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Unregistered
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Posts:2321
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| 07/07/2003 10:46 AM |
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I am evaluating the use of WarmBoard as a subfloor instead of a more traditional gypcrete pour. Anyone have any experience or comments with this product or a similar product? See [url]www.warmboard.com[/url]
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Unregistered
Registered Users
Posts:2321
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| 07/11/2003 6:51 PM |
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I am also debating the merits of Warmboard vs more traditional and less expensive methods. My home will be vacation home and therefore having a system that comes up to heat more quickly seems to have some advantage. Conversly, I am not sure that the significant additional installed cost vs gypcrete or under subfloor installs makes since for a home that will not have as much use.
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rbisys
Registered Users
Posts:47
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| 07/23/2003 3:47 PM |
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Greetings,
You can get the same effect by installing pek tubing to the underside and installing a thin sheet radiant barrier (RB) under that. The tubing is held in with channeled alum panels. If you are 2000 sf or under and use radiant barrier insulation in the walls and ceiling you can use a side tap water heated for the heating source.
For the fellow with the vaction home, you might want to consider baseboard units. They will heat up the home more quickly. With floor heat you would have to leave it on all the time. I don't what part of the country you are in, but if it gets cold in winter and you're not there the RB will protect the home against freezing if power goes out. By the way if you are looking for a good, strong, energy eff house at about $30.00 / sf with some DIY then check the decagon homes at one-eleven.com~econodome.
Thank you for considering my opinion. |
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Unregistered
Registered Users
Posts:2321
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| 09/05/2003 2:02 PM |
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Hello,
I am also considering Warmboard as an option for a vacation home. I like the concept of Warmboard over the tubing under the subfloor because the heat has to go through the wood subfloor and then through whatever floor covering you are using. The warmboard product sits on top of the subfloor, so it only has to get through the flooring. And if you are thinking about some type of hardwood or engineered hardwood, then it may not work as well.
I talked with a builder that remodelled with it. And he said that it is a nice product and the customer is very happy. They live in Seattle, WA, so it doesn't get as cold as Leavenworth, WA (in the Mountains), which is where we are building.
Conceptually, I think the product is good. I'm just not sure about application. If anyone installs it, please update us on how it performs. |
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Unregistered
Registered Users
Posts:2321
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| 09/07/2003 9:13 PM |
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I have done all the brain damage with radiant heat and all the different types of methods. I will be building a new house in the next few months and decided to go with the Warmboard product. Staple-up with radiant panels may be cheaper on initial cost, but I think if you do the math, the Warmboard it still more effective. If you consider the fact that Warmboard is your subfloor, you can deduct that cost of the original subfloor. If you pay yourself $20 per hour to staple up all the pex pipe, buy the aluminum plates and all the time to drill out all your floor joists, Warmboard makes perfect sense. Believe me, I talked to all kinds of companies tht said you could "do it yourself". Yea right. If you are into donating your time and putting up with a stiff neck from hanging all that stuff, knock your lights out. Also, if you have the pex pipe under your subfloor, I'll lay odds that if you drive a nail in from the top, you'll hit the pipe. At least with Warmboard, you can see where the pex is.
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Unregistered
Registered Users
Posts:2321
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| 10/19/2003 12:02 AM |
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I am going on the second year of living in a home with Warmboard. The stuff works great! If you chose to go the Warmboard route, keep in mind the following:
1. Warmboard is designed for floor joists on 12" or 24" centers. My house is 16" and I had to use a bunch of support blocking under the turn panels. Check the Warmboard site for a better explanation.
2. Keeping room size to multiples of 4' makes zoning much easier. In addition, The 4' multiple keeps the tubing out of the way of nailing up walls.
3. Warmboard is HEAVY! I think each 4x8 sheet is over 100lbs. Warmboard claims no additional support is required. I have a long 19' span that is bouncy. I don't know if the additonal weight is the culprit or just the span distance itself. You still may want to let your architect know about the extra psf weight of the Warmboard.
