I live in a moderately old house (1924), It pretty much is a 2 story 24×24 foot box. We have steam heat, but, the steam heat is pushed through cast iron pipes. I have already had to pull radiators out of two rooms and cap the pipes in the basement due to leaks/ cracks in the heating system. I do not want to pull down the walls (thick stucco on plaster and lathe) but, I need to start thinking about how I will handle the next failure.
In the house I have 3/4inch thick by 2 3/4 wide pine floors on the second floor and 3/4 inch thick by 2 3/4 inch oak on the first floor. The floors where poorly laid down with gapping and significant scarring from the prior owners.
I am pondering ripping up the floor, laying down warmboard or a similar radiant heat underlayment, and then putting a laminate floor over the top of it, I could leave all the heat pipes in the walls, and just pull out the radiators. I would also finally be able to cut the stupid pipes that run the whole perimeter of my basement ceiling that I constantly bang my head on out too.
I am hoping that I could also pull the pex tubing up the walls without tearing them open, but this might be wishful thinking.
I am concerned that raising the height of the floor 1/4 ” might throw the steps off enough to become a code violation, and I do not think that I want to try to drop the ceilings and staple the under floor radiant up
I have tons of cut nails (old square wire nails) hanging down in each stud bay….
I know there is no easy way, but I would like away that is less hard.
Jeff
Replies
Jeff, If I didn't know better I would think that your living in my house. My wife and I are planning to put an addition on our house and have done a lot of research on the radiant heat. Like you we have steam radiators but our pipes that supply second floor radiators are run outside (exposed) the walls. The layout of house is such that these pipes are located in the corners of the rooms of the first floor and we have been able to decorate around them. They are also easy to replace when they fail. I'm not an expert in radiant heat but as I said I have done a lot of research and my mother-in-law's neighbor is a Wirsbo sales rep. Wirsbo makes a product called QuickTrak which are small plywood panels with an aluminum sheet attached to transfer heat. These panels are only 1/2" thick and will hold 5/16" pex tubing. My thought is if you tear out your old flooring install quicktrak and then install laminate flooring your finished floor height will be almost the same as the old hard wood. The other important thing is to do a heat loss calculation to see if the 5/16" tubing will deliver enough heat. As for running pex through the wall, I don't know. I think the max length of 5/16 tubing is 250'. I think you should try to get the manifold on the second floor and the run your tubing loops from that point. In closing the radiant manufactures offer design and technical assistance.
Billy