Radiant Floor Heating an Engineered Slab

[67ghiaTIV]

The ball has started rolling and could use some help.

I am having an engineered slab poured for my garage floor. The perimeter 12"will be 17" thick and taper up to 6"thick through the middle of the garage.

I understand the concept of heating a slab on grade but with the volume of concrete around the edge how would I place the tubing.

Has anyone done Radiant Floor Heating in an Engineered Slab?

Thanks,
Jamie

 

[turbod7]

I have basically the same setup as you I have a 12" thickened edge that tapers up to 5" throughout. You want to make sure you insulate under the thickened edge then obviously under the slab itself, I used Owens Corning 2" foamular 250. I ran my wirsbo tubing basically right up to where the taper meets the main slab as I used 6" block. There is no tubing under the block. I insulated with the same foam along the outside of the thickened edge up to the block. Hope this helps.

 

[Joe Cool]

Here is a photo of how my tubing was routing. Basically the tubing is secured on the same horizontal plane as the rest of the slab.

Hope this helps.

 

[Rookie2]

If you have exposed concrete without at least 2" of foam board down 24" you will loosing a ton of heat !

Keep the pex in away from the outside edge , any drilling for anchor bolts will make you cry when you drill into a tube.

 

[Rookie2]

Yes ! or thicker and or deeper ! Radiant floor heat will heat down to around 6 feet. ( down south here) . I went thru the manuals from Wirsbo back in the 1990's .

 

[turbod7]

Here is a pic before I poured my floor.

 

[4 FN 27]

So what you are saying is run a vertical 2" thick sheet of foam board, down 24" as a thermal break to the horizontal slab.

Any reply is appreciated. - RLW

I couldn't agree more. I poured ICF Foundation Walls all the way around the building. The Worsbo was concentrated around the exterior of the building with more towards the Garage Doors. The storage area is 80 x 80. So heating around the outside creates a convection effect causing the air in the room to circulate. Placing thermometers around the area last winter the temp was a very consistent 50°.

The ICF Walls keep the heat from migrating out of the building.

In the dividing walls between the Machine Shop, Car Shop, Storage Are and Office we added thermal breaks since all those areas are zoned differently. In the future if I decided not to heat the Storage area there is a thermal break and no heat lose from the adjacent Car Shop and Machine Shop through the slab.

 

[67ghiaTIV]

Thanks everyone. I was over complicating it. Talked with my concrete guy and I will tie to the wire mesh and keep it around 3" from the surface. I'll stay 1 ft from the outer edges.
Insulation under the slab and around the slab walls. May even add the Horizontal wings to keep the frost away.

Thanks again,
Jamie

 

[Yourfired]

If your weather conditions re extremely frigid in the winter, you might want to consider an anti-freeze mixture for you radiant floor heating. Even a 40-60 mix-up will do wonders for your system and keep your tubing from freezing up.