radiant floor retrofit

[frdsuperduty]

I need to heat my 32x20 attached garage.Ive insulated the doors and the other three walls are insulated according to the builder.Ive had radiant floors before and loved them.The house is in southern Delaware. We dont get much snow but it can still get too cold to work comfortably.I get cold from my feet up on cold concrete so heated floors would be great.I had a contractor over today to discuss cutting grooves in the floor for the tubing .This would then be covered with cement.Then the floor would be sanded and finally covered with a high quality epoxy.He is preparing an estimate and says no problem.Has anyone done this?Any thoughts?

 

[Boomer343]

I assume it's a floating pad or on piles so I'd also get an estimate to cut it out and haul it away, insulate under the pad, do the heating then pour a new floor. I'd hate to put a bunch of money into the pad only to find it wasn't thick enough for a hoist for example or had other issues.

 

[frdsuperduty]

Thanks but thats way to big a project.The grooves would be cut away from potential lift area.

 

[Bondo]

Ayuh,.... Yer problem is gonna be tryin' to keep an uninsulated slab at temp,....

 

[Voi]

I occasionally see insulated subfloor systems designed for hydronic radiant heat. Green Edge Technologies makes one designed to have concrete poured over it.

I'm not affiliated with this company in any way. They just happen to advertise on my local Craigslist under Materials.

Here is a picture of one of the insulated foam panels. The ad suggests a price of around $1.33 per square foot.

 

[frdsuperduty]

Yea,I didnt think about that.Back to square one.

 

[sickjuice]

Thanks but thats way to big a project.The grooves would be cut away from potential lift area.

Labor is expensive. Not sure where you are but around here it would be cheaper to jack out the slab. Then again I can't pick up mexicans in the home depot parking lot up here

 

[Voi]

There are a few more of the molded/insulated PEX forms in a thread in the Heating and AC subforum.

The thread in question is here:

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=277139

The products mentioned are:

http://www.ezfloor.com/

Heat-Sheet from Beaver Plastics: http://www.beaverplastics.com/#construction

http://www.crete-heat.com/

I'd send a PM to a moderator and see if you can get this thread moved over to the Heating and AC subforum or maybe just start a new thread over there.

 

[993 man cave]

Around here (ct) we need 3" of rigid insulation under a slab if we are doing radiant heat as a primary heat source. I think that is about r12-r15 depending on type, I would not want to spend all that money on the system only for it not to perform as anticipated.

 

[rburke65]

Where is "around here"?