When your furnace is running constantly and you're still shivering in your home, your thoughts may turn to a radiant floor heating system. Radiant heat keeps you warmer at the same thermostat setting while a traditional forced-air furnace leaves you shivering. The difference is in how the systems operate and how the different types of heat make you feel. Here's a comparison between the two heating methods.

Radiant Floor Heating Eliminates Cold Flooring

One of the worst things about winter is getting out of a snug bed and walking barefoot on cold flooring. Since a traditional furnace blows heated air in the room, the air heats instead of the floor, furniture, and other parts of the room. If your home has tile flooring, it can feel like walking on ice in the winter. Radiant floor heating starts by warming up the floor with a blanket of heat that gradually rises and warms everything in the room it touches. The floors are nice and warm so you can walk barefoot in the winter, your kids can play on the floor, and your pets can sleep on the floor in comfort.

Radiant Heat Keeps Down Dust

A forced-air furnace blows air every time it kicks on. The air it blows out circulates through your house and is pulled back in the furnace where dust can accumulate and get recirculated. The result is a constant stirring up of dust in your house that could affect the air quality in your home. If you're sensitive to allergens, a forced-air furnace might make your symptoms worse. There is no blowing air with radiant floor heating. This helps control dust, and it also eliminates the noise associated with a furnace kicking on and off.

Radiant Floor Heating Eliminates Chilly Areas

A forced-air furnace heats your home unevenly. The warmest area is near a register and there might be pockets of chilly air on the other side of the room. If you stay near a register to soak up the warmth, you probably feel cold immediately when the furnace kicks off. You're in a constant cycle of warm/chilly when heating your home with a forced-air furnace on the coldest days of winter.

Radiant floor heating doesn't come from a small point like a register. The heat rises uniformly from the entire floor. There are no cold pockets and no sudden chilly feeling when warm air stops blowing out of a furnace. An even better aspect of the way radiant floor heat keeps you nice and warm, is it does so in a much more efficient way than a traditional furnace. This means you'll stay warmer and have lower power bills too.

If you are interested in learning more about radiant floor heating, contact a contractor such as Conquer Plumbing.