4. Installing the PEX tubing is a no-brainer and alot of money can be saved by doing it yourself. I laid all of my tubing down in my 2552 sq ft home in a single day.
5. If you are going to use carpet, I think the waffle-type rubber carpet pad is the way to go. I used the standard padding and it makes for an excellent insulation. I have three BR's and an office on a single zone. All 4 rooms had the same carpet pad and all were a bear to heat. I switched to the waffle rubber in the master BR and it made all the difference in the world. The rubber pad does cost more, but you will make up the difference in energy savings and, according to the installer, will last forever - i.e. reused for carpet replacement.
Good Luck!!!
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alternety
Registered Users
Posts:84
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| 10/19/2003 7:32 PM |
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| There was a carpet pad specifically made to use over heated floors. I used it in an installation about 12 years ago. It was a dense blue foam. Unfortunately I do not remember the name but you might try Googling about. |
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Unregistered
Registered Users
Posts:2321
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| 10/20/2003 3:56 PM |
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Folks:
Regarding carpet padding over radiant floors, a few words of caution from someone who knows an awful lot about carpet pad.
1) The dense blue pad Alternety was referring to was most likely the stuff Gypcrete sold to go underneath their Gypcrete. It was sold as a sound proofing material, not specifically as a "heat transmitting" carpet pad. It would work, but I don't think Gypcrete still offers the pad. (I might be wrong, got to check with them)
2) ALL carpet pads will DRAMATICALLY reduce the efficiency of radiant floor heating. That is just the laws of physics and heat transfer. The rubber pad might have slighly higher thermal conductivity, but don't kid yourself into thinking it is a huge difference. Rubber by it's nature is a lowsy heat transfer medium, and putting all that air into in to make the sponge, and the waffle effect only makes it worse. Yes, it is better than the urethane products 80% of residential construction is made up of, but not by much. My suggestion would be a low profile (1/4") pad of either solid rubber sponge (Commercial pad known as "Tred-Mor") or a fiber pad. Again, go low profile!
3) Don't let the sales people fool you. A good carpet will last 10-15 years easily. When you replace the carpet, replace the PAD. The other potential problem you've got is to get any decent transfer of heat through the pad and carpet, into the room, you've got to get the temperature of the water in the tubing up pretty high (130 F or more) That high heat over years WILL deteriorate the rubber padding, and cause it to become brittle and break down. Don't kid yourself into thinking it will last forever, you are asking the carpet pad (ANY of the pads currently in the residential marketplace) to do something they were not intended to do!
The bottom line, if you want radiant floor heat, put in a "Hard" floor covering such as hardwood, tile, etc. and use area rugs strategically placed. You will be MUCH happier in the long run, and not run into the problems of poor heat transfer with carpet and pad.
My $0.02 worth
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Terry Alsberg
Registered Users
Posts:11
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| 10/20/2003 7:09 PM |
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To David,
Thank you for using Warmboard. Our product has changed since you used it. It is now made out of seven layer, 1-3/32” Douglas Fir plywood which is almost 30 pounds lighter than the panel you used and no longer requires any blocking or supplemental framing. Framers find it much easier to use than our original panel.
A full discussion of structural analysis is more complicated than appropriate here but Warmboard adds about a pound per square foot of dead load above the ordinary weight of subfloor (your older panels added about 2 pounds). This is a trivial load compared, for example, to thin slabs on top of subfloor, a traditional radiant construction, which add 25 pounds per foot wet, 15 pounds dry! The bounce in your floor has nothing to do with Warmboard but probably has everything to do with the 19 foot span.
To the carpeting questions,
Carpeting need not "dramatically" degrade performance. Half my home is rich, plush 1/2" carpeting with a 3/8" slab foam rubber pad and it works wonderfully. If you start out with a poor conductor such as wood (staple up systems) or concrete (thin slab staple down systems) the additional resistance of another poor conductor such as carpet and pad may degrade system performance to the point where you cannot adequately heat your home.
