Your better half got up in the dead of the night and straightaway those cold toes are attacking your territory with the persistency of a heat-seeking missile. Good for you, the new house will be sporting radiant floor heating – a sure cure for confrontations with icy toes at 2 a.m. or a midwinter chill that reaches your bone marrow.

Under-floor heating has been used since the Roman Empire when it was in its heyday in state-supported buildings and the villas of the well-off. Hot air was dispersed under tile or brick, offering a radiant heat – energy that transmitted warmth through the flooring and on to cooler furniture like Roman reclining chairs, statues, marble-topped tables and stoic centurions.

With the advent of resilient PEX pipe to the United States in the 1980s, its use has jumped as more products have been produced for the construction industry – among which have been water arrangements to provide radiant floor heat. Unlike forced-air furnaces, modern hydronic floor systems using PEX plumbing products provide more homogenous heat to a room, are less drying, more capable and a whole lot quieter than aging furnaces or metal steam pipes.

PEX tubing is made of cross-linked polyethylene, which grants these modern pipes durability, chemical resistance, higher mobility, a streamlined installment profile and greater temperature range. This polyethylene piping can be exposed to water as hot as 200 degrees Fahrenheit in heat schemes.

There are disparate ways of installing radiant floor heat. Some use electrical line voltage arrangements, but easy-to-use PEX tubing products have made hydronic under-floor heat popular with both home constructors and home owners. Because the tube is so elastic, its coils can be employed in a sustained distance, getting rid of the requirement for multiple joints and fittings.

Many radiant floor heating arrangements utilize oxygen-barrier PEX radiant tubing utilized in gypsum concrete. Others integrate low-mass underlay – wood boards with sunken niches for flexible pipe.

Every remodeling or new-construction project is well fit by one method or another, so look into your hydronic floor heat options fully. Do your homework!