# HotRoom floor



## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Are you recirculating the water back through the water tank or wasting it to a drain. A grid floor like Q Decking would get the heat up quicker. Calculations could be done to see where gains could be made. Is there sufficient heat input from the water tank to raise the temperature of the pounds of honey and the room in a reasonable time? Is there sufficient pipe radiating surface area to dissipate that amount of heat?

I have done such calculations theoretically, but in reality sizing of heat input and radiating surface area is usually engineered and we, the monkeys, just follow the drawings.


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## pleasantvalley (May 22, 2014)

Budget for a boiler and proper in-floor concrete heating? I can only imagine the moldy mess a drip through grating would end up being besides trashing your forklift tires. How big is your room? Ours is 30x50x18 and a 250,000btu boiler keeps it easily at 30C, plus running our indirect water tank and a coil under the honey tank for the fall.


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## whiskers (Aug 28, 2011)

Wood is a fair insulator so the wood is probably trapping the heat under the floor. You could install a fan (or several) that would suck air from under the floor and exhaust into the room, also return gratings from the room back to under the floor. You could space the boards or install metal grid so the heat could convect from under the floor, but as mentioned above crud will fall through and be very difficult to remove (possible complaint from health inspector). You could install a continuous metal floor closely attached to the pipes to conduct the heat up and then radiate it into the room. Either this or the metal grid will be very uncomfortable to work on (rather like working in a skillet).

I'm afraid that this is mostly negative. Pleasantvalley's solution sounds like a good one if you have the money.
Bill


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## RDY-B (May 20, 2007)

need more information--size of black pipe--spacing of grid and so forth---

what I can say is the system can be built with a layer of 3/4-1 inch insulation under your chosen type of heat grid
the tighter the spacing the smaller the diameter of your convince-in other words 1/2 pex spaced at 12 inches
will out preform black pipe space at 24 inch--with the insulation under your chosen grid--concrete at 3 1/2 will
give you a better heat bank for a hydrosopic floor--circulation pumps are what makes the magic hapen-these systems can be built using a five gallon hot water heater-(if the watter heater is keep in the hot room)-this makes easy install because five gallon water heaters run on 110--but with your boiler system hot water is a plenty--lay insulation --re plumb heat grid and cover with concrete--RDY-B


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

My hot room floor is set up in a similar way. 2" foam on compacted sand, metal grid with heat tubes strapped to the grid. Concrete on top. My room is 10'x30'. Temperature is controlled by a bulb thermostat. I can liquify 50 drums of crystallized honey in a week and a half if I set the temperature to 120. Or, I can hold several day's harvest of honey supers, and extract at 100-110. 

Can't imagine going back to heat tapes and hot box methods.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Ours is similar to what Mr. Palmer and pleasantvalley describe, and I love it both for honey and honey tank warming in the fall and the room makes a cozy work area in the winter. There needs to be a thermal break (insulation) both under the pipe and also vertically around the edges of the floor to reduce conductive heat loss to adjacent floors. I had a similar setup years ago except with electric heat cables. It worked great.....for one year. The electrician who did the work didn't really have a solution other than to say it probably corroded and shorted out.


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## Woodside (Aug 10, 2010)

A simple and cheap solution would be to circulate your hot water through a radiator/fan combo above your wooden floor... Bare pipes surrounded by air or touch wood will not conduct heat very well, but running air over a radiator moves alot of heat fast. My hot room has boiler/heat exchanger/wax melter/ radiator+fan... no floor heat, during extraction the room reaches temps of 115f. At night I turn off the thermostat bypass and room sits at 95 over night


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Ya , having the pipes in the slab acts like a giant sized conductor, radiating the heat very effectively 
I love my heated floor


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