The concrete floor between the basement and the first floor is going to create issues, it's a good air barrier so you won't have mixing of air. My first step would be to do a Manual J or similar heat loss analysis and make sure that a floor temperature in that range can satisfy the heating needs of the room. Any warmer than that and your feet get uncomfortably hot. But you want something with high conductivity and low heat capacity to give even floor temperatures and good responsiveness to the thermostat.įor rooms other than bathrooms, you want floor temperatures to be barely noticeable, in the mid to high 70's. I like the approach of WarmBoard, although I'm loath to recommend it because it's so expensive. With traditional flooring you can go with more traditional floor heating.

If it were my house, I'd put down a 3/4' subfloor over the concrete and some sort of more traditional flooring. I don’t mind if the system heats the basement as well, since my bedroom will be down there (kids will be upstairs on main floor).Ĭoncrete is a lousy floor for residences, hard ceramic is lousy for anything other than bathrooms. Would this be sufficient to heat upper surface of the floor through the concrete? Would I have to worry about cracking or different expansion rates between the steel deck and the concrete? I’m planning to put either tiles or a new surface coat of concrete on the top of the floor. I think it’s called the “staple-up” method but I’ve only seen examples for wood subfloors using aluminum plates)? I’m doing a full reno and would like to add radiant floor heating, however I am reluctant to add to much thickness to the top of the floor (I have floor to ceiling windows along 80% of the exterior walls and only 1.5″ between existing floor and glass).Ĭan I install hydronic heating from the underside of the floor and heat the steel decking (i.e. 3,000 sq.ft above a conditioned basement). I have an existing 2.5″ thick concrete floor on open web steel joists (approx. Not sure if my first post worked so I’m trying again:

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