Forced air in bathroom with radiant floor?

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ironspider

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Greetings all, we are remodeling our kitchen which luckily (or not luckily depending on how you look at it) required the destruction of our outdated and terrible front "bathroom". It had a toilet and a sink and was very tiny. So we've redesigned the space and we're now going to be able to add a shower, exhaust fan, window, and make the space a little bigger. It's still pretty small (maybe 30sq ft including the shower) but bigger than it was previously (about 18 sq ft!).

So my wife wants to get some radiant flooring in there to warm up the tiles and such. My question, however, is that we have a forced air vent in that space but the contractor is going to have to move it since we're adding the shower in the location the vent previously shot out into. So if we have a radiant floor (electric) setup, do we still need (or even want) the forced air vent?
 

ironspider

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This was probably a dumb question because I just realized we'd need the vent for A/C in the summer right? :)
 

Reach4

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Do you think you will need an AC vent in the bathroom?
 

Jadnashua

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I'd leave the vent there - in most cases, the radiant floor (I'm assuming electric?) won't be enough to heat the actual space, but will make the floor nice and warm. I have not used it, but you might want to look into Schluter's new (just out in the last couple of months) electric floor system. http://www.schluter.com/media/datasheets/ditra-heat_eng.pdf?v=201402272301

I'll get a chance to see and touch it in April and may have more info after that. At one of the big floor coverings shows in February 2014, it won best new product at the show.
 

BadgerBoilerMN

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We heat floors, walls and ceilings everyday. Bathrooms and kitchens are challenging as jad points out, but a forced air register in small rooms usually performs poorly. This is also true of relatively high heat load rooms with a lot of glass e.g. sun-rooms, since the furnace will cycle-off leaving the room cold waiting for the rest of the house.

This is one of the few times I find a floor sensor controls best and leave the sensor set to say 74°F all the time. This is also a situation where an ACCA Manual 'J' heat load is indispensable, since you don't know how much heat to replace if you don't know how much you are losing.
 
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