Radiant heat gaining popularity
America’s Northeast has a strong growing trend of radiant heating systems. Other areas of the country are trailing bit behind. Builders cite that even heat and cleaner air combined with lower operating costs are the main factors favoring radiant heating.
In this Building Online article fireplaces were also found popular source for heating. However, traditional wood is not the favorite choice for fireplace heating, but gas is gaining acceptance.
In my opinion, log home owners belong to the group, which favors fireplace heating. Radiant heating system is especially good on tiled floors, which conducts heat much better than wood floors. Wood is the most common flooring material in log homes and it acts as an effective insulation layer, reducing advantages of radiant heat floors.
There is always the ceiling. Radiant heating can be placed under ceiling panels, which tend to be much thinner than flooring materials. This way radiant heating can be used in log home to a satisfactory degree, but cost of installation can be high, because this sort of installments are still quite rare and require skilled workers, which do not come cheap.
