Radiant Floor Heating with Heat Pump
Perhaps the best matched heating system for any heat pump is radiant floor hydronic heating. The reason is simple – the lower the design temperature, the higher the performance of a heat pump.
Radiant floors typically require between 110-120ºF supply temperature and larger systems can be as low as 80-90ºF. This lower design temperature/higher performance is true for any type of heat pump, including geothermal systems. Matter of fact, all modern hydronic heating is designed around lower temperatures; condensing gas boilers, solar thermal and heat pumps all work better at lower design temperatures.
Why a heat pump is ideal for radiant floor heating
Radiant floor heating is ideal for a heat pumps because of its lower design temperature, but also because it has a larger buffer mass versus other heating emitters. A large mass allows the heat pump to have to make smaller temperature shifts – but at the same time – the mass can hold large amounts of energy, reducing the short cycling of heat pumps.
The Arctic Heat Pump can adjust its frequency to match the load, which results in the highest performance output.
Because radiant floor is a very stable heat mass, the Arctic Heat Pump can tune itself to match the load and hold its frequency to match the load much better than other types of emitters that dissipate the energy quickly. As an example – a forced air furnace has little mass and is much harder to maintain an exact temperature, it requires more on/off cycles.
Radiant Floor Installation Options
There are four main ways to introduce radian floor heating when using a heat pump. The more mass you have, the better, so concrete slab or suspended slab are always best. There are also some good products that use aluminum plates and can be installed between joists or above the plywood subfloor.
concrete slab installation
suspended slab installation
staple-up installation
plywood & plates installation
Complete Hydronic Control
The Arctic Heat Pump can integrate into any radiant floor heating design, and replace any gas or electric boiler.
Using a buffer tank, we can set the heat pump to perform at the minimum design temperature and hold that temperature with in the buffer tanks. From here the system can deliver heat to any part of the house by removing the energy in the buffer tank.
FREE DESIGN
by our experts
When you choose to work with Arctic Heat for your radiant floor heating, we are happy to provide you with a. FREE design.
We can supply you with all the materials and controls for any type of radiant floor heating project, including correctly calculating and supplying the PEX and manifolds, controllers, and pumps. We also have aluminum plates for between joist or above subfloor installations.
We will supply you with a full CAD drawing to give to your contractor, or you can DIY with our plans.
We use only quality equipment such a Caleffi, PAW, Grundfos, RESOL and our prices are hard to beat!
