Comparing Benefits of Radiant Floor Heating vs. Forced Air Furnace

When choosing a new heating system, it’s important to choose the best one based on your household’s needs. Forced air heating systems are the predominant choice for homeowners, but they can make it difficult to maintain home comfort without constantly adjusting the thermostat. Installing radiant floor heating provides an effective alternative for quiet and even heat without the inefficiencies and disadvantages of traditional heating.

Forcing Warm Air

Forced air heating relies on ductwork to move warmed air from the furnace around the home and into living spaces through vents and grates. That air may then travel through attics, basements, or other uninsulated spaces, where parasitic heat loss allows heat to seep out through leaks in ductwork.

Simultaneously, warmed air will tend to rise and result in stratification, where the center and bottom areas of living spaces remain cooler. Furthermore, the overall heating system will oscillate back and forth between intensive heating and cooling off. All of these issues, alongside the difficulty of coordinating zones within forced hot air systems, make radiant floor heating an important alternative for constantly adjusting the thermostat.

Heating From the Ground Up

Radiant floor systems heat through panels embedded in the floor and so provide a wide array of benefits over traditional forced-air systems. These benefits include:

• Energy savings through 50 percent of heat produced by infrared light.
• The prevention of parasitic heat loss due to the lack of ductwork or grates, even as allergy problems resulting from dirty ducts are minimized.
• Continuous warmth rather than drastic changes through blasts of hot air.
• The prevention of stratification and 30 percent greater energy efficiency by heating from the floor rather than ceiling vents. Each of these benefits combined will allow you to set the thermostat lower and so save money by cutting energy use and eliminating the need to constantly readjust temperature settings.

At Sobieski Services, Inc., our goal is to help our customers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey learn more about energy and home comfort issues – especially HVAC and plumbing issues – so that they can save money and live in healthier, more comfortable homes.

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