Geez don't be so postive there cyclone.. heated floors are the catsass and heat the very best, warme toes all winteer long.. alaska what a great place. do what your doing its going to be like a rock when your done...

 

nice home...you got some floor plans?

.....I have some that I put together and it is a mix between concrete steel and big timber......no traditional house for me.....glad to see I am not the only one thinking along these lines....

 

That's why we line the pad with a 6 mil vapor barrier, then throw on 2" thick rigid insulation (blue foam). It's a requirement up here 'cause you're right, you'd just be heating dirt. The house I built for my family is very similar to this one, I have a poured monolithic slab with barrier and rigid insulation with the heat tubing stapled to the rigid insulation. Fuel bills are extremely low for my house (well, for Alaska at any rate). Sure, you have to heat up the 4" thick slab, but once it's up to temperature, the heated mass of concrete does a really good job at maintaining its thermal energy. Also, the boiler only has to heat up the glycol/water mixture to around 110 degrees, whereas a typical baseboard system requires around 180-210 degrees, so you're effectively using less heating oil to achieve the same results.

Having warm feet in Alaska makes the winters a whole lot less difficult to deal with!!

 

Yep, my brother, his wife, and I all sat down and I drew up their house plans off of plans that they had amassed over eight years. Looks really impressive, unfortuneately, I don't have them on the computer (I hand draw pretty much everything I design) so you'll have to stay tuned...

 

We used to use 2'' foam but they now have a "bubble wrap" thats suppoce to be better. So we use that now instead. (well the plumbers around here) You DEFINETLY want to pour at 8 in the morning....especially if the subfoor is already on. We have stayed up welllllll into the a.m hours to finish a floor. I have heard of a guy that gave up, came back early the next morning and finished powertrowling it