However, if you start out with a highly conductive and efficient Warmboard system, the added resistance of carpeting does not significantly degrade overall performance. For example for a carpet and pad with a typical R-value of 2.0 in a room with a typical heat load of 20 BTUH/SF, an average water temperature of 125 degrees will quickly heat your room to 70 degrees. Slab foam rubber pad is available throughout North America from one of the following two manufacturers. Call their 800 numbers and they will tell you where to find it locally.
Sponge Cushion, 902 Armstrong Street, P.O. Box 709, Morris, Illinois 60450
Tel: 800-435-4062 815-942-2300 FAX: 800-423-3557
http://www.sponge-cushion.com/
FOAMEX , 1000 COLUMBIA AVENUE LINWOOD, PA 19061-3997
Executive Offices Tel 610-859-3000 800-776-3626 Fax 800-355-3626
http://www.foamex.com |
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alternety
Registered Users
Posts:84
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| 10/20/2003 8:54 PM |
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Neither of those sources are the ones I got pad material from. It was not a Gypcrete product designed to go under or over the pour. It was really a carpet pad. At the time I could find only one vendor that made that kind of material. It was pricey. I lived on those floors for 10 years. It was an uninsulated concrete slab and I ran water into it at about 120 degrees F. Wool carpet over the pad. Thermal inertia could be a real pain if outside temperatures changed very quickly. You did not want to use nightime setbacks. But if you just left it alone, it was quite comfortable.
Note that I am not recommending carpet. My next implementation will use finished concrete as the floor covering. |
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Unregistered
Registered Users
Posts:2321
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| 10/20/2003 9:14 PM |
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I considered going with a light weight concrete or gypcrete floor vs. the Warmboard, and I decided on Warmboard. I was able to get a clearance price ($99/sheet) on the older Comply style of Warmboard (the heavy kind, whew!). Other than the weight, my builder really liked working with the Warmboard. He said the tongue and grooves went together easier than 3/4 T&G. Only straights and left turns were available in the older style, so I had to route all my right turns. I went a bit crazy with zoning, so it took me three days for a 2000 sqft floor. The templates and router bit Warmboard provided worked fine, but I did have to buy another bit. I laid all the tubing in two days, but it took that long because the floor had become really dirty while construction proceeded while I was routing. Rain + sawdust + mud = hours! PUT THE TUBING IN ASAP! More than 50% of my time installing tubing was spent cleaning out the grooves.
Double check the sheet layout Warmboard sends you! They messed up and forgot the wall thickness at the starting wall in my layout so all the loops were shifted over by a 12". It was not too big of a deal, but I did have to invent some tubing layout changes at the other end of the house.
In the end, I figured that the Warmboard at the discounted price was the same cost as Gypcrete. So, the full price Warmboard may not be an equal cost to Gypcrete, perhaps 40% more (depending on many factors including the lumber, gypcrete, and labor costs in your region.) However, I believe the faster response time and the lower water temperatures will make it worth the cost. As far as carpet is concerned, I zoned all the carpeted areas separately so I can run warmer water through those if needed. And you know that the continuous sheet of aluminum conducting the heat from the tubing on top of the subfloor is going to work way better than the PEX under the subfloor, even with aluminum panels. There are thermographic photos in some threads in this forum that prove that.
I will let you know next spring how well it is working!
rbsys: what happens as soon as you get some dust on your radiant barrier? Won't that reduce it's effectiveness?
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dbalinski
Registered Users
Posts:4
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| 10/23/2003 8:20 AM |
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| We installed Warmboard in our guesthouse 3 years ago with ceramic tile and hardwood flooring. It is as good a radiant heat base as concrete which we have in the office/workshop below. The only issue we had was finding flooring contractors - no one wanted to risk puncturing the tubes, even though they could see them. We had to install the durock for the tile ourselves and we went with a floating hardwood floor, Junckers. Other than that, no problems and the framing crew said they thought it was a snap to install (with the diagrams from Warmboard engineers). Good luck |
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Bodi
Registered Users
Posts:1
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| 11/10/2003 12:50 PM |
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Has anyone used WarmBoard to dovetail to other types of radiant floor systems?
