If you’re redoing your floors, renovating your home or just thinking about how to keep your little toes warm in the winter, consider installing radiant heating. If you wake up every morning having to count to three before you swing your feet out from under the covers and hit the cold hardwood floors, then underfloor heating is a worthy investment.
And it’s not just the first step in the morning that will send chills through your body. Once you hit that bathroom, forget about it. It’s one small step for mankind, but one dreaded, freezing leap for man. Radiant heating will change your floors from feeling like you are walking on ice, to walking on sunshine.
Photo: Balboa hardwood floors in Colorado bedroom by T&G Flooring
Radiant heating will also save you a whole lot of energy on your heating bills. By installing this type of heating, either using electricity or hot water buried underneath your floors, you are heating your home evenly throughout, instead of having the heat come from a single source, like a heater, that needs to push the heat into your home. Having heat radiate from the floors in your home will conserve energy as heat will naturally rise and fill your home from the bottom up. Since the heat generates from the floors, your toes will always be warm, even as it continues to rise.
This type of heating is also great for hardwood floors. Using the classic heaters will make one area of your room hotter than the rest as the heat generates from a single source. This type of heat can cause your hardwood floors to react differently than the rest of your floors.
Photo: walnut bathroom floors by T&G Flooring, Colorado
Due to the ever-changing nature of hardwood flooring, you’ll need to find a skilled hardwood flooring installation expert to ensure that your underfloor heating causes limited shrinking and expanding of the wooden boards. Radiant heat is also easiest to install before you install new hardwood floors, but if you’ve had enough of freezing feet, expect to pay more as your existing floors will have to be removed and re-installed.
If your floors have yet to be installed, take the extra step to add radiant heating, save on your energy bills, create a cozier, more comfortable temperature throughout your home, and jump out of bed singing every morning, not squealing.
