Radiant floor supplemental heat

Chuck_7

What would you do?
I have two situations. A couple corner rooms which are close but do not quite have enough floor area to meet the load.
The other is a large living room with vaulted ceiling, three walls and many windows. This one is not even close. The floor area only gives me not much more than half the load.
Should I start putting tube in the walls or use some baseboard or more decorative radiators?

hr

your choice, really

walls or ceilings would proably work with the same supply temperatute water. Panel radiators would be another choice, then baseboard. These might need hotter water to meet the addditional load.

How much are you shy?

hot rod

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Unknown

well, you might have to do some designing to get radiant wall or ceiling to operate at the same water temp; depends on how the primary radiant is installed. if you just did suspended tube in the joists you'd have to use more wall to get the overall water temperature even (and most of the load would be met by the wall). If you're using slab or some other low temp system however, wall or ceiling can be a very painless addition, even as easy as just another loop on the manifold.

for higher temp radiant, panel radiators or baseboard are more painless. You don't want wall or ceiling to get too hot.

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Chuck_7

The rooms that need a little heat are rooms with carpet so the temperature is higher.
The living room, which needs a lot more heat has a wood floor so the temperature is relatively lower.
The master bath (which has two outside walls with windows), has little floor space. There is a large shower, but I just found out the architect is using a shower floor system which I think would not allow me to put tubing in the floor of it.

hr

I'd still

make the decision based on how much short you are. Is is a few thousand BTU/hr or 10, 000 or more.

You can get a lot of "BTU bang for you bucks" with a kickspace heater, even at medium radiant temperatures. I have used the floor boxes and installed them under the large glass areas. They blanket this "low R-value" piece of the wall very nicely, with warmth.

If your system happens to be on outdoor reset they often become an automatic second stage as the fan kicks on only when the hotter water temperature hits their coils.

A lot will depend on what the customer can "accept" from a looks point of view. Most cringe when told HW baseboards needs to be added to their nice radiant floor. In that case the ceiling or wall would be worth a hard look.

hot rod

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Unknown

If he's got high temp floor, he could put enough wall or ceiling in to get the whole system water temperature down quite a bit and be surrounded in radiant goodness.

I would certainly encourage that if possible. doesn't get any better

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