Hydronic radiant floor heating is the most comfortable and efficient way to distribute heat through your home. Assuming it is designed and installed correctly, hydronic radiant floor heat distribution will save 7 to 10 percent over a system using forced air distribution. How can that be? With these systems, your floors are warmer, and your ceilings are cooler. This keeps the heat right at your side, rather than wasted up at the ceiling where no one can feel it. Because of this, your home will be warm and comfortable at 3 to 5 degrees lower than a home heated with a forced air system.
If hydronic radiant floor heating is done with a water-to-water geothermal heat pump, the system has even higher efficiency: besides the superior efficiency of being a ground-source heat pump, water-to-water geothermal units operate at lower temperatures than boilers (or even water-to-air geothermal heat pumps!), which maximizes the system's efficiency.
In a hydronic radiant floor system, water is heated with a water-to-water geothermal heat pump (or a fossil-fuel boiler) and circulated from a buffer tank through PEX piping that runs to every room in the home. In each room, the water moves through either in-floor piping, underfloor piping, or hydronic convecting radiators, allowing the heat to move into the room. The cooled water then circulates back to the geothermal heat pump to be reheated. Water circulation is controlled with centrifugal pumps, ball-valves, and electronic zone controls.
Air handlers can be added to a hydronic radiant system to provide cooling and dehumidification, to allow more heating to be done on the coldest days of the year, and to provide air filtration and purification.