Anyone know anything about radiant heating?

[The Sauce]

I have a radiant-only system in my home and I'm having trouble getting temps up. I think my circulating water temps are lowish (plumber turned them down due to floor warping) - maybe 85F or so. For the life of me I cannot figure out how to adjust the water temps. Any ideas?

 

[NetWareHead]

85 is usually the max recommended temperature of the heating loop. Most radiant floor setups have hot water supplied by a boiler going to either a 3 or 4-way mixing valve to temper the hot boiler water down to the recommended floor temp setting. This is where the temp setting is made.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I've run loops in my garage floor, but never setup a heat source. I may be looking at evacuated tube solar...But am interested in what a traditional boiler system costs. I just want to break chill in the winter and warm the slab.

 

[Humpy]

I've run loops in my garage floor, but never setup a heat source. I may be looking at evacuated tube solar...But am interested in what a traditional boiler system costs. I just want to break chill in the winter and warm the slab.

The building I used to have for a wood shop used radiant heat and we just had a basic inexpensive water heater for the source. The slab was insulated and I only needed 50 degrees to keep everything from freezing so their wasn't a high demand.

To the OP, if you don't see a 3 or 4 way valve with an obvious knob to turn, you may have an electric mixing valve with a smaller knob or even a small screw.

 

[Paperdoc]

In encourage you to think about this: is your problem that the house cannot be heated up to what you need, or is it instead that it takes a long time to raise the temperature if it's already cooled off? The reason for my comment is that radiant heating systems are always VERY slow to change the house temperature. That's one of the advantages of such a system - the temperature is steady. BUT if you are using a modern thermostat that is programmed to cool things down at night, then warm up the house in the morning, etc., your heating system probably takes several hours to raise the house temperature by, say, 6 to 8 degrees (Fahrenheit). That might make you think it's not heating enough, when it really not heating FAST enough.

 

[vi edit]

Floor warping? So I assume these are staple up under your floor joists? Wood or laminate flooring?