Warm floors

It is getting cold and we're not quite ready to install the radiant floor heating system, but I thought I'd show how the system goes together. Our system is produced by The FloorHeat Company. Their web site explains the system in more detail. It is mostly a do-it-yourself process.

It starts with a thin sheet of foil that goes directly on the OSB floor panels. The foil is covered by 16-inch square plastic grids which snap together to cover the entire floor. Metal pieces are snapped into the grids. These will help transfer the heat from the plastic tubing which will be snapped into all of the grids to the panels which cover the grids. The panels are then covered by the laminate floor panels. The tubes are attached to a panel which contains a tankless water heater and a pump to move the heated water throughout the system.

Here is a grid, a metal piece, and how they fit together. Of course there are hundreds of them in the system.

When all the components are together it will look something like this:


You can see four of the laminate panels snapped together. Under them is a 3'X 5' cement board panel. Under that are the plastic grids. The foil is not shown because I don't want to put it down until we're ready to do the installation. Finally, the OSB panels can be seen.

Notice the piece of 2X4 next to the floor system. It is the same thickness as the system. This allows us to build a wooden grid in closets and under cabinets that will have the same laminate sheets on them but will not be heated.

I forgot to take a picture of the control panel. I'll do that after the plastic tubing (PEX) is installed and the system is ready to go.