radiant & carpet

steve_87

I have done a heatloss on my home and would like to have radiant installed in the future. The load in the major portion of the house is 25 BTU/SqFt. The subfloor appears to be 5/8" plywood with 1/4" Luan over the top. The system would be an underfloor with heavy plates. I argued with 2 people at the carpet store about waffled rubber pads and they said the 6lb. one would be fine. Or they they could get what I wanted but "It will be expensive". I'm thinking about no pad at all now. I believe the rug is 1/4-3/8". Am I fooling myself by wanting radiant??? Should I just use HWBB in this area. A friend has the exact carpet in his his house which is entirely heated with underfloor radiant and a pinnacle. Doesn't seem to have any problem and I would consider our houses similar. Any thoughts.

Jeff Lawrence_24

carpet pad

Thick carpet pad has high R value, but there is one company that I know of that makes a pad designed for radiant applications, http://www.sponge-cushion.com/radiant.htm

This may not give you the exact answer you were looking for, but I hope it helps.

Jeff



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Unknown

even with heavy plates, assuming an R2 for carpet and pad, you're looking at about 140-150 deg water temps at 25 BTUs/sq ft. If you have areas much over that load, they won't make it, and even in that case you're running pretty hot.

If you have other areas with wood floors, such a water temp could be a problem. Otherwise, it's not ideal, but it's doable, but you need to evaluate the pad and carpet assembly R value together and keep it to 2 or less, no arguement.

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