I thought I was very comfortable with the topic of radiant floor heating. I designed a house in 1997 that uses both hydronic and forced air, and have had the enjoyment that comes from warm floors as well as the air conditioning and air filtration that comes from a forced air system. When building a new house, my wife and I decided on the same strategy; only this time, we would use a more modern radiant floor heating system. My general contractor had a client who had installed Warmboard, so he suggested I look into that system. Whoever came up with the concept for Warmboard deserves some congratulations. The concept of routing a channel into plywood floorboards is a good one. Our problems have been entirely with the absence of customer support. When starting out, I made it clear to the Warmboard people that my contractor would need lots of hand-holding during this very complicated installation. After more than a year of construction, I am regretting the time and expense that have gone into our floor heating. The Warmboard system requires electricians and plumbers, besides the carpenters who are laying the floor boards. The issue with that is it is next to impossible to call back an electrician when you've arrived at the phase for installing thermostats. The same goes for calling back the plumber when you need to connect something later on in the project. On two occasions, the people from Warmboard promised to make a site visit to walk through the project with me and the general contractor. On both occasions, the company failed to show up. After a year of construction, we were informed that we needed to have eye-level thermostats with 120v power throughout the house. This means breaking open new drywall to run wiring. I was relying on the customer support to keep my contractor up to speed with the installation. Instead, I was chastised for not reading a "page 17" in the installation manual ! When building a home, there are three important considerations: One is cost. This system is VERY pricey! Second is how the installation meshes with the construction timeline. Does it cause lots of delays? This certainly has led to many long delays because of having to call back plumbers and electricians, as well as having to cut into already finished walls. Third is the long-term value of the finished product. For that, only time will tell. I don't believe we have added that much to the resale value of the home. For anyone building a home today, the subject of customer service is one that is inescapable. If this company had reliable customer service, the cost might be justifiable. Unfortunately, this is NOT the case.

My opinion - its unfair to blame Warmboard for problems that should have been addressed in the design phase.

You dont mention a HVAC contractor or a HVAC design firm - normally on a residential geo install, they would be the ones that would pull together the hydronic tubing install, tubing layout and control system design. Not the plumber, carpenters or emitter supplier. Warmboard is an expensive alternative to pouring a lightweight concrete slab and embedding the the infloor tubing in concrete. The thermal mass of warmboard is much less so your floors can respond quicker to changes in heating demand , which can be either an advantage or a disadvantage depending on your particular climatic situation.

Thermostats are generally powered by 24V AC, not 120 VAC. If I was you with a home needing thermostats and drywall has already been installed, I would seriously consider using a wireless thermostat powered by battery.

My opinion as well... Material suppliers don't do the design or installation. It is the responsibility of the home owner to hire a competent general contractor. It is the responsibility of the general contractor to hire component subcontractors. It is the responsibility of the subcontractor to competently install the materials they use in their trade.

Warmboard is a good product with nearly equal performance to thin slab performance. Standard concrete slab has by far the best performance, but also has the longest response time so a proper integrated building design has to be first accomplished, i.e., a design that uses high interior thermal mass and is well-insulated and well-sealed making the interior temperature insensitive to the outdoor temperature variations. This was how we designed our personal total 4000 SF of living space located in remote southern Oregon which we can heat for about $15/month using a low cost and simple electric NextGen Boiler designed expressly for hydronic radiant heating when we also use our wood fired masonry heater for 60 minutes every 3 days. And about $30/month when we don't use our masonry heater.

https://www.borstengineeringconstruction.com/Masonry_Heater_Builders.pdf

https://www.borstengineeringconstruction.com/NextGen_Boiler.pdf

Our home is a single level, passive solar cooling/heating design, and constructed using ICF, so no AC is needed or used even with our triple digit summer temps. Construction photos may be found here if interested:

https://www.borstengineeringconstruction.com/About-Us.html

Gayle

Duplicate

I use 24vac relays off an Ecobee therm to turn on 120vac heated floor pumps.

First stage turns on the floor pumps and second stage turns on the geo...

Where are you located?

You are trying to turn on the system or fix a problem?