Pex tubing under existing wood floor
<!—-><!—-> <!—->I am looking to replace the heating system in my home with radiant under floor heating using a product called Joist trak. My question is how is this going to affect my existing wood floor which is ¾ x 2†inch oak strip over ¾ inch pine board that was originally installed in 1935? I am concerned about movement and buckling.
Replies
To really determine any meaningful answer you need to know what the heat loss of the house is, and the type of temperatures you will need to run in the tubing to achieve the proper heating. I'm doing a bit of an experiment at my home in nh with a 6" wide pine floor directly over radiant tube on top of the subfloor. Kind of a sandwich arrangement. We will see how it does this winter. This is in a very tight sip house and my water temps are very low. IIRC the high end of the design temp was around 120. From my experience last year I don't think the tubing ever got much over 90 or so. The tile floors occasionally felt warm, but far less so than I would have expected.
Edited 9/10/2008 7:58 pm ET by TomW
I'm no expert, but I would think that flooring that has been around for that long is pretty damn stable and that thermally cycling it some is not going to be a big deal. It does anyway when you turn heat on/off and when sun shines on it. I'm guessing that the higher temp of the radiant floor won't be an issue. Don't take my word for it, though .... get these other guys to chime in w/ their 2 cents.
I'll second clewless1. my only concern would be that your load might be very high and radiant might not be adequate in an old house, unless you've done significant envelope rehab to it at some point (window replacements, insulation updates, etc). If you haven't, those things should always be done first.-------------------------------------
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