[Greenbuilding] Air-heated slabs

[Alan Abrams]

some thoughts:

a well insulated slab in a well insulated house (waddever that might be)
will be room temperature-ie, reasonably comfortable all by itself.

conversely, to do a heated slab in a well insulated house means that the
slab could not be heated too much to begin with, without overheating the
space--given its typical area relative to the envelope.

further--given that modulating the temp of a slab--to respond to sudden
changes, say, in ambient conditions--or a lot of cooking for a house party,
etc-- is a sluggish affair with any radiant floor system--not to mention
the risk of contamination in ducts that cannot be accessed without a 90#
pavement breaker--I'd forgo the radiant floor and lay floating cork over
the slab (which is as comfortable a floor you can have, IMO), and pocket
the difference.

AA

On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 2:02 PM, RT <archilogic at yahoo.ca> wrote:

>
> And while I'm here, and for the same reason (quiet list) I thought I'd
> toss the following  out for comment.
>
> In my immediate neighbourhood there two expanded polystyrene (EPS)
> insulating concrete form (ICF) homes (one built two years ago, one
> currently being built) that chose to use heated air rather than hydronics
> to heat the slab-on-grade floor.
>
> They both use closely-spaced runs (24" o/c or less ?) of small diameter (4
> inch ? or less ) sheet metal ducts embedded in the concrete.
>
> Me ? I think that it's a dumb idea for a number of reasons but it'd be
> interesting to hear from others what they think , pro or con.
>
>
> --
> === * ===
>                       AOD257
> Rob Tom
> Kanata, Ontario, Canada
>
> < A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  c a  >
> (manually winnow the chaff from my edress if you hit "reply")
>
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