Like any type of electric

Like any type of electric heat, radiant panels can be expensive to operate, but they can provide supplemental heating in some rooms or can provide heat to a home addition when extending the conventional heating system is impractical.

Radiant panels have the quickest response time of any heating technology and -- because the panels can be individually controlled for each room—the quick response feature can result in cost and energy savings compared with other systems when rooms are infrequently occupied. When entering a room, the occupant can increase the temperature setting and be comfortable within minutes. As with any heating system, set the thermostat to a minimum temperature that will prevent pipes from freezing.

Radiant heating panels operate on a line-of-sight basis -- you'll be most comfortable if you're close to the panel. Some people find ceiling-mounted systems uncomfortable because the panels heat the top of their heads and shoulders more effectively than the rest of their bodies.

If you want carpeting

If you want carpeting, use a thin carpet with dense padding and install as little carpeting as possible. If some rooms, but not all, will have a floor covering, then those rooms should have a separate tubing loop to make the system heat these spaces more efficiently. This is because the water flowing under the covered floor will need to be hotter to compensate for the floor covering. Wood flooring should be laminated wood flooring instead of solid wood to reduce the possibility of the wood shrinking and cracking from the drying effects of the heat.

RADIANT PANELS

Wall- and ceiling-mounted radiant panels are usually made of aluminum and can be heated with either electricity or with tubing that carries hot water, although the latter creates concerns about leakage in wall- or ceiling-mounted systems. Most commercially available radiant panels for homes are electrically heated.

At least one company

At least one company has improved on this idea by making a plywood subfloor material manufactured with tubing grooves and aluminum heat diffuser plates built into them. The manufacturer claims that this product makes a radiant floor system (for new construction) considerably less expensive to install and faster to react to room temperature changes. Such products also allow for the use of half as much tubing or cabling, because the heat transfer of the floor is greatly improved compared with more traditional dry or wet floors.

FLOOR COVERINGS

Ceramic tile is the most common and effective floor covering for radiant floor heating, because it conducts heat well and adds thermal storage. Common floor coverings like vinyl and linoleum sheet goods, carpeting, or wood can also be used, but any covering that insulates the floor from the room will decrease the efficiency of the system.

TYPES OF FLOOR INSTALLATIONS

TYPES OF FLOOR INSTALLATIONS

Whether you use cables or tubing, the methods of installing electric and hydronic radiant systems in floors are similar.

So-called "wet" installations embed the cables or tubing in a solid floor and are the oldest form of modern radiant floor systems. The tubing or cable can be embedded in a thick concrete foundation slab (commonly used in "slab" ranch houses that don't have basements) or in a thin layer of concrete, gypsum, or other material installed on top of a subfloor. If concrete is used and the new floor is not on solid earth, additional floor support may be necessary because of the added weight. You should consult a professional engineer to determine the floor's carrying capacity.

Thick concrete slabs are ideal for storing heat from solar energy systems, which have a fluctuating heat output. The downside of thick slabs is their slow thermal response time, which makes strategies such as night or daytime setbacks difficult if not impossible. Most experts recommend maintaining a constant temperature in homes with these heating systems.

HYDRONIC RADIANT FLOORS

HYDRONIC RADIANT FLOORS

Hydronic (liquid) systems are the most popular and cost-effective radiant heating systems for heating-dominated climates. Hydronic radiant floor systems pump heated water from a boiler through tubing laid in a pattern under the floor. In some systems, controlling the flow of hot water through each tubing loop by using zoning valves or pumps and thermostats regulates room temperatures. The cost of installing a hydronic radiant floor varies by location and depends on the size of the home, the type of installation, the floor covering, remoteness of the site, and the cost of labor.

ELECTRIC RADIANT FLOORS

ELECTRIC RADIANT FLOORS

Electric radiant floors typically consist of electric cables built into the floor. Systems that feature mats of electrically conductive plastic mounted on the subfloor below a floor covering such as tile are also available.

Because of the relatively high cost of electricity, electric radiant floors are usually only cost-effective if they include a significant thermal mass such as a thick concrete floor and your electric utility company offers time-of-use rates. Time-of-use rates allow you to "charge" the concrete floor with heat during off-peak hours (approximately 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.). If the floor's thermal mass is large enough, the heat stored in it will keep the house comfortable for eight to ten hours without any further electrical input, particularly when daytime temperatures are significantly warmer than nighttime temperatures. This saves a considerable number of energy dollars compared to heating at peak electric rates during the day.

Despite its name,

Despite its name, radiant floor heating depends heavily on convection, the natural circulation of heat within a room as air warmed by the floor rises. Radiant floor heating systems are significantly different from the radiant panels used in walls and ceilings. For this reason, the following sections discuss radiant floor heat and radiant panels separately.

