Under Floor Heating – The warmth and benefits have been used for over a thousand years. The wealthy citizens in ancient Rome used warm air circulated under their floors, to create a warm comfortable living space in their villas and their bathhouses. Under-floor heating dates even farther back to the Neolithic period when people in Asia and Alaska used warm smoke flowing through trenches under their floors to heat their dwellings. Heating the air at floor level or in this case just below the floor, causes the warm air to rise heating the space above. Today people are rediscovering this basic principle and using it to heat modern homes efficiently. For quite some time, it was the norm to see heating vents near the ceilings in homes. The problem is of course that hot air rises so the heat stayed near the ceiling, meaning the thermostat had to be continually turned up to try and heat the rest of the room.
With underfloor heating just one of the benefits is no need to be continually be turning up the house heater. It is a very even method of heating that provides consistent economical heat. The Romans and early inhabitants of Alaska had at least one thing in commons. The Romans used under-floor heating in their villas and in buildings meant to house their legions as their empire spread into the colder regions of Europe. The Alaskans were faced, as you can imagine, with the problem of finding a way to fight the cold. Both chose under-floor heating. Today we have the same reasons to make the same choice. Picture a mountain ski lodge or resort in a beautiful, cold, crisp setting, somewhere like the sierras in California; Mammoth Lake for example. This is a beautiful area for a home, but in the winter Mammoth Lakes is a cold place to be. The snow there makes for great skiing and the scenery is incredible, but when you come back indoors, you want and need to feel the warmth of a cozy room. In a setting like Mammoth Lakes, or any area where you will have cold weather, it would be reasonable to expect the floors to be cold and the rooms to be drafty. However, with under-floor heat any area, including areas with cold winter climates like Mammoth Lakes in the sierras, can be toasty warm.
When looking into the benefits of under – floor heating; there are two types to consider, water and electric. Water is the one you see most often. The pipes are placed underneath the floor going back and forth in a pattern that tends to look “U” shaped. These pipes are connected to a manifold and a boiler. Warm water continuously flows under the floor; heating the tile flooring and causing the air at floor level to heat and rise, thereby warming the entire room. When choosing electric, instead of pipes there are heating cables run underneath the floor. Under-floor heating is more expensive than conventional heating to install but it pays for itself in lower daily heating costs, making it much less expensive in the long run. For child safety under-floor heating is a good option as there’s less of a chance of them getting burned. It allows you to have more, free floor space than using a heater and it general runs much quieter than other types of heating.
