Tiny home hydronic in-floor heating!
Hydronic in-floor heating!!!! We had ordered some pex-al-pex piping (So much easier than straight pex) and heat shields a few weeks before the trailer was ready to try a novel concept in tiny houses. There is a reason this is rarely done on THOWs. What a freakin PITA!!! Only half the heat shields were initially installed as the other half had to be secured against the sub-floor OSB, beneath the vapor barrier, as each sheet of OSB was installed.
Hydronic in-floor heating installation. This caused a lot of frustration and we even considered abandoning the system several times. In-between each floor joist, we installed 6 inch rockwool insulation as we had read that a cold floor was one of the major complaints from a lot of tiny home owners. Rockwool was chosen for it's thermal mass, high insulation value and moisture resistance.
Securing the pex with spray foam. We spray foamed the long return line to secure it if we ever moved the house and to give it extra insulation value. Next it was time to install the vapor barrier and sub-floor OSB.
Installing vapor barrier and OSB. In order to get both sides of each each shield properly screwed into the OSB, we had to crawl beneath each sheet with the far side on the joist. This proved to be extremely challenging as the angle of the OSB had to be very shallow to not pull the pex out of alignment or rip the joist mounted heat shields from the joist. Many angry hours went into this whole process, the only way it got finished was hoping the end results would be low maintenance, low energy and worth it.
Finally finished the sub-floor! Read the full article
