Warm Floors
Warm Floors, or under floor heating is something that many homes throughout the world have. There is truly nothing worse than having a home with cool floors, especially if the rest of the home is warm enough. The floor heats up and cools down like the rest of the area surrounding you, through radiant heat. What this means is that during periods where the temperature is very cold, your floor becomes freezing to walk on. If you notice the difference between walking around your home in socks and without socks, you can begin to understand how unpleasant it can be walking on cold surfaces. If you have carpet it’s not always so bad, but it’s still considerably more unpleasant than feeling that warm feeling on your toes!
Under floor heating is quite simple, and is most commonly used in bathrooms, for when you get out of a shower and you are dripping with water. In some countries though, under floor heating is throughout the entire house, which means that wherever you walk you can enjoy warm feet! Warm Floors are a luxury which you can do without, but when it’s minus temperatures outside it’s a great luxury to have! In some cases, Warm Floors are designed to heat the whole house up. This is done because the radiant warmth from the floor heats up the air above and hence the entire house.
This has a few advantages, but the main one being the lack of air movement. In cases where people are severely asthmatic, having little air flow can be very beneficial. However, by having under floor heating you are not heating things very efficiently. The sole reason for this is that as well as heating the floor you stand on and then the air above it, it also warms whatever is below. The energy that heats anything below the floor (concrete slabs and soil) is basically wasted, whereas all of the hot air that comes out of a heater or reverse cycle air conditioner is put to good use.
The other major disadvantage of having Warm Floors is that you find them hard to access if anything goes wrong. For example, if a pipe or wire breaks then you’re heating will no longer work and you will have to pull up everything (furniture, concrete covering, tiles or carpet and anything else that is in the way). If you have an air conditioner or heater then you can easily fix them as nothing is obstructing your access.
Asides from these negatives, Warm Floors are incredibly comfortable to walk on, which explains why so many people still choose to get them. You don’t need to have it in every single room, but in the ones that you spend the most time in it is sure worth the extra money. Warm Floors are created either through the hot water system, or it is done electrically. If it is done by a hot water system, you just have a series of copper pipes which run back and forth along the length of the room. Hot water from your hot water system is then pumped along these pipes, and circulated around and around (much like the radiator in your vehicle).
The hot water warms up anything around the copper pipes, which just so happens to be the floor. The electrical way of creating warm floors is done in a similar manner to an electric blanket. Both techniques are popular, but depending on the temperatures that you experience, and the number of square meters that you want to make warm floors, electric or hot water warm floors will have their own advantages.
Being an extremity of your body, your feet do tend to get cold very easily. Unless you have a heater close by you often find that they will get very cold, especially because heat rises. Even in a warm room the bottom 10 cm can be quite cold, which is enough to keep your toes and feet cool. This is highly uncomfortable and can only be overcome by fitting warm floors or by having a heater nearby which keeps your feet warm. Alternatively, if you are sitting down you can have your feet on a special electric plate which can keep your feet warm. However, it’s not so easy to move around with it on your feet! I have always loved floors that have a little bit of absorption available, as a pose to rock solid flooring. Something that I particularly like is Discount Cork Flooring as it has a little bit of sponge, its long lasting and best of all it looks great.
