What is Radiant Heating?
If your Pennsylvania home hasn’t had a heating system upgrade in a decade or two, it’s very likely that you are working with forced air heating. This is a type of convection heating, meaning that the heat is transferred via the air from a powerful heat source. Forced-air heating has a number of advantages, including that it can be generated through the same ventilation system as your central air, giving you a more comprehensive heating system all around.
But have you noticed that sometimes your home doesn’t feel like the number on the thermostat? You might set your system to 70 degrees, and you’ll be paying for 70 degree heating…but it won’t actually feel like it’s 70 degrees in your home. Sometimes, you might also notice that different rooms have differing temperatures — part of this is because some of your rooms aren’t insulated properly, and they lose heating through windows or unsealed gaps in your walls. However, the other major reason that convection heating tends to not reach the desired temperatures is because hot air rises. The hot air that comes in through the ventilation tends to rise towards the ceiling, leaving you and your floor cold!
That’s why, when you get out of bed in the morning, you dread putting your bare feet on the ground and feeling how frigid the boards are. No matter how high you have the heat on, your surfaces are never properly warmed.
What if there was a different way? What if you could get out of bed every morning and feel warmth right under your feet every time? What if you could heat from the ground up? That’s where radiant heating comes in. Radiant heating is different from convection heating in that it uses a different source: rather than heating air from a single source, it heats your home’s surfaces via a system of baseboards and underground pipes.
Radiant heating isn’t for every home, since it can be difficult to install. But what do you have from checking if your own home could benefit from this fantastic form of more effective temperature control? The Central Heating experts can help. Call Central today to hear more about radiant heating, and ask for a consultation on your specific home!