Warmzone Blog

Are we are smack dab in the middle of winter or what? Did you start thinking about heating system solutions for the winter months or are you just going to spend the season shivering and wishing you’d planned ahead? Leaving decisions like this to the last moment (for example, when your furnace up and dies in the middle of a brutal Nor’easter) causes unnecessary stress, expense, and, most obviously, a freezing cold house.

No matter your situation, whether you are building a new home from the ground up, preparing to replace your heating system, or renovating an older home, knowledge of available heating systems on the market today is helpful.  While fire places and coal burning stoves become less popular, 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. Not only does this cut down on heating costs, but it is also more efficient and eco-friendly as well. Radiant heating systems are quickly replacing traditional furnaces.

Heating Systems Tip: Choosing the best heating systems for a new home or to add supplemental heat to a cold spot in your home now takes a little homework. The radiant consultants and designers at Warmzone have been trained in all of the latest heating systems to properly assess your project and prescribe a system that will add value to your home within your budget.

Lawn care in the wintertime??  It’s true! Just because it’s wintertime and the grass isn’t green doesn’t mean you should forget about taking care of your landscaping. In the colder months, heating systems are the best option to melt the ice and to protect your landscaping. Heating systems like heated driveways actually do more than just melt snow and ice from driveways and sidewalks. They also help preserve your landscaping while avoiding the use of harmful salt and chemicals.

Ask any gardener, nursery owner, or landscaper, and they could probably tell you that salt spread over asphalt and sidewalks to melt the ice can do a good bit of damage to lawns and landscape plants. When salt products are spread over streets and walkways, the salt inevitably splashes onto nearby foliage. The sodium chloride burns the plants and gets absorbed by the plants’ root systems.

Before you running out for some alternate “ice-melt” products, let us assure you that they aren’t the solution either. They simply won’t work as effectively as outdoor heating systems. You see, these systems don’t use any harmful chemicals, and they melt the ice so effectively that you don’t have to do any of the work. These heating systems are state of the art but easy to install for any contractor or do-it-yourself expert.

Heating Systems Tip: You’ll find that snow melting heating systems can be installed in almost any driveway and can be retrofit into existing concrete and asphalt.

What do you have planned in the home improvement arena in the coming months?  When you’re planning a bathroom for a new construction, or even if you’re looking to remodel your existing bathroom, there are several things to consider regarding your heating systems options, especially when it comes to making your new bathroom comfortable and energy-efficient.

It might feel like an extravagent luxury, but warm tiled floors are rapidly becoming an affordable standard for many new and remodeled homes. Radiant floor heating has always been considered a distinctive quality, so if you are building a new home or remodeling any of your floors, now is the time to add under floor heating for a new level of comfort and warmth.

Great news is that many of the heating systems products available today can be installed by do-it-yourself homeowners. For small areas electric radiant heating products are usually the best for reasons of cost and ease of installation. Not only will heated floors add comfort to your bathrooms, but they allow you to heat your bathrooms as well.

Radiant heating systems provide uniform heat and has a comparatively low cost of operation of up to thirty percent less than conventional systems in most residences. Efficiency is high because radiant heat raises the surface temperature of what it is warming, thereby providing comfort at a lower room-air temperature than other systems

Heating Systems Tip: For information on radiant heating systems for your bathroom, such as towel warmers, and heated floors, contact the staff at warmzone.com. Warmzone.com can help you find the right application for your project, at a price you can afford.

There’s something that just about every homeowner in a snowy or cold area of the country fears.  Their home heating system going on the blink during a doozy of a winter storm (whether that’s ice, snow, or just plain cold cold cold weather). You know it’s going to happen at the worst possible time, after all, so why not beat it to the punch and upgrade your home heating systems to radiant heat.

To learn more about the heating systems that are available today, then keep on reading. A boiler works by heating hot water and then distributing it to radiators, baseboard units or radiant heat tubes that can be placed under the floor. Though not as popular as furnaces, a boiler heating system can be very efficient and makes an excellent choice if you do not need central air. Meanwhile, a furnace – powered by gas, electricity, oil or propane — uses a fan to drive hot air through your ductwork and into your home. The biggest issue with these types of forced air heating systems is their decreased efficiency.

Alternative heating systems are quickly becoming more common, including 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, which allows them to operate much more cleanly, and efficiently.

Heating Systems Tip: Radiant floor heating has always been considered a distinctive quality, so if you are building a new home or remodeling any of your floors, now is the time to add an under floor heating system for a new level of comfort and warmth.

Were you like me and got a huge shock to the system (and your wallet) when your most recent energy bill arrived? It’s pretty scary how high those bills can get, we know. Well, we’d like to let you know that new technology in radiant heating can help you cut electricity costs. Now electric radiant heating systems offer you a choice of a thermostat that is controlled by a floor sensor. This allows you to measure floor temperature or with an ambient sensor to control the actual temperature in a specific room. Radiant heat can be used and controlled as a primary source of heat or used as a supplemental heating source to add comfort to your living spaces.

When an Electric Radiant Heat system is turned on, energy is forced through a conductive material to create resistance or heat. For most areas an electric line-voltage system is used. These systems use a special thermostat that has an integrated breaker for safety right at the power source. They are available in 110 or 220 voltage.

Low-voltage systems use the same voltages and consume the same amount of power as line-voltage products. The use of a step-down transformer reduces the voltage supplied to the heating materials. Due to their safe low-voltage current (8-30v) products like Zmesh can be nailed and stapled down to secure the electric radiant heat product to the floor and are therefore useful for installation under hardwood and carpet.

Electric Radiant Heat Tip: One of the low-voltage product recommended by warmzone.com is Zmesh.

I know I’m not alone in thinking as a kid that surely by the time it was the 21^st century, we’d have tons of space-aged automated gadgets (like the Jetsons) to make our lives easier. Well, we still don’t have that automated dog-walking machine that George Jetson had, but we do have some amazing automated outdoor heating systems available.

Recent improvements in designs of aerial sensors and surface mounted sensors make these outdoor heating systems cost-effective to operate, compared to just a short time ago when they seemed cost-prohibitive to anyone beyond royalty. Automated sensors detect the combination of precipitation and cold temperatures and activate the outdoor heating systems during inclement weather conditions and then automatically turn off a few hours after the storm. Manual operation of these outdoor heating systems can also be used to spot heat your driveway or patio when additional heat is required.

Outdoor heating systems in concrete, asphalt, and under pavers was thought to be a luxury that most people couldn’t afford. Now, heating driveways, walkways or even parking areas is becoming common for many residences and businesses. And we think many folks, like those living in New England, the Great Lakes area, and snowy ski areas like Aspen, will enjoy having safe and ice-free steep driveways and sidewalks.

Outdoor Heating Systems Tip: If you are in an area that requires snow removal, consider an automated snow melting outdoor heating system before you begin construction to assure yourself the best design and performance.