RADIANT FLOOR HEAT

There are three types of radiant floor heat -- radiant air floors (air is the heat-carrying medium), electric radiant floors, and hot water (hydronic) radiant floors. You can further categorize these types by installation. Those that make use of the large thermal mass of a concrete slab floor or lightweight concrete over a wooden subfloor are called "wet installations,” and those in which the installer "sandwiches" the radiant floor tubing between two layers of plywood or attaches the tubing under the finished floor or subfloor are called "dry installations."

Radiant heating

Radiant heating systems supply heat directly to the floor or to panels in the wall or ceiling of a house. The systems depend largely on radiant heat transfer -- the delivery of heat directly from the hot surface to the people and objects in the room via infrared radiation. Radiant heating is the effect you feel when you can feel the warmth of a hot stovetop element from across the room. When radiant heating is located in the floor, it is often called radiant floor heating or simply floor heating.

Radiant heating has a number of advantages. It is more efficient than baseboard heating and usually more efficient than forced-air heating because it eliminates duct losses. People with allergies often prefer radiant heat because it doesn’t distribute allergens like forced air systems can. Hydronic (liquid-based) systems use little electricity, a benefit for homes off the power grid or in areas with high electricity prices.

Due to recent innovations

Due to recent innovations in floor technology, so-called "dry" floors, in which the cables or tubing run in an air space beneath the floor, have been gaining in popularity, mainly because a dry floor is faster and less expensive to build. But because dry floors involve heating an air space, the radiant heating system needs to operate at a higher temperature.

Some dry installations involve suspending the tubing or cables under the subfloor between the joists. This method usually requires drilling through the floor joists to install the tubing. Reflective insulation must also be installed under the tubes to direct the heat upward. Tubing or cables may also be installed from above the floor, between two layers of subfloor. In these instances, liquid tubing is often fitted into aluminum diffusers that spread the water's heat across the floor in order to heat the floor more evenly. The tubing and heat diffusers are secured between furring strips (sleepers), which carry the weight of the new subfloor and finished floor surface.

Baseboard heaters

Baseboard heaters supply heat to each room individually, so they are ideally suited to zone heating, which involves heating the occupied rooms in your home while allowing unoccupied area (such as empty guest rooms or seldom-used rooms) to remain cooler. Zone heating can produce energy savings of more than 20% compared to heating both occupied and unoccupied areas of your house.

Zone heating is most effective when the cooler portions of your home are insulated from the heated portions, allowing the different zones to truly operate independently. Note that the cooler parts of your home still need to be heated to well above freezing to avoid freezing pipes.

Even though

Even though the program is transparent  in the sense that all equations are  reported in the model, it is very hard to understand and follow the calculations, and the program cannot be said to be transparent in the general sense. The interface of the program is not very friendly and can easily confuse the user. The model does not include tap water.
Possibility Making the ground water and borehole temperature climate dependent might lead to results more sufficient to its actual installation spot.  
Risk The model is not adjusted to fit heat pumps and is disadvantaging heat pumps. Despite this the COP and capacity of water to water heat pumps can be overestimated since they are tested at +10°C at the cold side (this can also happen to ground source heat pumps, but probably not to the same extent).

Weakness

Weakness The model takes only air to air heat pumps into account. In accordance to prEN14825 the test points for the heat pump has to be chosen specifically to fit the chosen climate and heat profile of the house.  In accordance to LOT 1 the model does not include an effect balance at each temperature bin. This results in that the heat demand of a house at a specific temperature bin is different at different climates and that the heat requirement of a backup heater is misleading.  The model does not seem to be entirely consistent, partly it is contradicting itself.

Possibility

Possibility To make the model usable at other spots it would be better to make it possible to use other climates. Now the model only provides a number of specified heat loads of the house. It would be useful to be able to freely choose the heat demand of the house. There is a risk though, that since the heat pump has to be tested in part load, it has to be tested at each specific heat requirement.  
Other types of heat pumps could be included in the model. The model only provides the SPF (SCOP) with the backup heater included. For comparable reasons, it would be useful to include a SPF with backup heater excluded.  
Risk It is not obvious whether the excel model is compatible with the standard. There are also some calculations in the standard that seems to be incorrect

Heat (and cooling-) demand of the house

Heat (and cooling-) demand of the house
This study is focused on heat pumps for indoor heating. The study is made in houses with different heat demand. The ground source heat pumps in this study are considered monovalent, but it is difficult to determine the actual energy demand of the house. When using the calculation models the required heat load of the house is decided by the capacity of the heat pump.
The studied air to air heat pump is not monovalent. The energy demand of the house with the heat pump installation was estimated in the field study. When using the calculation models the energy demand of the house were tried to be the same as in the field stud