Of course it is all about design temperatures and ROI.

Exactly. And you can improve them by placing the tubing as described by Siegenthaler. It doesn't matter whether you've placed 3 million or 3 billion feet of tubing. The issue isn't that one way or the other is going to catastrophically fail, the issue is about the efficiency of the installation. Actually, if you've placed 3 million feet, someone can probably calculate how much extra energy you've caused to be wasted. The reason it ceases to be an issue for our Swedish friends is that they use inordinately large amounts of insulation in and around their slabs. No one is attacking the way they do it, because the inefficiencies trend toward nothing.

Posted By BadgerBoilerMN on 08 Mar 2014 09:53 AM
Sorry warimoto;

I was being facetious. I couldn't agree more. I too have been fixing radiant floor tubing to the bottom of 4 inch concrete slabs for a couple of decades and found them more than satisfactory. Between 1990 & 1995 we had roughly 3 million feet of polybutylene tucked neatly at the bottom of concrete slabs all over N. America,out of one little distributor I used to operate. Some of the commercial systems were even installed over bear ground! Imagine. Of course it is all about design temperatures and ROI.

I find more than interesting, the reduction of electrical use in Sweden primarily attributed to the use of heat pumps, as apposed to increased insulation, conservation et al. This makes sense, as there are many more houses renovated than built new.

http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:587720/FULLTEXT01.pdf


Your cost of electricity is exactly what we pay in Minneapolis, but you do have the Greener advantage (low carbon footprint) afforded by Nuclear power and to a lesser degree hydro. Reinvesting this windfall in alternative energy seems to be paying dividends.

Do you find most of the radiant floors you have installed driven by heat pumps, district energy, bio-fuels?

Thank you for sharing.

Distric heating are the most common soure in Sweden. I live in Stockholm capital of Sweden. We have 26 primary municipalities in Stockholm who owns the land that we usually build on. they are required to build roads, install electricity, water, TV, internet and distric heating.

biofuels such as pellets, wood chips are popular in rural areas, especially in northern Sweden, many working in the forestry industry.

geothermal heating is popular in older homes that have  radiators. It is simple and cheap to conect to the existing system.

Heatpumps are very popular in big cities. I live in a muncipality where distric heating  are not installed to every street  so heatpumps are really populare here .


The company that i work for are currently building  91 rental apartments consisting of 6  3 and 4 storyhouses.  The primary heating source there will be geothermal which is very unusal .. but kinda cool imho