If you are building a home or planning a major renovation, radiant heating may be the perfect solution for your heating needs. Radiant heat systems have been around in one shape or another since primitive times. While forced air systems are the norm today, radiant heating is still a viable, affordable option for many homes.

What Is Radiant Heat Anyway?

Radiant heat happens when heat transfers from a warm space to a cooler one. The classic example is the use of radiators in older homes. Those old cast-iron pieces were attached to a network of hot water pipes. A boiler in the basement sent hot water through all the pipes out to the radiators. The heat of the hot water would warm up the radiator. That in turn would heat the air in the room. That is how radiant heat works.

Modern radiant heat systems work much the same as the old radiator/boiler systems. Each room has its own heating component. It might be a network of pipes under the floor that radiate heat up. It might be a panel on the wall that radiates heat out into the room. The systems can be fed with hot water, like the older radiator systems, or it can involve electric heating elements heating the surface that radiates the heat.

What Are the Advantages of Radiant Heat?

Using radiant heat has certain advantages over other heating systems.

  • Rooms heated with this method are more comfortable than those heated with forced air. Objects in a room heated this way retain heat after the heating source has turned off.
  • It is easy to zone a house with radiant heat. Zoning systems allow independent temperature control from floor to floor, or room to room.
  • Many homes with radiant heat tend to have lower energy bills.

Because radiant heat systems usually install inside a wall or the floor, most homeowners wait until they are doing a renovation or building a new house to have such a system installed. It’s imperative to have an experienced contractor size the system and do the installation.

For more information on radiant heating systems, please contact us at Stack Heating & Cooling. We have been serving our neighbors in Northeast Ohio since 1976.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Cleveland, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about radiant heating and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

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