Radiant Heat And Wood Floors

With more and more retrofit projects adopting in-floor heating, it is paramount for developers to know the best practices when it comes to wooden floors. Usually, experts working with wooden floors attach under floor heating tubes either on the underside of the floor or on the subfloor top, located beneath the finish wood.

Quality placement of these tubes is vital in ensuring your wooden floor remains intact and the whole system works perfectly. To avoid issues, there are various rules that you should adhere to during floor heating under hardwood installation.

Here are some of them:

• Boards: If you have wider boards, the chances of trouble when installing underfloor heating system are greater. To avoid floor deformation during your installation, it is important that you go for boards that have a width of three inches or less. Especially for retrofitting projects, wide boards tend to warp during installation.
• Utilize mechanical humidity control: For your radiantly heated home with wooden floors, the ideal relative humidity should not be more than 50 percent. If you don’t constantly maintain this level of humidity, cracks will inevitably appear on your wood finish. Before you install your radiant floor heating Vancouver, establish how you will keep the humidity of your home in check.
• Damage begins at the construction stage: In a situation where you are putting wood finish on top of a concrete floor that has radiant tubing, you ought to know that water in the concrete takes time before it evaporates. As the moisture dries up, the moisture leaving the concrete enters the wood and here is where many problems start. To avoid this, ensure that all the moisture is out of the concrete before placing the wood finish by taping plastic sheeting on top. After you leave it for some time, the plastic sheeting will indicate if there is any moisture left in your concrete.

• Provide for ventilation and heat during construction: This is vital because all the painting and plastering that will take place indoors is going to increase the amount of moisture in your rooms. If not taken care of, this moisture ends up in the wooden floor. Once you turn up your radiant system and start heating this wooden floor, cracks will appear. Ventilate and heat the rooms during construction if you want to keep your heated floors intact.
• Purchase a moisture detector: Costing about 100 bucks, a moisture detector will go a long way in helping you know if your floor is ready for the radiant heat system. Try as much as possible to ensure that there is no moisture in your wooden floor before utilizing radiant heat.
• Avoid using horsehair or paper containing tars under the wood floor: These things tend to give off an odor the moment they are heated and the smell created will stay in your room for a long period. To avoid a situation where visitors will be wondering if you stay with animals inside your house, use resin paper instead.
• Summertime means more humidity: Are you using a newly installed system during summertime? Don’t be surprised if you see small fissures developing in your wood floor. This is normal so you should not be alarmed.