Floor Heating System

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Reduce Heating Bills With Underfloor Heating
Underfloor heating is growing in popularity because it has many advantages over the traditional form of heating, such as: low installation cost and no maintenance costs. The heat is spread evenly over the whole room instead of being centered around a radiator or a fireplace, and because radiant heat is used, it reduces the airborne circulation of dust and house mites, which is ideal for asthma sufferers.

The commercial sector has increased its use of underfloor heating, and since the late 1990’s there has been a 25% yearly increase in demand for this heating system. High-profile buildings throughout the UK have had underfloor heating installed, such as: the Scottish Parliament building, Greenwich Museum, the British Museum, the Imperial Museum and Canary Wharf.

In most cases, underfloor heating can be the primary source of heating in a home that is adequately insulated. It is also advisable to add floor insulation when the underfloor heating is installed, to prevent heat loss into the sub-floor, otherwise more energy will be used to heat the room.

There are generally two different types of underfloor heating: warm water systems, or electric systems. Today’s homes mainly use the electric system, as the electric cables are located directly under the floor and heat the floor quickly, thus making them more efficient and cheaper to run than the wet system. The electric cables are usually installed onto an insulation board and covered directly with the floor covering of your choice. The temperature control for each room is made easy by a programmable digital thermostat.

Underfloor heating can be used in every room in your home, including the conservatory and the bathroom. Installing underfloor heating in the conservatory allows you to enjoy your conservatory all year round, and in the bathroom, after you’ve bathed, you can step out of your bath onto a lovely warm floor. You’ll have family and friends queuing up to bathe so they experience your flooring!

Once underfloor heating is installed it can enhance the appearance of a room, because there aren’t any unsightly radiators taking up wall space. It allows you freedom of choice for furniture location, as you don’t have any radiators to avoid. In public places, it can improve health and safety because there aren’t any hot pipes or sharp surfaces to cause a health hazard.

Underfloor heating can be used with wooden and concrete flooring and with different types of floor covering, such as: stone, tile, wood, laminate and vinyl. For small to medium sized rooms, the underfloor heating can be fitted on a DIY basis. The underfloor cable heating mats come with full installation instructions but it is strongly advised a qualified electrician attaches the cable heating system to the household electrical mains. If the thought of doing DIY makes your hair stand on end, or you have a large area that needs underfloor heating, the system can be installed by a company that specialises in this system. The internet has made it easy to gather information about underfloor heating, and to find a company who are experts in their field.

Underfloor heating is not a new phenomenon. Wealthy Romans first used underfloor heating in their homes but their system did not survive the passage of time. In Korea, around 37 B.C – A.D 668 the Koreans created an underfloor heating system, called an ondol and this system is still used in some modern Korean homes.

Underfloor heating is the way forward to improve your home and business.
Paul Mockford wrote this article about underfloor heating. Underfloor heating is gaining in popularity in today’s society because it can reduce overall heating costs. For more information on electrical underfloor heating visit http://www.floorheating.ltd.uk

Underfloor Heating For Primary Heating
When planning a primary, electric underfloor heating installation, where the floor heating system is providing the sole source of room heating, it is important to take into consideration some basic principals.

All structures lose and retain heat according to their U-values. The U-value is a measure of how much thermal energy will pass through a square metre of structure when air temperatures on either side differ by 1 degree Celsius. The fabric of any building will typically consist of a number of components, each with their characteristic resistance values the U-value is a combination of all these values.

In designing a primary under floor heating system, greater consideration of these factors of heat loss and heat gain need to be taken into account. For a typical convection heating system, on cold days, where the temperature on the outside of the structure is low, the room heating can be increased by turning up the boiler and opening up the radiators to improve the heat output.

On the other hand, an underfloor heating system acts as a low-level heat source, radiating thermal energy into the room as radiant heat. Unlike a traditional convection heating system, where a wall radiator or freestanding heater is used as sole source of room heating, the under floor heating cannot be turned up to produce a higher heat output, due to the comfort factor on the feet. Effectively, because we are converting the floor into a low level radiator and walking over it, the human foot factor limits the maximum floor operating temperature to a maximum of 27-28 degrees Celsius.

Electric underfloor heating systems are controlled using a digital thermostat. The controller can be programmed with 4 on-off settings over a 24-hour period. Once the floor heating reaches the programmed floor and room temperature settings, the thermostat will cycle on and off continuously to maintain these settings.

The floor heating will radiate heat energy uniformly, warming the room evenly to your preset ambient thermostat settings, maintaining a comfortable room temperature providing heat is not being lost to the outside by poor insulation and frequent changes of air .

