Floor Cooling?

wetheat1_2

Commercial or residential? We are doing commercial cooling work.

Tim D.

jerm

Floor Cooling?

Anybody have experience w/floor cooling?
Does it work?
Downside?
Upside?

Carl PE

It works, but...

There are some drawbacks. You need a separate system to ventilate and maintain humidity in the space. If your floor temperature is below the dew point of the air at any time, you'll have condensation. This is particularly bad in spaces with an exterior door. Open it on a humid day, and you've got a wet floor.

wetheat1_2

Considerations

There are most certainly considerations to be looked after. Radiant cooling is all about increased comfort and decreased energy usage. We don't normaly do residential work due to the variables such as the ability to leave a door or window open. Commercial spaces are easier to manage typically. Commercial spaces also have strict ventilation requirements so this equipment can deal with the latent load and the balance of the sensable load if need be. ASHRAE standard-55 builds a strong case for radiant systems as far as human thermal comfort is comcerned.

Tim D.

GMcD

Floors vs ceilings

The ceiling is the recommended place to do combined radiant heating/cooling - no fear of floor coverings, no masking by furniture, etc. etc. Besides- cooling will only work properly in a slab/topping floor system fo a number of technical reasons that are too lengthy to describe here. Think contact, conductance, and fluid temperature in the tube required to get the desired surface temperature for radiant cooling.

Do a Google search on radiant floor cooling and see what comes back - it CAN be done, and it can work but only in the right design and performance envelopes.