SunTouch Mats Blog

Make 2008 a great year. There are remarkable choices available to homebuilders and renovators alike in regards to home heating systems. Suntouch radiant heating is one of the most comfortable, yet efficient heating options for any home. So, what are the benefits of choosing a Suntouch radiant heating system for y our home?

The increased comfort and significant efficiency benefits aren’t all that’s offered. Another huge benefit to electric radiant heat is that, unlike central heating and air, with radiant heat you can zone different areas of the house to fit your lifestyle. Some of our customers use one thermostat per floor, while others separate bedroom areas and living spaces. Suntouch is happy to help with recommendations based on your project plans.

Many families will enjoy the allergen reducing qualities of electric radiant heat. Radiant Heat reduces dust mites and air borne allergens by 60%-90%. No other heating system reduces allergies as effectively as a Suntouch electric radiant heating system. And of course, there’s always the increased property value aspect to incorporating an electric radiant heat system to your home.

Great news! You don’t have to cover your ceramic tile, marble, or stone floors with rugs—install floor warming mats and show your floor’s beauty and allow them to give you the heat you want at the same time! The feeling of warmth under your feet when it’s cold and snowing outside is like no other.

Floor warming mats also offer you complete control of temperature of your home on a room by room basis. Not only that, their operation is completely quiet. Floor warming mats have even heat distribution and will not effect the furniture placement as it uses no radiators or heat vents to disperse heat. They are easy to install, very energy efficient, and can save you a bundle on your winter heating bills. Another way they save you money is that there are no expensive filters to change or clean.

With the added heat and efficiency come some additional health benefits as well. Floor warming mats don’t blow air around your house, so there is no dust or dirt forced into your air to breathe, which is extremely beneficial for those who suffer from allergies.

You may be wondering just how do floor warming mats work? They simply heat the floor with electrical resistance cables that are spread evenly and sandwiched between layers of durable fabric. All these options are easy to install yourself or can be quickly installed by your flooring installer. If you choose to install the system yourself, you will want to have a certified electrician hook up the controls to a programmable thermostat.

Bottom line: New floor warming mats can help cut your heating costs, while increasing your level of comfort. Why? Because evenly distributed heat in your floors will allow you to turn down your thermostat two to four degrees. This can reduce energy costs by 10-40% and can be verified with your local utility company. This setback to your thermostat can happen because floor warming mats heat from the ground up, delivering the heat through objects rather than the air. This makes the lowest three feet of your home the most comfortable where a forced air system loses its heat to the ceiling and is required to heat from the top down. Delivering heat by air also makes it easy to escape and increase your overall heat loss.

A good analogy for radiant floor heating to forced air is a car that has heated seats and a forced air heater/furnace. The forced air in a car can dry you out and can become uncomfortable and is difficult to dial in because of the heat loss due to its air delivery. A heated seat will provide you with quick results and will remain warm long after it is reduced or turned completely off. The heated seat actually warms your body and the car seat, not the air. Forced air will over time will inefficiently heat objects but with the negative side effects of dry air, dust and pollen.

You might not know that using floor warming mats to heat the home can have a huge impact on both efficiency and health benefits.

Efficiency. Radiant heaters are also on of the most efficient form of heat available. Significantly less operating time is required to maintain the desired warmth compared to furnaces and other methods of heating keeping operational costs to a minimum. High efficiency boilers or electric radiant floor systems makes radiant heat one of your most efficient ways to heat your home. Coupled with a well insulated home these systems can quickly warm your home and then shut down or wait idle for long periods of time before being called upon by the thermostat to operate.

Health Benefits. Floor warming mats, which provide radiant heat, improve the air quality, This is especially important for anyone who suffers from either dust allergies or asthma. Floor heating provides ample heat alleviating a breeding ground for germs to multiply not to mention the added benefit of not having change filters or clean heat ducts.

Many health experts also claim that floor heating via floor warming mats can help in eliminating dust mites that live in our homes, and since dust mites love a warm moist environment, towel heaters aid in maintaining a consistent room temperature and keep it moisture free.

Furthermore, mold and mildew are also caused from excessive moisture especially in bathrooms with insufficient ventilation. By placing radiant heaters or a radiant heat towel rack in the bathroom you can combat the spread of germs for only pennies a day.

You don’t have to worry that it’ll be an impossible task, even if you’ve ever tried to update, or install a new heating system in an older home and you’re well aware of how difficult this can be. A lot of older homes that were once heated by wood burning stoves don’t have heating and air conditioning ducts with which to deliver the heat to the different rooms of the house.

Installing these ducts after the fact can not only be difficult, but is also very costly. However, there is a solution to adding heating to homes that have not been built for traditional forced air systems. This can be accomplished via floor warming mats, which are installed beneath your flooring.

Floor warming mats, as opposed to warm air systems (such as a forced air unit heaters), delivers the source of heat to the floor level, not the ceiling. Radiant heaters or radiant energy is the oldest form of heating used to provide comfort and is the basis for all heating systems. Radiant energy is totally pure radiation and is absorbed by an object without physical contact with the heat source or by heating the surrounding air, as is the case with convective, forced air systems.

Because floor warming mats can be installed under carpet, hard wood, tile, or other floor or wall surfaces they make adding heat to any room of the home very simple. Furthermore, radiant heaters offer more comfort than forced air heating by heating the atmosphere from the ground up. Since heat rises, the heat will be more evenly distributed, thereby providing a much more comfortable atmosphere.