With a high performance insulation layer between the heating cable and the sub-floor below , the underfloor heating will operate efficiently and very effectively. For cement sub-floors where no insulation can be fitted, a high-output heating mat is normally recommended to compensate for the heat loss into the concrete slab below. With no insulation, the floor heating would otherwise be very slow to reach operating temperature the extra output capacity of a 200Wm2 heating mat is used to good effect to bring the floor up to operating temperature quickly.
For more info on electric underfloor heating and how best to plan your installation, take a look at the underfloor heating Installation Guide. You can also browse the Floor Heating website where you will find informative pages packed with help and guidance. If you want to price your project and would like to get an idea of the costs involved, there is a very user-friendly online webshop to help with building a list of items needed for a complete installation, including flexible adhesives and leveling compounds.

Lennox Heat Pumps Are An Alternate Way To Heat Your Home
The name Lennox is synonymous with heating and cooling equipment. Lennox heat pumps are one of their most popular products. The company sells units to residential and commercial customers. Besides heat pumps, they also sell furnaces and air conditioners. When people look for economical ways to heat and cool their home they want a name they can rely on. There are quite a few reliable companies out there. If you do your homework and you should be able to find a product that works as described.

We will focus this article on Lennox heat pumps and the Lennox Company. Back in 1895, Dave Lennox developed his first furnace. Only nine years later, he sold the company and it was re-named the Lennox Furnace Company. It stayed that way until 1955, when it was re-named to Lennox Industries. They have sales offices all across North America.

Lennox heat pumps provide homeowners with a cost saving method in which to heat or cool the home. The pump transfers heat between the inside and the outside of your home. This allows it to heat the home in the winter and cool it in the summer. An example of one of their newer units is the PowerSaverT heat pump. It operates at a low speed when the weather is mild and when the temperatures are extreme it will operate at a higher speed. The two-speed efficiency will improve the air filtration and protects the machines compressor from wearing out due to the frequent stopping and starting.

Many experts believe that a geothermal heat pump is the best means in which to heat or cool your home. This type of pump requires only a small amount of electricity to run. This, it is good for the environment because it reduces the reliance on electrical power plants. They are also considered the quietest pump on the market.

In conclusion, when choosing a efficient and cost effective way to heat or cool your home, why not look into Lennox heat pumps. The more information you have about different methods of heating and cooling your home, the more informed you would be to make a good sound decision.
We provide information for the consumer on heat pump prices along with information on various models such as Lennox heat pumps, Trane heat pumps and Carrier heat pumps.
By D.Karlson

Heat Loss Heat Gain H.V.A.C. Calculations The Correct Way To Size An H.V.A.C System!
How an Energy Survey is done.

Heat Loss and heat gain in a building is figured by either manual calculations or by using a computer software program. We have done hundreds of these calculations for new building construction. Read on to find out why it is difficult to do one on an existing home or building. It involves finding all the insulation values of the building, measuring the length, width and volume of all rooms, measuring all the windows and glass and recording their composition .

The amount of glass, their orientation, and the number of sky lights will have a big effect, especially on the cooling side of the calculations. Over hangs over windows will also affect this calculation. The tightness of the building construction has to be included as a loose building will allow more out door air to enter the building and let the heated or cooled indoor air escape the same way . There are many other factors involved in doing a COMPLETE Heat Loss Heat Gain calculation, down to and including how many bathroom fans exhaust air from the building. This full calculation is most of the time called an H.V.A.C. Energy Survey. It is very time consuming to do correctly. Beware of a company just measuring the floor space and saying they have done a " Survey ".

A true survey will require help from the building owner to answer questions. For instance, just one example is how do most people who own a home with vaulted ceilings that have been finished with sheet rock actually know what insulation is behind the sheet rock? We know if it were our own home and we hadn't been there when it was built, we would have to " guess ". This makes the survey inaccurate and really not much better than using a general rule of thumb that most contractors use such as 600 square feet per ton of air conditioning or 30 B.T.U.H. per square feet of actual out put capacity for heating.

On existing homes or buildings that already have a heating system, the blower size of the furnace and the ductwork installed in the building will dictate what size system can be installed. It is of little value to do an Energy Evaluation to find that even though a 5 ton air conditioner is needed, the building only has a 3 ton blower in the furnace or the duct work can only handle 3 tons of air conditioning. To put a 5 ton ac in under these circumstances will result in major equipment failures and it still won't cool any better than a 3 ton would have in the first place! The same things happen when we are talking about installing a " bigger " furnace.

If however, you want a true survey and are willing to take the time it requires to find all the answers needed, any GOOD Heating and Cooling Contractor can do a Energy Survey for you at a reasonable cost. This survey should spell out the exact heating and cooling needs of your building based on your requirements for the building. You will sometimes receive a printed report of all aspects of the building. One of these surveys should be done especially on new construction while the building is being built. Some of our local clients ask us to do one to determine if the system in an existing building was ever sized correctly to begin with.

Author: Bud Chick

Owner of My HVAC Parts and Sheridan Mechanical Services
http://www.myhvacparts.com

Sunday, September 07, 2008

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