What do you think of this?

bill clinton_3

Been playing around with ideas to get a relativly low cost but good performance system for those situations requiring minimum build-up of floor level--something easier and lower cost, maybe even better than thermal board, radiant trak, Warm Board, etc. Would like to do it as follows:

Rip good quality 3/4" plywood into 2" wide strips. Lay strips on 6" centers on sub-floor screwing down tightly. Run 3/8" pex-al-pex serpentine between strips, crossing furring strips at alternate ends. No aluminum. No -crete. Hardwood floor would nail directly on furring strips. For other finish floors, add 1/2" plywood layer.

Reasonings:
1. 3/8" tube (1/2" od) in 3/4" space prevents direct contact between tube and hardwood therefore greatly reducing possibility of "striping" and noise generation if tube moves.

2. Pex-Al-Pex to reduce expansion and contraction movement perhaps eliminating noise possibility.

3. 6" spacing gives hardwood flooring lots of nailing and plywood enough support that 1/2" should be thick enough, thus keeping R-value and cost down. 6" spacing would also contribute compensation for lack of supplementary heat conduction--plates.

4. Additional dead-load structure must carry is negligible.

Using this method with hardwood, R-value above tube would be around 0.5--0.7: Probably a piece of cake. With 1/2" plywood about the same plus R-value of finish floor.

OK, if you don't like that, there is still the possibility of filling the 4.5" gap between furring strips with the -crete of your choice. At 3/4" depth, one cubic foot of -crete should cover almost twenty gross square feet of room floor area. This gives us some of the beloved thermal mass and maybe better heat transfer while locking the tube solidly in place so it can't move; yet the quantity of -crete and labor required remains in a range that could be called "low-cost." Dead load would be around 8 lbs/sq ft or lower.

Open to comments.

Bill

hr

That's almost identical to the

Watts Subray system. They use a nice Baltic birch material for the sleepers for nice flat surfaces with good nailing.

They also have half circle pieces for the ends.

hot rod

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D lux_2

what if

you filled the space with thinset ? would the pipe expand too much ?

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