I'm assuming that the PEX tubing from warmboard can simply be manifolded with the tubing from the other systems. Any foreseeable problems?
My wife and I are about to undertake a home renovation / expansion in Vermont. The impetus being the purchase of a '50s home with a dying furnace and a leaking roof. We want to change heating systems from forced hot air to radiant floor heat. The renovation will give us an opportunity to better insulate the upstairs and roof. We will also be better insulating along the foundation when removing an oil UST next spring.
There are two rooms with existing hardwood floors that we don't want to remove - one on each floor. For those rooms we will need to do a "staple-up" system between the joists. There is also one room that is slab on grade (former garage bay that is lower than main level)which seems like a good candidate for tubing within concrete - particulary since we want to tile the floor in that room. We plan to possibly do the same to the concrete slab basement.
The remainder of the home seems suitable for Warmboard. A 500ft2 addition upstairs on top of what is now a single story section of house will be in an area with no prexisting subfloor, seemingly perfect for Warmboard. The remainder of the heating renovation is on prexisting subflooring that seems to all be comprised of 2 layers of tongue and groove white pine.
In order to keep the kitchen area flush with the hardwood in the living room & dining room area, we can either rip up this subfloor (at least one layer) along with the dead linoleum and then lay warmboard, or we can do staple up beneath that double-layer of subflooring from the basement. The staple up would be cheaper in the short term, but I'm not sure it'll be a good long term solution.
Upstairs is more complicated. The only flooring we're keeping has hardwood in a bedroom above the living room. This would require staple up. At a minimum, the living room ceiling needs retapping and finishing anyway, so redoing the drywell isn't seen as too big a waste. The rest of the existing upstairs is all built above slab on grade, above two existing garage bays and one former garage bay. This is significant because the floors in these rooms are lower (a step down) from the bedroom with hardwood - which is built above the basement portion of the home. The addition will be adding a second floor above the remainder of the basement - presumably also a step up. We can either add additional floor joists to raise the lower portion of flooring to become flush with the rest of the second floor (requiring the stairs to be redone), or settle on a step up to both the "masterbedroom suite" and the hardwood bedroom. The latter would require removing some of the subflooring to avoid also needing to redo the stairs. The latter would also limit flexibility in any future floor plan changes given the different flooring heights.
Lastly, we have some Cherry trees being cut by a portable sawmill for flooring the remainder of the second floor, but it won't be ready until several months after the addition is finished. It seems like we can just throw the existing carpeting and some other covering over the WarmBoard to protect it until we're ready to install. Seem reasonable?
Sorry for such a long post. Any suggestions or advice is greatly appreciated. - Bodi
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Terry Alsberg
Registered Users
Posts:11
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| 11/12/2003 3:45 PM |
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We do lots of hybrid systems at Warmboard, such as what you have described. The non Warmboard portions just need to be on their own loops and need to have their own therrmostats and accuators. If you wish to cover the Warmboard until your hardwood is properly air dried there is no problem with using a some old carpeting to cover the WB.
As to your other issues, all remodel/additions tend to have a plethora of the sort of problems that you cite. There is always a certain amount of head scratching and creativity required to get the result you wish. The important thing is to remember that the hoped for result is a remodel that does not appear to be a remodel and which functions as close as is possible like a home that was created from a blank sheet of paper. In general, remember that construction takes a relatively short time compared to all the years you will live in and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
I have rarely seen an apparent short cut, that compromises quality, pay off in the end. If you have to demolish a little more than your hoped it is often a better compromise than having too much of a patchwork. |
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Unregistered
Registered Users
Posts:2321
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| 11/22/2003 9:09 PM |
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After the warmboard is installed, do you put the pex tubing as soon as you finish? If you do, won't the subcontractors step on the tubing and puncture it? I'm just courious how the procedure works.
