|
|
Heat Exchangers for Radiant Floor
Heating.
Brazed heat exchangers provide you
with a simple way of supplying warm water to your hydronic radiant floor
heating system. With the cost of electricity and gas constantly on the
rise, heating your home, especially if you live in a climate that's cold
for a good part of the year, can be a very expensive proposition! Apart
from the expense of such heating methods, the need for vents can make
placing furniture tricky, ruining the aesthetic look of a room's
arrangement. And health-wise, forced air systems using fans that blow
air around in your home also blow around dust, odors and
allergens.
For those of you with allergies, this can
be a very uncomfortable problem - one that is difficult to overcome.
Radiant floor heating offers an alternative method to heating your home
that takes care of all these problems in one neat package.
What is radiant floor heating? It's
a heating system that circulates warm water through pipes located
beneath the floor - radiating heat upward and creating a feeling similar
to standing in the sun on a summer's day. Radiant floor heating will
warm the interior surfaces of the room, not the air. There are no
heaters, radiators or vents to work around, making it easy to place your
furniture where you want it - not where your vents dictate it needs to
be. It can also save you as much as 20 to 30% in energy costs! And with
no fans, allergens and dust are not blown around to create health
problems.
Why should you choose hydronic radiant floor heating?
Tired of cold feet or cold drafty rooms? We are all familiar with
inefficiencies of central forced heating systems. Hydronic radiant floor
heating offers true thermal comfort while consuming less energy. Instead
of simply maintaining interior temperatures within a certain range,
radiant heating reduces the loss of body heat by warming the interior
surfaces of floors, walls, ceilings, windows and doors. The overall
reduction in lower energy consumption is due to several things:
- Reduction in room temperature
stratification: Radiant floor heating all but eliminates the
familiar but uncomfortable situation of warm air rising to the
ceiling while cool air stays at the floor level. This reduces the
transfer of heat through the ceiling and upper portions of the wall.
The greater the height of a room, or the taller the building, the
more beneficial this feature is.
- Out of Mind, Out of Sight:
Radiant floor heating systems and piping system that supplies the
warm water are easily concealed and routed throughout the building.
This places fewer constraints on the placement of furniture
placement and will preserve the architectural aesthetics of rooms
without compromising thermal comfort.
- Easily Zoned:
Radiant Floor heating gives you control
over the temperature of each room. You'll never have the
problem of finding one room boiling hot while another remains
freezing cold. You'll be able to find the perfect temperature for
each room, which should lower heating bills.
- No Air Motion: In addition to
distributing dust, odors and airborne viruses throughout the
building, forced air systems pressurize rooms increasing air leakage
and wasting energy. In radiant floor heating systems, on the other
hand, air motion is virtually undetectable.
- Noise Reduction: Unlike a
central forced air system, radiant floor heating systems are
extremely quiet. They eliminate expansion noise, sheet metal
vibration or velocity noises caused by air motion.
- Increases Boiler Efficiency:
Since your comfort can be maintained at a much lower temperature,
the heating load is much lighter than it is in a central forced air
system. This should reduce the the load on your boiler system
increasing its life span.
- Adaptable: Low temperature heat
from solar collectors, geothermal heat pumps, or waste heat recovery
systems can often be utilized.
The brazed heat exchangers allow you
to heat the radiant floor water indirectly from a central heating
boiler.
Advantages of the brazed heat exchangers:
- Brazed heat exchangers are compact
and lightweight. The smaller footprint makes
it easier to be installed in places where space is limited.
- They have a high turbulent flow,
which reduces deposit build-up and maintenance.
- Available in plate configurations
and chevron patterns to suit your needs.
- The brazed heat exchanger is ideal
for hydronic systems like swimming pools, spas, radiant floor
heating, domestic hot water and snow and ice melting.
- With the high flow rate of the radiant
floor water going through the shell and boiler water through the
tubes, low pressure drop is achievable.
|