Got me! In our residence, there is no heat in the bedrooms, and sometimes I get a little grief about that if we've forgotten to leave the doors open in cold weather, so in this house I'm going to put just a little heat in the bedrooms, hence the wider spacing, but in truth, I don't see why bedrooms should be heated at all. I will put tubes on 4" centers in the bathroom and 6" centers elsewhere in the house. Sorry not to have provided a little more information.
Both houses have crawl spaces. The concrete is poured (or will be poured) on a plywood subfloor with joists and girders below. I will put a multilayer reflective bubble insulation against the underside of the subfloor first and 6" of fiberglass insulation between the joists after that. In our residence we have only 6" of fiberglass insulation. I've been schooled in the belief that little heat is dissipated downward in such construction, that it's ceilings first, then windows, walls and finally the floor with the stipulation that there be a thermal break around the edge of the slab (when it's not on grade because there one needs lots of insulation below the slab as well) to prevent heat leaking out the sides. That may be old school.
I was reading yesterday an article that provided a way to examine how efficient one's house was regarding heat loss. It stated that if your house lost fewer than 40kBtus per square foot per year, it could be considered reasonably efficient by today's standards. I was feeling smug with the knowledge that our house loses about 15kBtu/SF/yr until I discovered in the fine print that the article had Vermont as its reference. I'm sorry not to be able to link to the article because I didn't save it. mm
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