My heated bathroom floor quit. Does the tile have to come up?

Usually not. The most common failures are the floor sensor and the thermostat, both accessible at the wall, and many thermostats can run on air temperature while a replacement sensor is sorted out. Tile only comes up when the mat itself has been damaged.

Should I turn my radiant floor down at night?

Not by much. A slab holds hours of heat, so a deep setback leaves the floor cold well into the next morning and then overshoots catching up. This is the most common way people end up unhappy with a system that is working correctly.

Why is one part of my floor warm and another cold?

On a hydronic system that usually means air trapped in one loop or a zone actuator that is not opening. On an electric system it typically means the area sits outside the mat's coverage, since mats are laid to a plan and rarely reach walls or cabinets.

Is radiant heating worth installing in Houston?

For a bathroom or a sunroom addition, plenty of people are glad they did it, because the comfort is real even in a short winter. For a whole house it is a harder case: the heating season is brief, radiant cannot cool, and you still need ductwork.

Do you install radiant heating?

Tell us the project and we will tell you plainly what part of it we take on. Electric mat work has to be coordinated with whoever sets the tile, and hydronic tubing in a slab is a decision made before the concrete is poured.

Radiant Heating in Houston, TX

Radiant Heating in Houston

Radiant heat is rare enough in Houston that most homeowners who have it struggle to find anyone willing to look at the system. Usually it is a heated tile floor in a bathroom, occasionally a hydronic loop in a slab or an addition. This page covers how these systems work, what tends to fail, and where our work ends.

The two kinds you actually see here

Electric radiant is the common one: a resistance mat or cable set in thinset under tile, controlled by its own thermostat with a temperature sensor buried in the floor beside it, on a dedicated circuit with GFCI protection. It heats the surface above it and nothing else.

Hydronic radiant is the larger version: PEX tubing in a slab or under a subfloor, fed warm water from a boiler or dedicated water heater through a manifold, moved by a circulator pump, and split into zones by valve actuators.

Radiant behaves differently, and that confuses thermostats

A concrete slab is a large thermal mass. It takes hours to warm and hours to give that heat back, so radiant does not answer a thermostat the way forced air does. Turning it up because you feel cold accomplishes nothing for a long while, and then overshoots.

So the deep setback schedules that suit a furnace work badly on a slab. Radiant wants a steady setpoint with modest adjustments. Floor sensors also cap surface temperature to protect the flooring above, which is why a floor may stop short of the number you set.

What usually goes wrong

On electric systems the floor sensor fails most often, followed by the thermostat and nuisance GFCI trips. The awkward part is that the sensor lives in the floor, though many thermostats can run on ambient air temperature while a replacement is pulled through the spare conduit.

On hydronic systems the usual suspects are a seized circulator, air trapped in a loop, a failed zone actuator, low system pressure, a waterlogged expansion tank, or a control no longer telling the heat source to fire. Air in a loop has a distinctive symptom: one section of floor stays cold.

Where our work stops

We are a licensed mechanical contractor, TACLA36229C. Controls, thermostats, floor sensors, zoning, circulators, and how radiant coordinates with the rest of your heating and cooling are work we take on. What we will not do is guess on your dime: if the fault sits inside a boiler, in tubing buried in a slab, or in the flooring itself, we tell you which trade should carry it.

What we check on a radiant system

Thermostat and floor sensorSensor resistance measured against the manufacturer's table to separate a dead sensor from a dead thermostat.
Circuit and GFCIDedicated circuit and GFCI behaviour, since repeated trips point at the mat rather than the control.
Manifold and circulatorOn hydronic systems, whether the pump is moving water and whether each loop is open.
System pressure and airLoop pressure and trapped air, which explain most cases of one cold section in a working floor.
Heat source and controlsWhether the boiler or water heater is being asked to fire, and whether it responds.

Radiant Heating, answered plainly

Usually not. The most common failures are the floor sensor and the thermostat, both accessible at the wall, and many thermostats can run on air temperature while a replacement sensor is sorted out. Tile only comes up when the mat itself has been damaged.
Not by much. A slab holds hours of heat, so a deep setback leaves the floor cold well into the next morning and then overshoots catching up. This is the most common way people end up unhappy with a system that is working correctly.
On a hydronic system that usually means air trapped in one loop or a zone actuator that is not opening. On an electric system it typically means the area sits outside the mat's coverage, since mats are laid to a plan and rarely reach walls or cabinets.
For a bathroom or a sunroom addition, plenty of people are glad they did it, because the comfort is real even in a short winter. For a whole house it is a harder case: the heating season is brief, radiant cannot cool, and you still need ductwork.
Tell us the project and we will tell you plainly what part of it we take on. Electric mat work has to be coordinated with whoever sets the tile, and hydronic tubing in a slab is a decision made before the concrete is poured.