Your basement floor behaves the same way.Ī heated floor will warm your feet and the air in the house (making it rise), but it will also be heating the ground below your house, and like any exterior surface of your home, the less insulation you add the more heat you will lose. Heat radiates from all sides, including the bottom. Does all the heat come out the top? Is it cold on the bottom? Absolutely not. You need only pick up a hot coffee in a ceramic mug to answer this question for yourself. Warm air rises, but heat goes everywhere. Contrary to common beliefs, heat does not rise. Heating a floor increases the temperature differential between the concrete and the ground below it, which increases the rate of heat loss. Read more here about the importance of balancing insulation for energy efficiency. You wouldn't say "I don't need to insulate my roof much, because I'll be heating the air in my house". Having a heated floor is not an argument against greater insulation, it is actually the opposite. This seems extreme to some, but that is simply because floors are chronically under-insulated and any addition to that can be a foreign concept to lot of builders. The floor of the LEED V4 Platinum Edelweiss House is insulated to R32, more than 3 times what is normally used in new builds. Life is short they say, unless of course your feet are cold, then it will seem much longer. Read more here about radiant floors and designing for thermal comfort. We have been on the fence about this and leaned to both sides at different times, but it seems we have now fallen off the fence, and landed on a warm floor. ![]() There is some debate in performance building circles, particularly in the Passive House community as to whether or not you can add enough insulation below a concrete floor to eliminate the need for heating it.
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