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Paul Schwebel
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Posts:1
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| 09/27/2008 6:14 PM |
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Our old (100+ years) house needs to have our ancient floor furnace replaced. Radiant floor heat is the most attractive. Our floor is old 3 1/4" fir boards on redwood floor beams, no subfloor. Three of the six rooms have 2" oak nailed on top of the fir. Bathroom has tile. Kitchen is about 5 layers of linoleum.
One of the HVAC experts made the point that in a house like ours, an old house over a large crawlspace (this is Northern California), the wood flooring above the crawlspace is acclimated to the moisture content. His point is that the radiant heat will dry out the floor and ruin it. In such a case, he suggests baseboard radiators.
What is the experience of the green building community here?
Thank you for any insights you can offer.
-Paul
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ground.loop@yahoo.com
Registered Users
Posts:4
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| 11/15/2008 5:52 PM |
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I am not familiar with the acclimated to moisture comment, however there is product that is called ultra-fin which can be used as a radiant product under the floor, also staple up could be used as it would alow the use of low water temperature which is good fit for efficiency in boilers.
another choice if the radiant floor is not, look at the european style radiators one manufacuturer is Myson. They alow you to use lower temperature water also but mount on a wall in many different sizes and shapes. I would stay away from baseboard if you could since it requires medium to high water temps which are not as efficeint to opperate.
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Dana1
Registered Users
Posts:27
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| 11/18/2008 11:44 AM |
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I don't have a lot of experience with antiques like this, but the rule of thumb out there seems to be that with floor-thermostats limiting the floor temp to a maximum of ~85F or so and water under 130F you don't have much to worry about in regard to splitting or damaging the wood. Those temps may not be high enough to fully heat the house on "design-day" (the coldest hours of the coldest days) though. But it WILL likely be enough to heat the house most of the time, and provide the creature comfort of warm floors. It's not uncommon to have a combination of radiant floor with baseboards to pick up the slack. Then, just keep the floors at a constant temperature with a floor thermostat and let the baseboards control the room-air temperature. Running constant floor temps of ~75F in combination with baseboards is probably a safe compromise for comfort & efficiency.
Planking widths up to 3" on the finished floor is the rule of thumb to avoid inter-plank gapping due to seasonal moisture changes. At 3-1/4 your're BARELY over the rule of thumb- I woudn't worry about it too much, especially if you use floor thermostats & lower temps. It's just a rule of thumb, not a hard-limit, but something to keep in mind.
"Acclimated to the moisture content" seems a somewhat unscientific description. Rapid drying, not the absolute moisture content is more likely to cause damage than keeping the wood at a constant temp through variations in air-humidity. (Unless you're living in high altitude or desert conditions over-drying the wood to the point of splits is very unlikely- just don't abuse it with high differences in temperature.) With retrofit radiant floors you'll be insulating and air-sealing (but not necessarily vapor-sealing) the floor from below, which would keep the humidity under the wood flooring similar to that of the room. While "cooking" the wood with supply temps of 150F+ might induce sufficiently rapid moisture change within the wood to cause a split, you shouldn't have a problem even at 80F floors (10-15F above the room temp) and 130F supply water or below. (FWIW- I run 130F water under 2" wide birch flooring without floor thermostats in my house in New England, but it's a plywood sub-floor above insulated basement- not exactly your scenario.) |
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