Here’s the bottom line: radiant heaters are not only a comfortable, and cost effective heating solution, but they make installing heating in older homes much more easily, and can save you a lot of time and money.

While fire places and coal burning stoves become less popular options for heating a residence, other alternative heating methods are quickly becoming more common. Traditional furnaces as a primary heating system are now being challenged from radiant baseboards, radiant floor heating systems and even radiant ceiling heaters.

Many of these new heating systems are using electricity instead of natural gas or heating oil. Suntouch, for example, provides affordable heating solutions which add comfort, and save money as well. Not only do Suntouch heating systems cut down on heating costs, but they are also more efficient and eco-friendly as well. These heating systems are quickly replacing traditional furnaces. This is not surprising given the fact that they are not only more efficient, but provide a more comfortable environment as well.

One great aspect to Suntouch heating systems, as opposed to warm air systems (such as a forced air unit heaters), deliver the source of heat to the floor level, not the ceiling. As a result, you get heat evenly distributed where you need it most, rather than having heat accumulate at the ceiling level. 

If you would like to know more about Suntouch radiant heating systems, contact their knowledgeable staff who will be happy to help.

Are you thinking about remodeling a bathroom or kitchen?  We think there is something you should seriously consider: Floor warming mats. If you’re not familiar with what floor warming mats are, they’re simply thin electric mats installed beneath your flooring. The floor warming mats are controlled by a timer-thermostat.

To install this type of heating is very cost effective, especially when you consider how much money you’ll save on your heating bill. For an average sized bathroom, it will operate on less than 10 cents a day of electricity. In theory, these products are very similar to electric blankets. They are made of a heat resistant wire which serpentines over a supporting material. They are safe, relatively easy to install, and extremely energy efficient. If you are remodeling, floor warming mats are the perfect solution. They’re inexpensive, and easy enough to install that a do-it-youselfer could install it.

Aside from the economical arguments for electric radiant heat are additional benefits, such as added comfort. Have you ever noticed during the winter how your feet can be icy cold, while you’re upper body and head are sweating? This is because traditional forced air heating puts the heat in the air, which rises to our head level. This leaves the air at our feet cold, and the air at our head hot. This is really not optimal, because our upper body and head areas are generally hot due to the fact that this is where the majority of our body heat escapes.

Having electric radiant heat in the floor increases our comfort by bringing the heat to our feet, which leaves the air at head level cooler. This scenario creates the perfect level of comfort.

Whether you’re building a new home, or remodeling your existing home, radiant floor heating is a great way to add comfort and efficiency to the rooms in your home that are traditionally hard to heat.

So how does this work?  Instead of rising like warm air, radiant heat starts by warming the coldest and closest objects from its source. This is why radiant heating systems are generally placed under floors in the form of floor warming mats. There are several different applications for floor warming mats, which include the following:

Bathrooms, Kitchens, and Entry Ways. Bathrooms, Kitchens and Entryways are ideals places to incorporate floor warming mats. Tile, Marble, Slate, and even Hardwood are floor coverings that are cold to step onto with bare feet during winter or summer. A radiant heat product can be installed under these surfaces throughout the home and take the cold bite out of these areas. Never have cold floors or feet again!

Basements. Basements are one of the top requested areas to add radiant heat. Due to the fact that forced air systems heat air and hot air rises the basement is usually the living space that remains cold. New construction is the best time to add radiant heat to a basement.

Have you ever been suddenly woken up in the middle of the night by your noisy furnace switching on? Of the many benefits of floor warming mats, their quiet operation is one of my favorite things about them. Don’t get me wrong, being able to show off my slate floors without having to cover them up with rugs (to keep my feet warm), along with the energy I save are all right up there on the list of reasons that I love my floor warming mats. However, I just love the peace and quiet they bring. No more noisy forced air systems, no more slamming doors with pressure increases as the forced air kicks in. Instead, I have peace and serenity all day long.

There’s nothing like curling up with a book and not be startled half to death as the door slams behind you. If you’ve currently in a home with a forced air system, you know exactly what I’m referring to. If your home has a forced air heating system, you may think that there is no way to install radiant heating without tearing everything up at considerable expense. You’d be wrong!  The adaptable floor heating systems can be easily retrofitted to fit almost every application. Not only that, but they are very inexpensive, and will save you a lot of money on heating and electricity bills. To find out how your family can benefit from floor warming mats in your home, contact the knowledgeable staff at Suntouch.

What’s tops on many homeowners’ 2008 lists of home improvements including upgrading the heating system for a small space in your home. You’ve probably been putting that project off, thinking that a traditional heating system may cost you far more than it’s worth. This is almost always the case for those who may live in small or older homes and apartments. Older homes often times don’t have the necessary heating ducts needed to install a traditional forced air system, and installing these ducts is very expensive. Due to the cost associated with installing these systems, many people choose not to heat smaller rooms and instead suffer through the winter, chilly and miserable. However, there is a very cost effective and efficient solution to this problem: floor warming mats.

Radiant floor warming mat systems are very cost-effective solutions for smaller spaces (1-5 rooms) because they are easy to install and have a very low start-up cost. An electric thermostat is all that is required and costs only about $100-$200.

Another advantage of radiant floor warming mats over a warm-water system is the floor build up or height. Floor build up can be from as little as 2mm. The electric cables are usually installed onto an insulation board or directly onto the subfloor or padding (under carpet or laminate), then the floor covering is placed directly over the heating system or thinset.