Recently a friend of mine moved into a house with heated floors and, I have to admit, they were super nice! I loved not having my feet warm on the hardwood floor and she said it was actually cheaper on a monthly basis to heat her house.
She told me that she didn’t even realize the house had radiant floor heating when she bought it but that it has been a delightful benefit. This all just sounded so cool! The moment I got home, I asked my husband what he thought about us getting radiant floor heating and he said he would look into it. Turns out, it’s a huge hassle! First and foremost, in order to install radiant floor heating, you have to rip up your existing floor. I get that this might not be surprising to a lot of people, but for me it didn’t even cross my mind that I would have to tear everything up! Secondly, I knew it would be expensive, but I didn’t realize it would cost me less money to replace my entire furnace! Hydraulic systems were recommended over electric, but this type of radiant floor heating was the most expensive one! It was just too much work to get radiant heat flooring for our house. My husband suggested that maybe if we get our next home built from the ground up, we would consider radiant floor heating but for right now we would just keep heating and cooling costs low with prudent practices and hold off on the radiant floor heating.