Radiant Floor Heating in Modular House

ParaGuy

I am getting ready to retire from the military and will be moving back to Western North Carolina. My wife and I are planning to have a modular home built and we are very interested in having Warmboard installed all over the house during the build. All of my research has been showing that this is one of the most efficient products. I was thinking of doing a closed loop system with a separate water heater for the radiant floor heating and a tankless water heater for the rest of the house. The builders we have picked for our modular home so far are saying that they can accommodate my design plans as far as the installation of the warmboard in the build so hopefully I wont be running into problems with installation on that part. What I am interested in is hearing back from anybody who has done a similar type installation and used warmboard or equivalent type systems. How cold does it get where you are? Basically any help or information you can point me to or suggestions that you might have would be greatly appreciated. My wife is from Korea and has lived with concrete slab style radiant floor heating all her life and after I experienced that over there I found it to be the most comfortable heat in very cold conditions (-10F) I have ever experienced. I grew up with wood heat/fireplace and although I love a good fire, I just don't think that the radiant floor heat can be beat for efficiency. Also any suggestions as to the floor coverings you used and how you like it would be much appreciated as well.



Thanks.

Steamfitter66

Start with an actual heat loss calculation.

Not a rule of thumb or an estimate. Its done after you know what your windows, doors, walls and insulation values are.

Heat loss calculation.

system design

component selection

contract

installation



Changing the order gets expensive and results in poor performance.

bld999

Warmboard

I looked into warmboard about 5 yrs. ago for a client in a five unit project. The biggest benefit for mild climate western Washington was that it's heat capacity was much less than standard concrete, which was the other option. What that meant was that it would be more responsive to outdoor temp changes and tend to overshoot less than a high heat-capacity slab. Cost drove the client back to slab on grade and staple up with plates in upper floors.



Purely from a building assembly perspective, warmboard requires careful shop drawing layout and quality control so the tubing doesn't have to be run under partitions, etc. the tubing remains at some danger from nails and screws for quite a while in construction, but I was doing stick - built.



It is expensive.

Bob Gagnon plumbing and heating

Radiant Floor

First, thank you for many years of service, we appreciate it. Have you considered stapling radiant directly to the top of the subfloor, and having a tile guy install tile with a mud job?



Thanks, Bob Gagnon