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Wide Plank Floors and Radiant
Heat - a Great Combination
 (ARA) - Wide plank floors are prized for their weathered patina and the sense
of history and character that they add to a room. Among the many attributes of
wide plank floors is the fact that they can be used with radiant heat.
If you have questions about using radiant heat with the floors in your
home, contact an expert. Don Carlisle, president of Carlisle Wide Plank Floors
of Stoddard, N.H., gets this question frequently. His family-owned company has
been manufacturing wide plank flooring for 40 years.
"It often surprises
people that you can use radiant heat with hardwood floors, especially
traditional wide board floors," says Carlisle. "But once you consider the
history of wide plank floors, it makes perfect sense." He points out that wide
board floors were used in the days when heat's main source was a fireplace or a
wood stove. "These are very crude heat sources, in the sense that they aren't
very balanced and provide heat in a very uneven way throughout a home," says
Carlisle. But wide board floors remained flat, stable and comfortable. "If these
floors have beautifully withstood the worst of environments over time, they can
certainly live in a more refined controllable one."
And experience has
borne this out. "We have made thousands of wide plank floors for many years, and
have found that these floors hold up very well with radiant heat systems," says
Carlisle. "As wood floors are a living resource, they respond well to the more
consistent and warm environments supplied by today's advanced heating systems."
When buying wide plank solid wood flooring, keep in mind these three critical
factors:
* Old growth wood - Carlisle uses only hand selected old growth
(trees that have grown for 100 to 150 years) from areas of the country with
colder climates that allow for the slowest growth. These timbers will have a
very tight growth ring structure that produces the most stable floor plank,
regardless of width.
* Air drying and kiln drying - One of the most
critical steps in ensuring stability in a wide plank floor is to dry the boards
for up to a year before placing them in a lower temperature drying kiln. This
slow, natural drying process allows the fibers of the wood to remain pliable and
healthy so that a plank will not be "shocked" when heat is introduced and it
will be able to adapt with minimal movement to its new environment.
*
Appropriate acclimation - Once the floor arrives at the job site, the wood
should be "stickered" in its live-in conditions for an appropriate period of
time, depending on the climate and the time of year. Make sure that all
materials surrounding the floor, such as the concrete slab, plywood sub-floor
and filler material, are also acclimated.
Carlisle stresses that the most
important thing to remember when using wide plank wood floors with radiant heat
is to use good wood - stable, high quality, properly dried. "Any issues that
arise with this marriage are typically due to one of the critical factors being
absent, not due to the use of radiant heat," he says. "Wide plank floors love
radiant heat . . . period."
For more information on the use of wide plank
floors with radiant heat (or any type of heating system), or to see photos of
wide plank floors installed with this application, call Carlisle at (800)
595-9663 or visit the company's Web site at www.wideplankflooring.com.
Courtesy of ARA Content  |
