My fiance and I are in the process of closing on a former fire station which was built in 1955. Our plan is to renovate the building into our dream home. The building has hydronic radiant heat ceiling panels throughout the living space on the 1st and 2nd stories. The panels on the second level are in great condition and will most likely remain as is, however the many of the panels on the first floor are bent, missing, dirty, or generally in poor repair. While the boiler and heating all works great, the tiles are an eyesore. Would it be possible to cover these panels with something more appealing, such as tin cieling tiles or something similar, without affecting the efficiency of the radiant heat? My thought is that many types of materials can be used over radiant heated floors-is it the same for ceiling panel systems? Any info or opinions would be so appreciated as I am just beginning to educate myself on this topic. Thanks!

As long as you keep the R-value of your “covering material” very low, you should be okay. You want high total R-value on the side of the radiant emitter where heating is NOT desired, and you want very low total R-value on the side of the radiant emitter where heating is required.

Sailaway, thanks for your reply! We were thinking the same thing, but always good to get a more experienced opinion. We appreciate it

What sort of "radiant ceiling panels" do you have?

http://www.badgerboilerservice.com/ceilings.html

Hopefully this picture displays. I don't have any large pictures of the tiles close up. You can't tell from the picture but there are small holes covering each tile. The tiles are some kind of metal, I'm assuming connected in a sturdy fashion to copper pipes above. There are several different zones through out the station, each with it's own thermostat. Again, the building was built in 1955. I plan on trying to get more information from the city on the specifics of the system- these are just observations that we have made during inspection and another walk-through. Our inspector, while extremely knowledgable about the boiler itself, didn't seem to know much about the system (originally we thought the heat was in the floors until we actually observed and felt the copper pipes in the ceiling).

these tiles cover the entire ceiling of the living space, except where there are pot lights or missing tiles.

Drywall would look nicer than panels in poor shape. A local radiant company can calculate if that leaves you with enough radiator capacity.

Radiant ceilings were actually quite popular just after WWII and leading up to the early 60's when many tract-builders used various methods to heat from the ceiling. I have worked on many radiant ceiling heating systems in Richfield, MN--a suburb of Minneapolis and in fact sorted out some confusion about where the heat was coming from. This a great testimony to the incomparable effect of radiant panels, but more especially to radiant ceilings.

Most of the early radiant ceilings were installed by skilled plumbers whom started by laying out a jig on saw horses bending soft copper into suitable patterns to fit each room. The formed copper was then fastened to the ceiling joist or lathe followed by "chicken wire" and plaster. Controlling the design water temperature was critical and accomplished with a simple manual or thermostatic mixing valve.

In new radiant ceiling installations we generally use an aluminum heat transfer plate or insulated panels covered by 1/2 to 5/8" dry-wall. In retrofit situation a air-gap is should be avoided and an old-fashioned plaster preferred.

Above all, outdoor reset will make the system operate with a higher degree of efficiency and comfort. All condensing boilers feature outdoor reset and will perform perfectly at the typically reduced operating temperatures intrinsic with radiant ceiling heating panels.

We think tin ceiling tiles look much nicer and classier than plain dry wall and they provide easy access to the plumbing should this ever be required in the future.