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Myth #1
- Modern
Radiant Heating and Cooling
Myth
#2 – Everyone Knows Heat Rises
Myth
#3 - Radiant Floor Heating Emits Harmful Rays
Myth
#4 -
Radiant Floor Heating Causes Varicose Veins
Myth
#5 - Radiant Heating Is Slow
Myth
#6 - Radiant Heating Systems Are Susceptible to
Freezing
Myth
#7 – Radiant Heating is 30% More Efficient Than Air
Myth
#8 - Efficient Homes Heated with Warm Floors
Myth
#9 –
Radiant Floor Heating Dries Out
Hardwood Floors (Facts on Humidity)
Myth
#10 -
Radiant Floor Cooling
Doesn’t Work and It
Causes Condensation
Myth
#11- Radiant Heating Causes Pink or Yellow Floors
Myth
#12 -
You Don’t Need Radiant On The Main Floor, The
Basement Will Heat The WHOLE House.
Myth
#13 -
Use a Water Heater Instead of a Boiler.
Myth
#14 - If You Use Radiant You Have to Increase Your
Slab Thickness
Myth
# 15 - The Bigger the Radiant Pipe The More Heat You
Will Get.
Myth
#16 - If You Use Zone With Circulators Instead of
Zone Valves You’ll Never Lose All Your Heat.
Myth
#17 - You Need To Have A Furnace For Air Movement For Indoor Air Quality.
Myth
#18 - Radiant Heated Pools and Water Beds
Myth
#19 - You Don’t Have to Spend Money On Light Weight
Concretes or Gypsum Poured Floors – You Can Use Sand.
(…or pick another favorite and silly substitute)
Myth
#20 - You Don’t Need To Buy Pipes With Oxygen
Barriers When You Can Use Chemicals to Control Corrosion
Myth
#21 - Floor Coverings Are Damaged By Floor
Temperatures Over 85 Deg F
Myth
#22 - You don’t Need That Expensive Rigid High
Density Slab Insulation When You Can Use The Low Cost
Reflective Bubble
Foil Insulation.
Read All the Details - Download the Complete Article
Advisory on
Reflective Insulations from Canada, United States and
New Zealand.
More myths coming to
you via the rumor mill...
Myth
#23 -
Radiant output...can you really get 40 Btu/hr/sf?
Not if you want to stay comfortable!
Click here.
Myth
#24 -
The bigger the zone valve the better...oh really?
According to Decision Analyst (tm), over 50% of
homeowners are dissatisfied with their HVAC system...one
of the reasons - oversized equipment! This is a
technical topic which you can learn about
here. Myth
#25 - Water heaters vs boilers...
We shake our heads daily over this...Click
here. Myth
#26 -
Radiant pipes will leak.
PEX is a product not
like copper, or rubber or some plastics like
polybutylene. There are uninformed people roaming the
earth claiming to be experts who just haven't been
paying attention to the past several decades. All over
the world the very same PEX pipe used in military
applications, bridge decks, helicopter landing pads and
other brutally challenging applications is installed in
your home. In fact the PEX used in residential
applications is overqualified for the application!
Click here for more info.
Myth
#27 -
Radiant heating saves energy.
Lets get back to basics. The first law of
thermodynamics states energy can neither be created nor
destroyed...ergo it can not be saved by any type of
heating system...not even radiant. All one can control
is how effective energy is converted into useable heat
without creating a lot of parasitic heat transfer. Ask
yourself this question..."why am I creating temperatures
of thousands of degrees by burning fuel when all I need
is less than a nominal 120 deg F?" How logical is that?
To improve the effectiveness of energy conversion we can
use low temperature devices like condensing boilers and
heat pumps, which are better matched to low temperature
systems. Conversely we could burn fuel to create steam
and use it to generate power and then use the condensate
to heat the space. For more details on this myth read
about
exergy. That’s right ‘exergy’ – not energy.
Myth #28 -
When it comes to radiant; tile and concrete are better
than carpet and wood. The ability for a material to
radiate heat is based on a term called “emissivity” and
every material including your skin has a rating. The
rating scale is between 0(zero) and 1(one). One is the
perfect emitter and zero is the worst.
There is a relationship between emissivity and
reflectivity. In very general terms what makes a lousy
radiator makes a good reflector.
Shiny and smooth materials like aluminum foil or
polished steel have emissivities as low as 0.04 which is
why they are good reflectors. When it comes to floor
coverings, tile, concrete, wood, or carpet have very
high emissivities between 0.9 and 0.96. What does this
mean? It means these floor coverings when operating at
the same surface temperature will radiant the same
amount of heat. The confusion lays between people’s lack
of understanding in emissivity and thermal resistance.
Carpet has a higher resistance (makes a better
insulator) which means (all things being equal) it will
require higher fluid temperatures in the pipe and or
more pipe to get it to the same surface temperature as
the tile or concrete. Carpets may feel warmer than
tile, but not because of the surface temperature -
carpet feels warmer because it does not draw heat out of
your feet at the same rate as tile.
When it comes to radiant heating 99.99% of all floor
coverings work equally well as radiators.
Learn more about emissivity here. |
