Floor Slab Heat Loss

Marc rosenbaum is the director of engineering south mountain company.

Floor slab heat loss. Hvac air ducts located inside concrete slab floors invite a surprisingly broad range of building problems that fall into two broad categories. Away from perimeter i only lose heat to the soil. Learn how to do simplified heat loss calculations for basements slab on grade and walkout basement foundations. If your house is built on a concrete slab and that slab was poured directly on the ground without a barrier or insulation you ve got the ultimate heat sink.

50 f ground at 4 insulation. Learn why radiant heat in your concrete floor may or may not best for you. This is one step i see left out of a lot of radiant installations. Just because phpp accurately tells you that your heat loss through a slab with 14 inches of eps under the slab is very low doesn t mean that using 14 inches of foam is a good use of the earth s resources.

Concrete floor heating has many advantages over other types of heating systems. However if you re planning to install a floor covering on top of the slab you may want to consider one of our other floor heating elements like tempzone or environ combined with an insulating underlayment to help prevent heat loss to the slab. Up to 80 of heat loss in a floor slab occurs around the edges. Learn how to estimate design heat loss through an insulated floor to a basement below.

It s possible that phpp accurately models heat loss through slabs. He uses an integrated systems design approach to help people create. Near perimeter oat is dominant. But remember phpp provides absolutely no cost effectiveness feedback.

Check out this article for a list of slab edge insulation solutions and episode 125 for my interview with henry edney of maxraft. If i didn t have in floor radiant this would not be much 55 f space vs. Both ground temperature and oat are important. The rate of heat loss from a building varies by the temperature differences between the heated and un heated space the colder climate and frozen ground gave more rapid heat transfer colder in building floor temperatures and thus provided an opportunity to test and measure different floor slab and foundation perimeter insulation schemes.

Notice the styrofoam going up the edge of the slab to reduce heat loss. The r value is calculated from the heat loss from the slab. The research is based on long term field test measurements of two new row houses in southern finland. This article describes heating and air conditioning ducts that have been placed in or beneath concrete floor slabs.

Hvac ductwork in floor slabs. The first thing to consider when looking into different types of concrete floors is why it s so important to insulate the floor slab. I do think concrete floor heat is a great way to go. It may not be intuitive but since i deal with.