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Originally Posted by RobbMeeX
So I've been searching and searching. I've got carpet in a few rooms. I want to take it out and put pex on the slab.
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It sounds like you already have a slab floor. Almost certainly, the slab is not insulated. We did have a poster from Denmark, as I recall, who actually went in with a metal grinder and cut slots in a pre-existing concrete basement floor for installing PEX... must have been a horrible job to do. We never heard back from him, so I don't know of the degree of success of his method. He had a major PEX project and this was only a small part.
Hot water piped through an uninsulated slab is the way they use to do it originally. There is heat loss downward but that heat loss seems to stabilize to a certain extent, after a while. There is also heat loss around the edges that doesn't really stabilize. I have heard tales of flowers planted around the perimeter off these houses that lasted through the winter!
As far as cracked floors in a concrete pour go, the cracking is to be expected, and crack lines are intentionally put in the concrete to control where the cracks will occur.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RobbMeeX
I'm searching for a way to cover the pex and put floor on top. I don't have a lot of thickness at my disposal. I guess the question here is how thin can a PEX installed floor be? I have been looking at can't find a good answer.
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There is a product called
Roth Panel that is high-density foam that is faced with .020" aluminum and the PEX channels are already formed in. The high density foam is about 3/4" thick and offers R-3.5 insulation against downward heat migration. Floor goes on top of this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RobbMeeX
Maybe I am overthinking this.
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No, not yet.
-AC