Why Use Radiant Heat Transfer Plates in your Installation?

    Radiant heating systems typically use pipes or tubes to distribute heated fluids throughout the house.  Heat stored within the fluid escapes to warm its surroundings, hence the name ‘radiant heat’.  The efficiency of the radiant heat system depends on this final transfer of heat to the desired location.  Tubing alone is not efficient at transferring the heat between two surfaces because of its cylindrical geometry.  Only the tangent (tip) of the tubing is able to touch a flat surrounding surface such as a subfloor or drywall.  Additionally, tubing installed horizontally will sag between clips where it will not touch another surface at all.  This system would otherwise rely on surrounding air to transfer the heat from tubing to subfloor by convective heating, which is significantly less effective than direct contact.  This is why radiant heat transfer plates are essential to a radiant floor heating system.  What if your system only had tubes installed with clips originally? The good news is you can retroactively add the plates over tubing to optimize the system with little cost.  Radiant heat transfer plates and tubing can be installed above subflooring in a track style ‘sandwich’ installation or used below the subfloor.  If no floor access is available or loosing headspace is not ideal, radiant heat can be installed in walls or within ceilings too.   

    Radiant heat transfer plates are made with heat conductive materials and are shaped with a central groove to hold the tube.  The best plates I have used are ones that fully surround the tube in an ‘omega’ shaped design.  They snap into place over tubing making it really easy for installation.  This design also has the most surface contact with tubing, compared to ‘C’ or ‘V’ groove shaped ones, and helps transfer the heat to surrounding surface faster.  Some believe, in theory, that a thicker plate material will transfer heat faster.  This is false assumption, as the purpose of the plate is not to store heat, but to simply provide the conductive surface to transfer heat between tube and floor.  Actual performance shows that there is negligible benefit to using a thicker plate material but it will otherwise end up adding significant cost.   This is why it is instead better to focus on using the conductivity of the plate material. Copper is a better conductor than aluminum, but the cost of copper is so much more than aluminum that it is usually cost prohibitive for any build.  Therefore, aluminum offers the best value by performance.  Even within aluminum, there are tempered alloys that are more conductive than other alloys.  I tend to only use the tempered aluminum heat transfer plates to ensure I am getting the best conductivity for the price.  Here is link to the plates I have used with great performance:  

http://www.uspolystock.com/polystock/www/index.php

There are more items than are displayed on the website.  I’d call if looking for a different size or item.