Hydronic floor during bath remodel

[Ted co]

I’ve been working in the bath remodeling industry since 2007 and today had a customer ask about having a heated floor installed. We’ve installed dozens of electric heated floors, and worked in plenty of homes that have whole home hydronic systems but never had a customer ask for a hydronic system installed during a remodel. I’m not familiar with those systems at all. It’s nothing I deal with. She has hot water radiators and wants to tap into that for the floor.
Has anyone done this during a remodel? The plumber my company uses is on vacation so I figured I’d ask here to see if anyone can give me some info.
Thanks

 

[Jadnashua]

The inlet temperature of a typical radiator is usually way too hot for use in a hydronic floor...it can easily get too hot and burn you. So, that branch typically needs a tempering valve to restrict the temperature. Without knowing how the existing heating loops are plumbed, it could be fairly easy, or really difficult to implement.

Unless you have access to beneath the floor, you’ll end up raising the floor a fair amount to embed the tubing in the floor and usually, you end up encasing it in either deck mud or slc. Schluter makes a screed mat called Bekotec that can be used to hold the tubing in place, and then you fill it with deck mud, then you can add your tile on top. That’s likely to be thinner than embedding the tubing in bare deck mud so there’s enough depth above the tubing so it doesn’t crack. https://www.schluter.com/schluter-us/en_US/Modular-Screed-Systems/Schluter®-BEKOTEC/p/BEKOTEC