Radiant Heat
Monday, March 3rd, 2008Winters in Korea are cold. When I lived in Korea the one thing that kept the winters bearable was the warm floors. Korea uses, I think universally, radiant heat as its primary heat source. The comfort of having warmfloors heating the house without the noise and discomfort of having forced air is really nice. The one thing that I did not like about radiant heat in Korea was having to rotate the 연탄 (coal briquettes). I don’t think 얀탄 are very popular in Korea right now though. I think it used to be that every year there were news reports of people dying from carbon monoxide poisoning from 얀탄. Nowadays the floors are heated primarily from a gas boiler.
We finished building our house last year and we decided that our primary source of heat would also be radiant. Unfortunately, here in the United States the radiant heat market is left to some very high dollar specialists, especially here in sunny California. So, after getting some very outrageous bids for the job, we decided to do it ourselves.
A friend of mine builds greenhouses and most commercial greenhouses have a radiant heat system built in. So he was very helpful to us in getting the job done. We literally did all of the work ourselves. I spent a lot of time on the phone with manufacturers and suppliers who were more than happy to help create a system that suited my needs and then sell me the materials to build that system. Here is a photo of the pex tubing once we have zip-tied it to the rebar, before pouring the concrete slab:
The system is powered by a boiler that pumps hot water through all of the tubing in the floor to warm the house. The boiler also does the same thing through a water tank for hot water. It is very efficient. Here is the boiler plumbing setup. It looks more complicated than it is:
The boiler can be seen on the left. Not shown is the indirect water heater to the left of the boiler.
This has been our first full winter living in our new house. While our radiant system is not perfect, we have really enjoyed having 온돌방 in our house. By doing it ourselves we saved a lot of money (really, a lot) and learned a lot too.
Posted by steved in Steve's House |
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:17 pm
That’s really awesome. I’m sure that 온돌 is one of those things that I don’t know I’ll miss it until I have to live without it!
What did you do for the second floor? Or is your house just one story?
March 4th, 2008 at 1:18 am
Steve… that is AWESOME! WOW what a job… 수고하셨습니다!
March 4th, 2008 at 1:39 am
Austin, radiant heat is great. I am sure you will miss it. What you may not miss is the extremely hot floors “because it is winter and so the heat must be on even if it is hot inside already.” We have every room in the house on its own thermostat so we only heat the areas where we are. Because we did it ourselves the added expense was very minimal. Plus it freaks people out when you say something like, “I have eleven thermostats in my house…” We do have an upstairs. The radiant tubing is stapled up under the wood subfloor.
Kieth, thanks. Sometimes I think I would like to do it again just to do it better. Then I wake up.
March 4th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
우와 진짜 수고하셨습니다! 사진보다 더 복잡하고 말이에요? I’m glad you felt that it was a valuable experience to do this, but I know I’d never be able to do it! I’d get lazy and start cutting corners, and then… I’d have cold winters!
March 4th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Wow. 진짜 대단해요!!!
다 만들고 나서 정말 뿌듯했을 것 같아요!! I still remember changing 연탄 until I was 9 year old… And it was fun, too, but at the same time, as a kid, I think I was kind of afraid that it might blow up somehow… haha. 
March 5th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Thank you for the interesting post! I’m going to make my husband do this in the house we plan to build. Forced air systems have given us all miserable allergy and sinus problems.
March 5th, 2008 at 5:33 am
Having worked in construction, I have to say that I found this very interesting! That’s great that you have a thermostat for each room, so you can adjust it as needed. Are there separate thermostats for the A/C, then? How long until you get to move into your new home? It’s a shame that you won’t get to enjoy the radiant heating until next winter.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Jeff, we are actually living in the house now. This is our first winter in it. Yes, two of those thermostats are for A/C, one uptairs, one down. The HVAC will also push hot air but we have never used it.
When it comes to air conditioning there aren’t really any choices besides forced air and opening the windows at night. Or a combination of both
.
March 8th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I really enjoyed reading this post… I grew up on Long Island, New York, right near a town called Levittown (you may have heard of it… thousands of identical post WW2 housing built by the firm of Levitt & Sons, Inc). The funny thing is… every house in Levittown was built on a concrete slab with radiant coils. At the time, they used copper piping, which after 30 years or so, gets corroded by the concrete. By now, most of the radiant heat in Levittown has all been capped and replaced with something else.
By the way, what kind of flooring do you have? I heard radiant heating can reek havoc on hardwood floors. Also, how long does it take to heat up the house?
March 8th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Wow, that looks like a very thorough job! Doing it yourself is so time consuming and such hard work, but I think it really ends up worth it with the amount of money you end up saving. My father used to do all the rennovations on our home himself, same with my grandad. We saved lots of money that way!
Do you think that radiant heat in the floor is more effective than other heating systems? I can definitely imagine it being better than the systems that blow hot air out, anyway! Those always give me really bad headaches.
March 10th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Wow! Steved that house looks beautiful! Keep up this great work and great blogs too! S_R_C
March 10th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Eran, thanks. I hadn’t heard of Levittown. The link you provided was very informative. It seems like he was ahead of his time. Some friends of ours just replaced the copper in their floors because of age. It was a major undertaking. I think that PEX has a longer lifespan than copper; at least I hope it does. The floors in our house are travertine and wood. Downstairs the wood is a floating engineered floor. It was very simple to put down. The other option was glue down and we didn’t do that because of concerns of the glue outgassing every time the floors got warm. Upstairs the wood floor is engineered and stapled down. The job was a little more complicated but not bad. Engineered flooring is more forgiving than a traditional hardwood floor. It is also friendlier on the pocketbook. The boiler can be set so that the water going through the pipes doesn’t exceed a specified temperature. So far the floors are holding up just fine.
Taliana and Sindy, thanks for reading! We love our radiant heat floors. The heating is actually much more efficient than forced air. The entire floor becomes a giant heat source so the temperature stays more consistent.
I would be happy to answer any more technical questions either here or via PM.