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Terry Alsberg
Registered Users
Posts:11
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| 12/03/2003 2:26 PM |
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This has been a great thread with many good questions which, while impossible to answer in depth, I will try to address briefly. For more in depth information feel free to call me at 877-338-5493 or email alsberg@warmboard.com.
Cost issues: We have done extensive cost analysis of overall completed system cost of Warmboard vs. many alternatives such as gypsum slabs, staple up etc. We include in this analysis differences in labor costs, differences in hydronic equipment costs (e.g. Warmboard’s superior conductivity allows less tubing, manifolds, controls and the labor to install them) differences in the costs of installing finish floor goods and many other factors. We can do a spread sheet comparing these costs for individual projects for anybody that requests it. It routinely indicates that completed Warmboard based systems are either on par with or cheaper than the alternatives. We are confident that enjoying the superior performance of a Warmboard systems need not cost you more, and can in many instances be the least expensive installation. We are especially certain that Warmboard will always deliver the fastest response to changing heat loads, lowest supply water temperatures, most even floor temperatures and the greatest flexibility in choosing floor coverings
Installation issues: The labor cost for installing tubing is lowest when tubing is placed in our channels immediately after the panels are nailed down. Most who choose this method manage to avoid nailing into the easily visible tubes or cutting them with a sharp tool such as skil saw or sheet rock knife. Only a reasonable level of care is necessary. Ordinary construction activity such as walking on the tubes, dragging ladders across the loor, dropping lumber onto the floor etc. does not result in damage. However about 20% of our installations nonetheless choose to install tubing after walls are in place which raises the labor cost somewhat. Those that choose this method are trading a relatively small labor cost increase for increased peace of mind. Each contractor must weigh the trade offs and choose for themselves the method that best suits them and we are happy to design the system for either method.
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Unregistered
Registered Users
Posts:2321
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| 12/13/2003 5:39 PM |
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Business must be good for Warmboard. I spoke to the rep and sent him a CAD file to help me with the layout. That was 3 weeks ago. I still have not gotten any response. I'm not going to use the Warmboard product becaue their inability to repsond to customers needs. I have heard this from other people on the Internet. Now I know what they are talking about. For the $169 a 4 X 8 sheet, you would think they would respond to customers who have a 4000 sq ft job. I am not impressed with Warmboard support!
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Unregistered
Registered Users
Posts:2321
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| 01/13/2004 11:30 AM |
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I hope this thread can continue just a bit. I am looking at WarmBoard for a heating retrofit of a detached "bonus room". The room is built on a concrete slab and I am confident the slab has no insulation under it. I can't find any consistent and authoratative recomendation for how to apply WarmBoard (or any other subfloor) that takes into account insulation of the slab. I find various outlines/ideas that suggest various combinations of vapor barrier, rigid insulation, & sleepers (with subflooring attaching to the sleepers or simply floating on the rigid insulation).
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Unregistered
Registered Users
Posts:2321
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| 01/14/2004 10:46 PM |
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You should check out a product called thermalboard (i think it is also called thermaltrack). From what I hear it is thinner(5/8"), lighter and easier to install (just lay it over your subfloor). It is pretty new but it might be worth looking at.
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Unregistered
Registered Users
Posts:2321
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| 01/27/2004 3:31 PM |
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Can somebody answer me this question:
If Warmboard cost $169 for a 4x8 sheet,why can't I make my own "warmboard"? Instal 3/4" subfloor, Insultarp, and then nail down 6-10 inch wide CDX ply strips, leaving 3/4" gaps in between for tubing?
Or just install 2 sheets of ply and then cut out lines for tubing with a router? In this case putting insulation from under.
If this would work it be three times less for the materials!
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