Radiant Bathroom Floor Heating - An Economical and Practical Luxury

It's hard enough to push yourself out of bed on a cold, dark morning, but when you follow that action by stepping onto an ice cold tile bathroom floor, you're actually punishing yourself. Few things can be more miserable, and the experience is likely to cause you to jump back into bed again just to warm your feet. There are fairly simple ways you can treat yourself better when it comes to cold floors. You could invest in plushy slippers or bathmats that will warm up after awhile, or you could add radiant heat underneath your tile. If you're doing a bathroom remodel anyway, you can add thin heating elements that run under your tile in order to give you warm, toasty floors.

Although tile is one of the coldest flooring materials in your home, it would also feel nice to warm other types of flooring, and you can do so with radiant bathroom floor heating. You can also install radiant heat under glass, porcelain, slate, ceramic, stone, marble, and granite floors as well as hardwood and carpeting. One of the good things about installing it during a remodel is that it doesn't raise the floor very much so that doors are still going to open and close over it without needing to be cut off. You can choose between radiant heat that will use hot water, steam pipes, or electricity to warm the floors. Whichever you choose, it's sure to be a treat for your feet.

Many people like to keep their bedrooms cool for sleeping, but then they want to get up to a warm, cozy bathroom. Radiant bathroom floor heating can give you that luxury for a very affordable price. A small master bathroom floor of about 200-square-feet might require a $200 expenditure for radiant mats and another $1300 for installation.

The way this flooring system works is that you have a contractor make a template of your bathroom floor which he then sends to the manufacturer who will custom-make a heating mat to exactly fit your floor. Once it has been constructed, it will need to be installed by an electrician. It's economical to run, because it operates on a 110-volt circuit. Thermostats and timers provided with the mat allow you to heat the floor to the temperature you want and only have it come on when you program it to do so.

For example, you might decide to have it come on at 5 a.m. and then switch itself off again at 7.

Once the mat has been installed, your tile contractor can just mud over the top of it in order to put down your flooring, and no one will know the difference - until they step on the floor! Radiant bathroom floor heating is an excellent choice for small areas. It will actually keep you warmer than forced-air heat, because it warms your feet. When your feet are warm, your whole body feels warm.

For more info on bathroom floor heating including tips on replacing bathroom floor, visit http://www.betterbathroomfloors.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_W_Smith

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