Toe kick vs radiant floor for heating

[NetWareHead]

Fixer upper house that I bought and I have both the kitchen and bathroom gutted down to studs and subfloor. Going to be redoing everythign from scratch and need to come up with a heating solution for these two rooms.

-House is 2 family house with baseboard hydronic heating. All rooms in house have this heat except for kitchen and bathroom. No room for baseboard radiators in bathroom due to space constraints. Kitchen similarly has no room since wall cabinets will occupy usuable space.

- deciding between radiant floor and toe kick heaters.

-Re radiant floor, I have option to go with electric or tie into hydronic system. Electric will be cheapest but also most expensive from energy cost perspective. Using hot water from boiler is option but will need to plumb in a manifold with 4-way mixing valve to send water to these 2 areas. I have room for this manifold in the attic and then bring the water lines down along the walls and go under the floor. I also have room in electrical panel for potentially 2 240 volt circuits.

-re: toe kick heaters. I also have option of electric vs hydronic. The only constraint is that they need a cabinet to fit under so if I choose this option for the bathroom, I cant go with a pedestal or wall hung sink. Not really a concern at the moment as I want to choose the heating solution first and then decide on sinks etc...

The question is, of these two, which solution does a better job of heating a room? Both areas contain water pipes that need to be kept from freezing in a NH winter.

 

[paperfist]

If freezing is an issue I would think locating a manifold in the attic would be bad.

For me I'd keep going with the baseboard heat. It's cheaper then electric, already existing and in the case of radiators keeps giving off heat even after the system stops running.

They make cast iron baseboard units but they are pricey.

Thanks for the idea about toe kick heat. I am redoing an upstairs bathroom and was contemplating under floor heating mat, but hear not too many great things about them, plus I need a 20 AMP circuit just for that. The bathroom floor is going to be small so I think I could heat up the tile with a toe kick heater

 

[DrPizza]

When we turned the garage into an apartment, I went with electric radiant heat in the bathroom under the tile floor. We haven't really hit cold weather yet, so I cannot say for sure how well it'll keep the bathroom warm (in addition to convection from the other rooms). But, even when it's 70 degrees out, stepping out of the shower onto a tile floor, the floor feels rather cold to your feet. For the fall/winter, I have the floor set to a constant fairly warm temperature. The coil for the whole bathroom (about 100 square feet of floor, but a lot of it (under vanity, behind toilet, etc.,) isn't heated - only the walking area is heated. And, I believe it was under 200 watts. 8" of insulation in the walls, and plenty in the ceiling, but on a concrete slab.

I'll know better in the Spring, after we've endured a few weeks of temperatures getting into the negative 20s' if it was enough to keep the water lines from freezing. (Toilet, sink are on exterior wall. In case it isn't enough, I planned for that - extra 20 amp circuit so I can toss an electric space heater in the bathroom on a timer or thermostat. I doubt it would ever come to that. 4 hours with the pellet stove set at the absolute lowest setting with it 30 degrees outside, and the indoor temperature rose to the mid 80's - we had to open windows.)

 

[tracerbullet]

My neighbors remodeled their kitchen and added the toe-kick heaters, since they had open access from the basement ceiling. In their case though they could easily access an existing radiator, and add pipes that ran parallel with the floor joists. It was a "no brainer" for them because it was so easy. If your situation is similar I would suggest it.

If you have to cross joists and run miles of piping and it gets to be a huge chore then perhaps electric is the way to go? Running wire is easier than pipe.

 

[Humpy]

When I added new heat to my house I chose a boiler as the source to feed a mix of baseboard, radiant, and a toe kick in the kitchen. It all works good. I far prefer the section of the house with the radiant as it "just works", feet are warm and comfy and there is no fan noise or air movement of the toe kick and no obvious cycling of the baseboard.

In your case I would easily recommend the hydronic radiant floor heating for the bathroom and kitchen, probably using one of the grooved subfloor sheet products or hopefully a thin slab in the bathroom if possible.