When the temperature drops, it is easy to desire the floor warmth and economical efficiency of hydronic in-floor heating. It warms the house without drying the air or stirring up dust. How do you add it to a house with no pex pipes in the floor?
Glad, you asked. There are several ways to do just that depending on your situation.
1) The floor you want to heat is cement. This one is easy. You lay pex pipes on the cement and cover in gypcrete. We do recommend the cement is insulated under or you may want to insulate over it (So you don't lose heat to the ground). It does raise the floor level about 3-5", so it might not be the best choices for places with low ceilings. Then hook all the pex pipes up to the HUG Hydronics In-floor heating system with an electric on-demand water heater for fairly instant in-floor heating.
2) The floor you want to heat is wood floor where you can access to under the floor. Most likely to occur on a 2nd or 3rd floor (any above basement). And then you run pex pipes under the floor (usually 1 loop between every floor joist) and connect them to the HUG Hydronics system. Along with running the pex pipes under the floor- you have to staple them up, often with aluminum heat plates that have pex pipe grooves in them (see what I'm talking about here), and then layer insulation under that so the heat from the warm water pipes goes up and not down.
For many houses, this can be done in a weekend if you hook those pex pipes up to a HUG Hydronics system. You can also connect a HUG System to pex pipes from multiple floors. The HUG Hydronics In-floor heating system can connect pipes from a floor above the system and/or a floor below the system at the same time, but for these applications make sure each loop has its own pump.
3) The floor you want to heat is a wood subfloor. If you already have a wood floor, and can not get under it easily, but have space to layer another few inches on top, the Eco WarmFloor are boards with a grooved system to put the pex pipes in might be the right approach (although its probably the most expensive).
So warm floor and economical heating are possible to do in many already standing houses. If you want to discuss it with our sales techs, to brainstorm ideas please call.