Electric Heating Systems

Infloor heating is one of the best heating systems you can have in your home. Why? Imagine no clanking radiators keeping you awake, no vents shooting out air and coughing out dust, no ducts to get clogged. You get a blanket of heat under your feet and warming your home. It's completely invisible, and actually very efficient... keeping your energy costs down while keeping your home toasty warm.

Infloor Heating vs Forced-Air Heating
With a forced-air system, hot air bows out from your vents or registers and quickly rises to the ceiling, where some of that heat gets lost. As the air cools, it comes back down. Because of this, you get a very uneven heating. Your head might feel warm, while your knees are chilly! Your furnace cycles as well. Once you turn it on, the air heats up to the desired temperature and then the furnace cycles off and you get ups and downs with heat.

Radiant floor heating systems, on the other hand, heat from the bottom up. The heat either comes from electric cables or hot-water pipes underneath the flooring. As the heat rises, it travels through objects, like your furniture, which helps to distribute the heat throughout the room. Also, you feel the heat right where you are... from your feet up. The warm air rises evenly over the floor area, and the cold air is kept at the top of the room.

Sources Of Heat
There are two ways of heating your floor, electric floor heating or hydronic heating. Electric heating uses wire in a zig-zag pattern under the floor, and is usually used in a single room like a bathroom or a kitchen. Hydronic systems use hot water to heat the floor, and for large areas are much more cost-effective. These use flexible tubing either on top of the sub-floor or even embedded in concrete. They circulate water from your water heater or your boiler. You can then install almost any type of flooring overtop, even hardwood flooring. The heat produced by the tubing or wires will not warp wood.

Costs
Electric floor heat or hydronic floor heating are going to cost more at the outset that other heating systems. Generally, they will cost somewhere between six and fifteen dollars per square foot. Of course, the cost also depends on the method that you are using, where you live, and if you are starting from scratch with a new build or are retrofitting your existing house. And for cooling your house, you will still need to use an air conditioner. This can put some people off at first.
But once you have infloor heating installed, you will recoup your costs. Radiant floor heating is up to thirty percent more efficient than forced-air. You will be able to keep your thermostat lower, which translated in to savings on your energy bill. And of course, this type of heating is always more comfortable... making it well worth the initial cost, even if there were no additional energy savings to be had