easier. Hydronic heating systems with aluminum panels offer a slab alternative, low mass or modular board underlayment system. Instead of embedding the PEX tubing into concrete, it is laid in the grooves of pre-cut aluminum panels.

Unlike other hydronic radiant underfloor heat providers, the support doesn’t end with your radiant heated flooring purchase. Warmzone consistently exceeds competitive design services. Our in-house team of experienced professional designers will evaluate your radiant heating needs and produce a comprehensive design of a hydronic radiant heat system that is best suited for your needs. They’re ready to partner with solar heating experts to create system for your home that not only lives up to the definition of socially responsible green living, but lives up to the promise of warmth, comfort and convenience you would expect from your solar-powered hydronic radiant heated floors.

It’s a great time to partner with Warmzone and a solar heating specialist to make your green dreams a reality. Contact Warmzone today at 888.488.9276 to find out which underfloor heat product is best for you.