I've been doing a lot of research in the past couple of days, trying to resolve our dilemma of having a doorless shower yet still feeling warm while we shower and dry off. One of my Piano Forum buddies, Monster M&H, sent me the URL for a wonderful website called "Fine Homebuilding," which has tons of resources and articles for all aspects of residential construction and renovation. I signed up for a 14-day free trial and have spent hours browsing all the articles there.
What I learned from that site is that my impressions of heated bathroom floors was not correct. I had assumed that all it would do is warm the tile, which would do no good at all in terms of warming the rest of our bodies as we showered and dried off. However, it appears that these radiant floor heating devices could actually waft a bunch of warm air upwards, and--in fact--many people use radiant heating as their sole source of heat. And then I was talking with my buddy, Rich, about the heated floors, and he assured me that an acquaintance of his had just put them in his new home, and he, quote, absolutely loved it, unquote.
So now I am leaning toward adding in some heated floors in the bathroom. Wagner has in the mean time added a furnace vent in the drying off portion of the shower. While that will help somewhat, there will only be heat coming through that vent when we have the furnace for the addition blowing, and there are lots of time we take showers when we don't necessarily want the furnace going. I'd rather have some limited heat source that could be turned on for the duration of the shower and that would affect only the bathroom area.
What I wasn't sure of is whether the radiant floor heating devices could be used in our shower proper. After a bunch of googling I found one manufacturer, SunTouch, who explicitly states that their mats can be used in the shower as well as outside. I have emailed them and asked if the heat radiates upward or simply warms the tile. I'm a little nervous about the thought of electrical wires running underneath a (very wet) shower floor, but I really do want to have plenty of warmth as we take our showers.
Grapple grapple.
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We have been selling the SunTouch system for 8 years and our customers have installed SunTouch mats in MANY shower floors (and seats as well).
SunTouch Electric Radiant Heating mats provide true radiant warmth; 12 watts per Sq Foot = 40 BTUs/SF/Hour - a significant amount of heat energy. Radiant heat warm OBJECTS (& people!) beyond the tile - just like the sun.
The GFCI protection built-in to the SunStat PRO thermostat provides personal protection.
Read more aqbout SunTouch here:
http://www.warmyourfloor.com/suntouchfloorheatingmats.aspx
Thanks, the rev! SunTouch was in fact the company I referred to in my post that explicitly states you can put the mats in the shower. I'm still a little worried about water and electricity in the same place, but I'm leaning toward putting the mat in our drying off area.
Very Cool Posting!!
Even I am also doing some research to do some home improvement in this winter. I planned to install a suntouch heating system in my living room this time.
Instead of heating all the rooms in a house temporarily. Get the permanent solution for it by radianted heated floors which are very easy to install.
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