I am sure many have wondered whether or not radiant floor heating is something a homeowner can install themselves. The answer is a qualified yes. If you have no real background in home improvement projects and/or plumbing and electrical, I would not reccommend this project for you. But if you have at least limited skills in this area, I would strongly suggest you look into this as a possibility.

First, this isn't typically the kind of project you would install in a completed house unless you have mostly accessible floor crawlspace or are also in the middle of a serious renovation and/or remodel. But with new housing costs getting higher and higher all the time, buying an old house to fix up, add on to, and rennovate is becoming an increasingly popular and cost-effective option. And if you are going to be tearing apart large sections of an older home and the heating system needs upgrading, this is the ideal time to look into a radiant floor heating system.

The advantage to radiant heat are both much higher comfort, and much higher efficiency. It is a very good alternative especially for those who suffer from allergies or asthma, you don't have all that dust and particulate matter blowing around your house the way a typical forced-air system can.

My wife was skeptical when I suggested we look into this system, she didn't see how a bunch of plastic tubes under the floor with hot water running through them could possibly work well but in the years since we have had this system running, neither of us would want to go back and would definitely want this type of heating system in any future home we live in.  The main thing is that you just don't notice it.  It is just warm and comfortable all the time and is virtually silent.

One of the few companies that sell packaged systems of this nature to homeowners is called Radiantec. And to be clear, I have no professional affiliation with this company other than being a satisfied customer several years ago, and a happy homeowner now.

Though this may look a little scary to the uninitiated, the basic concepts of the system are quite simple. Heat the water, pump it through some tubes under your floor, that's pretty much it. The programmable thermostat ( a must for this system, more on that later) then just turns the pumps on and off for the different heating "zones" you design into your system. That's another lovely advantage to this system, only heating the rooms you want to heat when you want to heat them. The water heater on the right probably looks similar to the one you already have but it is generally much higher capacity (heats water very quickly) and is also likely much more miserly with the gas. This Polaris heater, that you can get as part of the packaged system, custom designed by Radiantec for FREE for your project, boasts a 96% efficiency rating. One of the beauties of the Open Direct System option is that this heater will also heat your normal domestic hot water too so you don't need a furnace and a water heater, this one does both! But the Open Direct System is sometimes not allowed in certain areas, so check with you local building department first. If this system is not allowed, there are two other alternative systems available, just check with the Radiantec people.

This was to me, the toughest part of the job, running the tubing up and down (and either across underneath or through) the floor joists. I just bought a cheap little electric staple gun to tack the tubes up into the subfloor using these pre-fabricated aluminum fins, also supplied as part of your packaged system. The tubing is very tough, which is good, but as a result, not the most flexible. So if you are working in a tight crawl space, this can be tricky with possibly hundreds of feet of this stuff to weave through the floor joists. They do have couples to piece ends together, but it is best to keep these to a minimum.

The tubes can also be run inside a new concrete slab floor (usually the most efficient), and can also be run on top of the subfloor and covered with 1-1/2 to 2" of lightweight concrete, but your floor system must be designed to deal with the extra weight. For this reason, this is mostly only an option in new construction. The added floor height can also be a realy problem in existing house situations.

Once the tubes are in place and pressure tested, a special reflective foil and insulation are placed under the tubing to help direct the heat up through the floor.

As mentioned above, one of the key components to this system is the programmable thermostat. These are very common nowadays and available at most hardware stores. One of the few drawbacks to the radiant floor system is that if you start with a cold house, it does take a while longer before it will heat up. But these nifty devices can be easily programmed to get the heat going in plenty of time before you get up in the morning, and to turn it off when you usually go to bed. In fact, new houses and heating systems in California are now required to have these. Trust me, they are great.

A significant feature of the Open Direct System is that you will be plumbing your entire home hot water system so that any time you turn on hot water anywhere in the house, the new water that feeds the hot water heater is drawn first through all of the tubing in the floors. This causes the water entering the water heater to be pre-warmed, thus making the hot water heater not have to work so hard. But I know what your are thinking- Isn't that drawing heat out of the rooms then? The answer is yes, but that the amount is negligible compared to the efficiency of the pre-warming done by the large array of tubes. This also ensures that water in the tubes does not stagnate and is constantly being refreshed.

But since the heating system is interconnected with the rest of your hot water usage, it is critical (and required by code) that the entire system be of "potable" quality. This means stainless steel pumps, potable quality tubing and fittings, and also the tank of the Polaris water heater is stainless. This allows it to have a significantly longer lifespan (which is warrantied) than your typical hot water heater.

 So, if you are building a new house, have a lot of accessible floor crawlspace in an existing house, or are doing a major renovation of an existing house, this may be a system to look into.  The people at Radiantec were wonderful to work with and I would highly recommend seeking them out for the purchase of this kind of system.