to cover pipes or not

Big Ed

I perfer warm floors too. You can have savings and comfort too. Have a warm floor system installed..

Live/Learn

should I cover my pipes

Hi Wallies, Back in the day when oil was a lot cheaper and I was running with my old boiler, I left my one pipe hot water systems pipes uncovered. My basement was always nice and toastie warm as where my floors in the living area. Due to the price of oil I replace my old boiler with a more efficient model and also wrapped all the pipes. I really miss the warm basement and floors. Am I saving a lot by having the wrap on the pipes? Thanks in advance. Live/Learn

Plumb Bob

No, you won't save a lot. Even if you don't heat the basement, it'll get heat from the rest of the house (it's inside the envelope). So it may be cooler and less comfortable, but it's a lot warmer than the outside (in winter) so you still have heat loss pretty close to if the basement was warm.

To get the basement outside the envelope, you'll have to insulate the ceiling and isolate the basement thermally from the house.

fatty

heat in the floor is heat in the floor, whether you mean to do it or not - it still counts as comfortable - and isnt that the goal? maybe just wrap the areas that aren't going to spill over into convenient areas.

jp_2

basement

as typical, most older basements are poorly insulated, the more heat you are dumping down there, there higher the losses and higher heating bills.

look into insulating the basement well, then unwrap the pipes!