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Common Questions About Heating, Ventilation and Cooling
What is radiant heat?
Radiant heat is essentially the capability of a machine or object to heat the surrounding objects or people in the room. How this works is pretty simple: the heat created from an object passes over the air and the particles in it and is transferred to the people and objects within the room.
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Boiler type heating radiant systems are an example of using radiant heat to heat a building. These systems pump hot water or steam through a series of pipes to radiators that radiate the heat throughtout the building.
New systems use the pipes themselves to warm the floor and cause the floor to radiate the heat up into the living space. Remember how cold tile floors can be in the winter, well with in-floor radiant heating these once cold surfaces now radiate warmth into the home. This type of radiant heat is very efficient and considerably more comfortable than forced air systems which can dry out the air and cause air currents.
With advances in boiler and geothermal technologies along with the increased comfort of radiant heat, it is becoming a very popular method for heating homes, especially higher end homes. These systems typically cost more than the more standard forced are systems, but typically last longer and require less maintenance over their lifetimes.