Ultra fin vs staple up traditional radiant heat

caitlin278

Hi! We are currently renovating a house in Denver. The main floor is around 3300 square feet. We would like to add radiant heat. We have gotten multiple proposals. The seemingly best ones have been for traditional staple up radiant heat vs ultra fin. We are confused about which heat type to go with. We have a boiler. Any advice or experience with ultra fin heat would be appreciated. The ultra fin quote is a lot lower than the other quote. Thanks!

hot_rod

The room by room heat load numbers could help make the decesion. Also the UF will need a higher supply temperature. The UF works great for adding some floor heat onto a high temperature baseboard system. Run the same temperature in the UF and fin tube.

My opinion is you want a system that uses the lowest possible supply temperature to keep boiler efficiency up, reduce temperature overshoots, and matches best with mod cons, A2Whp, or solar thermal temperatures, 120F or lower.

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

Ultra-Fin is easier to install, thus the lower quote. You only need one run per bay instead of two with plates. That’s one reason why I like Ultra-Fin better.
The other reason is that with plates, 120F is the highest recommended water temperature, otherwise you could get some damage to your finished floor, especially hardwood. Ultra-Fin can run higher water temperatures.
Ultra-Fin has very strict insulation details as it needs an air space above and below the fins. Follow them.
Both products work well, just make sure a heat loss calculation is done, especially with a house that has marginal insulation. There are limits to how much heat the products will produce and sometimes you need supplemental heating.