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Do it yourself heated flooring installationHeated flooring seems to be a job for heating or electrical contractors at first glance, but it is really quite easy and actually a lot of fun. The modern radiant heat floor systems are gaining popularity because they replace air-blown heat which stirs up a lot of dust and pathogens. Back in the 1970's, radiant ceiling heat was popular, but as we all know, heat rises, so our heads were always hot and our feet were always cold. Floor heating solves this problem along with a few others. Here's a site that's an excellent reference to floor heating. It's called www.thermosoftinternational.com Here are some highlights of that site.
The floor heating options are water or resistance heat. Water requires tubes of heated water that circulates inside the floor. It requires more floor cement to cover it up than resistance heat. The resistance heat is similar to ceiling heat, only it's inside the floor. It requires a special cable that heats up quickly and is controlled by a thermostat.
You can buy this cable in sheets or mats. You just secure it to the subfloor with 2-sided tape so it can't move when you apply the mortar.
The mats need to be connected together using the black to black, white to white, wiring method. Doing it this way wires all the mats together so they are wired in parallel to the thermostat.
Next, you will need to cover the floor heat mats with a latex-modified Portland cement made specially for floor heating systems. Most heating repair contractors use this type of mortar.
You can either lay the tile into the wet mortar after you get it spread evenly over the heating mats, or you can let it dry for 24 hours after you apply it over the heating mats, then apply more mortar and lay the tile. Then after the tiles dry, you add the grout and grout sealant.
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