What’s the best heating source?
That’s a question we’re often asked here at Advanced HVAC, your trusted experts in Ottawa heating solutions.
The answer can vary, however, depending on the configuration, size and age of your home, as well as your particular preferences and goals for home heating. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for “the best” source of heating in Ottawa.
Radiant floor heating, however, is gaining in popularity among homeowners as being an excellent source for home heating in Ottawa.
Whether you are renovating your current home, looking to replace a furnace or other heating source, or you’re starting to design and build a new home, radiant floor heating is certainly worthy of your consideration.
What is Radiant Floor Heating?
Radiant floor heating is an alternative to traditional home heating sources such as forced air heating (furnaces & ducts, such as those found in a vast majority of Ottawa homes), baseboard heating, wall radiators, boilers, stoves, etc.
As its name suggests, radiant heating in this iteration exists in the floors of your home, using convective heating to warm the interior evenly through a series of heated coils that reside throughout the floors.
Different from traditional home heating methods, radiant floor heating yields many advantages:
- It’s much quieter than a furnace & ductwork!
- Consumes less energy than forced-air or other heating sources
- Provides a more even temperature
- Can scale up from one room to whole home
- Less maintenance than a furnace & ducts
- Keeps those toes toasty!
In addition, people with allergies report significant improvements with radiant floor heating. That’s because there’s no constant recycling of allergens & bacteria through the ductwork.
Types of Radiant Floor Heating in Ottawa
Radiant floor heating comes in two essential varieties.
Electrical Radiant Floor Heating
The first type of radiant floor heating involves the concept of electric radiant heat. Charged cables run through the floor (below your tiles, concrete sections or even hardwood floor boards) via conductive panels.
Much like traditional home heating systems, electric radiant floor heating is controlled from a thermostat, and can be adjusted to reach and maintain a desired temperature (you can also adjust for day and night settings via heating programs on a smart thermostat).
While electric radiant floor heating has some efficient applications, it can get expensive as a whole-home heating source with hydro or electric rates being on the high side these days. That’s why the best use for electric radiant floor heating systems is often found in limited floor heat situations, such as a heated floor in the bathroom.
For general use throughout the home, there’s a better form of radiant floor heating.
Hydronic Radiant Floor Heating: Efficiency through Water
The other type of radiant flooring system that’s more prevalent heating Ottawa homes is a water-based floor heating system called hydronic radiant heat.
Hydronic Floor Heating uses tubes that pass heated water under the floor boards, tiles or sections.
The source of heat in this case is a boiler, which can be controlled by a thermostat or separated into zones to control water flow for pinpointed floor heat distribution.
Hydronic water-based radiant floor heating is an excellent solution for many Ottawa homeowners, providing efficient, quiet, clean heating for your family to enjoy and appreciate throughout the winter.
Curious Whether Radiant Floor Heating is Right for You?
If you are designing a custom-built home or undergoing a home renovation, or if you are looking to replace your existing furnace or other type of home heating system, radiant floor heating in Ottawa could be a great option.
Talk to Advanced HVAC today to find out more about how radiant floor heating could be right for you.
