SunTouch Mats Blog

It seems as if every home has “cold spots” in the wintertime, right? Areas – perhaps the upstairs hallway, guest bathroom, kitchen, or (heaven forbid) one of the family bedrooms – that just doesn’t stay warm? Such cold spot problems are easily solved with floor heating products by Suntouch.

One bonus to the heating systems offered by Suntouch is that it can be installed under almost any type of flooring, including tile, hardwood, carpet, and marble. The products you’d need to install the heating would be dependant upon what type of flooring you’d be installing it under.

One of the most popular Suntouch heating products are floor warming mats. The Mats include a red heating cable woven into an adhesive-backed fiberglass mesh that allows for simple roll-out installation without worrying about heating cable spacing. Suntouch floor warming mats are pre-terminated for use with 120 and 240 volts, and are available in various lengths of 24″ widths to accommodate any room’s layout. The tile floor warming mats emit no measurable electromagnetic fields due to the shielded dual conductor design. This dual conductor cable requires only one cold lead connection making it easy to layout and install. If you want to stamp out one or more of the “cold spots” in your home, contact Suntouch to find out about their innovative line of floor heating products.

You may not know that floor warming mats are one of the most comfortable ways to heat your home. As opposed to forced air heating, which heats the air, floor warming mats heat objects, namely your floor. This increases the level of comfort in your home because the heat is distributed at the floor level where we are usually cold, and gets cooler toward our head area, which is usually too hot. Because floor warming mats distribute the heat in this manner, the comfort level of your home is increased, thus no more cold feet!

Another benefit of floor warming mats is that they can be used for nearly any floor area. Areas such as concrete, tile, hardwood, carpet, and even linoleum can all benefit from floor warming mats. Even if you live in an existing home floor warming products can be retrofitted, in most cases, to your existing floors.

Whether you’re building a new home or remodeling an existing home, you’ll find that floor warming mats provide a great, efficient way to add comfort and efficiency to the rooms in your home that are traditionally hard to heat.

For homebuilders and renovators alike, there are a multitude of uses for floor warming mats in homes. Bathrooms, kitchens and entryways are ideals places to incorporate radiant heat. Tile, marble, slate, and even hardwood are floor coverings that are cold to step onto with bare feet during winter or summer. Floor warming mats can be installed under these surfaces throughout the home and take the cold bite out of these areas. Just think: you’ll never have cold floors or feet again!

Another area of the home that floor warming mats make sense is in the basement of your home. Basements are one of the top requested areas to add floor warming. 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, but in many cases it can be accomplished via a remodel, or before getting new carpet.

Floor Heating Tip: Whether you’re building a new home, or remodeling your existing home, floor warming mats are a great way to add comfort and efficiency to the rooms in your home that are traditionally hard to heat.

Here’s a question for you: how can you comfortably heat your home while also enjoying a reduction in energy usage? Through radiant floor heating by Suntouch, of course! Delivering heat by forced air makes allows heat to escape and increase your overall heat loss. However, heating through radiant heat is more efficient, which allows homeowners to turn down the thermostat two to four degrees.

Naturally, turning down a thermostat can reduce energy costs by 10-40%.This setback to your thermostat can happen because a radiant floor heats from the ground up and delivers the heat through objects not 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.

Believe it or not, the installation of Suntouch radiant floor heating is not a new development in the housing industry. Heated floors have been installed under bathroom and kitchen tile in the United States for the past decade and the warming products continue to gain popularity.

Heating Tip: Many in the kitchen and bath industry expect floor heating systems to continue to play a big role among homeowners who crave comfort features, while reducing energy costs – Which is something Suntouch can help you with.

Building “green” is about energy efficiency, but it is also about using durable materials that won’t need to be replaced in a few years (for example, metal roofing instead of shingles). Both aspects can put a little green in your wallet over the long haul. This is especially true with radiant heating products like floor warming mats.
Floor warming mats are one of the hottest green features being installed in new homes these days. Getting out of bed and stepping onto a warm bathroom floor is a luxury, to be sure. However, these floor warming mats are also much more efficient, which will lower your energy consumption, thus saving you some “green” as well.
“There’s getting to be more and more people asking about it,” said Steve Overholser, part of the husband-and-wife team that owns Tiffany Homes. He installed radiant in-floor heat in one of his green houses that was featured in a parade of homes. Floor warming mats are not only helping save energy, but these reduced energy costs will pay for floor warming mats many times over.  If you’re serious about saving money, and cutting down on energy consumption, radiant heating is a great place to start.

If you’re considering installing radiant heating, you need to consider several key aspects of your project that will assure you the best price and performance. It’s important to understand the details of your project and then match it to the best system available.

Whether heating under hardwood, carpet, or tiled floors, there is a system that will fit your individual project. Both electric and hydronic systems can be installed directly under hardwood and carpet flooring. If you are in the market for a radiant heat system, you should check out the selection of radiant heating products available through Suntouch. Suntouch can provide you with as many options as possible, and help you select the best options for any project that will fit your individual needs and budget. If you’re considering installing a heated floor, you really should check out the products offered by Suntouch.  Along with their technical expertise, they can educate you as to which radiant heat products match your application, as well as your budget.

If you’re thinking of remodeling a bathroom or kitchen, there is something you should 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. 

Choosing the best heating systems for a new home or to add supplemental heat to a cold spot in your home takes a little homework. The consultants at Suntouch can provide information on all of the latest heating systems. Suntouch can also help to properly assess your project and prescribe a system that will add value to your home while staying within your budget.

Heating a home efficiently offers many challenges.  A common challenge to traditional heating systems is the inability to zone your home for specific areas of the home without heating the entire home. Suntouch heating systems can be easily designed to be independently controlled by zone which enables a home owner to increase the temperature for defined areas of the home during occupancy and conversely allows a particular zone to remain off during down times. This strategy not only saves the home owner money, it gives you complete control to efficiently warm you most used living spaces without comprising cost.

The use of a bathroom can be responsible for a significant amount of your utility bills year-round. Bathroom heating is one such energy consideration because you want the heat quickly, but for only a short period of time. Therefore traditional forced air heating systems for a bathroom can be very inefficient, and waste a lot of energy.  However, Suntouch provides a solution to this in their radiant heating products.  Radiant heat can make you feel comfortably warm without having to heat all the air in the bathroom.

Suntouch radiant heating provides a unique transfer of energy that naturally searches out colder objects to warm. 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. If you have ever strolled barefoot along the beach on a sunny day and felt the warm sand underneath your feet, or held a warm mug, then you have felt radiant heat. Objects absorb radiant heat until they are the same temperature as the heat source, after which the heat slowly escapes to other areas that are colder, such as the air, etc.

Not only will radiant heat save you in heating costs in areas like your bathrooms, which only need heat for short periods of time.  But, they also increase the comfort level of these rooms because they keep concentrate the heat in the areas that are generally the coolest, such as tile floors, etc.  Imagine being able to step out of the shower onto a warm floor this winter.  These are only a few of the benefits of a radiant heating system. To find out the other benefits of radiant heat, contact Suntouch today.