HYDRONIC RADIANT FLOORING

Everyone's heard of it, you get a tax credit right now for upgrading your home so there are ads all over the radio. Radiant flooring is considered by most to be the most efficient form of heating for a home because instead of running a furnace and piping hot air through the house constantly, it utilizes laws of nature to distribute the heat more effectively which drastically cuts down power/propane/gas bills. It's basically a series of pipes in the floor distributing heat. The heat rises, if it's in a concrete floor it heats up the concrete and becomes even more efficient since the concrete acts like a sponge and retains a lot of the heat to disperse more slowly.

Because it's not cycling air through the house, the air quality in your home is better and there are less allergens being cycled around between 60-90%. There are no air filters to replace, no air vents to worry about covering. Since it's not cycling air, you don't have to worry about drying out the air in the house with the heater in winter time either.

There are basically 3 kinds of radiant heating setups:

Air-heated radiant flooring. These aren't very cost efficient because air doesn't retain heat well so I'm not gonna talk about them. Just remember: Air-heated is garbage.

Electric radiant flooring. These are also not very economical with one exception, concrete floors. In which case, because of their mass, the concretes absorb the heat and distribute it for a longer period of time. If the power company in your area has time-of-use rates, this could be good as well. Overall though, with the cost of electricity going up and idiots in the government suggesting stupid ideas like Cap-and-Trade... doing anything based on electricity isn't something I would invest in... unless you like being raped by the government and the power company. I'd skip this one personally.

Hydronic radiant flooring. This is the most popular and most effective radiant flooring. It involves a series of pipes holding water put into the floor and cycled via a pump connected to a hot water heater. Water is more efficient at holding onto heat and since it heats the floor, your water piping (for toilets and sinks) are less likely to freeze with some clever planning (especially if you have a concrete floor). I've read about a few individuals who've cleverly combined their regular hot water heater and their radiant flooring hot water heater so they only have one large hot water heater doing it all and cut down their bills even further. It's so efficient that it's suppose to cut your heating bill in half (53.2%).

Costs range between $1000 - $22,000... depending on the size of the house.

Now combine that with geothermal to regulate the air tempt being piped into the main unit...