Hi all, new to forums. Very good information on radiant heating on here.

I am considering doing radiant heat in my place. I was wondering what would be the ball range to have someone design a radiant system. I would provide the heat load calculations and floor plan of the house.

I have visited a few sites and some that even say they offer free design of the system if you buy the system from them.

Nothing is free. But material sales can subsidize design charges, it's true. What you get for "free" is a question too, of course. It's not hard to dump heat in a room. But to reach for true comfort and efficiency, that takes a bit more work. Naturally I have my own biases on the matter and a lot depends on what you're trying to get in terms of quality.

I can say that I personally almost never work from a load calc by others, unless a particular project requires it. It's the entire basis for the design and if it's wrong everything they do after that will be wrong too so if a designer guarantees results, that really muddies the waters... is the design wrong, or the load calc it's based on?

I can understand what you mean by materials justifying cost of design. But what type of quality the design will be is questionable.

I guess I am looking for an independant contractor to design the system based on my load calculations. I am certified in the HVAC industry so the load calculation isn't a problem for me. I do the calculations by hand and then run it by software to double check the work. This would be my first radiant system install so having the system designed by someone with experience would work best for me.

Rob is right again.

Load calcs are different for radiant floors as they lower the load. The load dictates the various options e.g. slab, sub-floor, sandwich, wall and ceiling. To answer your question my residential design fees start at $500.00.

I design systems every day using radiant floors, but also use many European style steel wall panels.

http://badgerboilerservice.com/radiators.aspx