Product Description

Add radiant floor heating to your money-making arsenal. Demand for radiant floor heating is rising fast, and Radiant Floor Heating is your ticket to cashing in on this highly profitable opportunity. Top expert R. Dodge Woodson grounds you in all aspects of specifying, designing, installing and troubleshooting today's advanced, super-efficient radiant floor heating systems. He also gives you business-building advice for selling the benefits of these systems to clients. Whether you're installing radiant floor heating in new construction or retrofitting existing structures, you get step-by-step procedures for: *Estimating heat gain and loss and laying out an effective in-floor piping diagram *Installing piping in thick and thin concrete slabs, through wooden floor joists and between layers of subflooring *Combining in-floor heating with an existing hot-water baseboard system *Establishing heat zones for more cost-efficient heating *Selecting and installing gas- and oil-fired boilers, circulating pumps and electrical controls *Deploying radiant floor heating in special-use areas like garages, spa rooms, pool rooms and greenhouses *Troubleshooting and repairing both new and existing systems *And much more!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #352115 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From the Back Cover
Old as the Romans, radiant floor heating is what customers want today! Customer demand has made in-floor radiant heat the fastest growing sector of the home heating market. And no wonder. This healthy, quiet, economical, and clean method of heating--invented in the Roman empire--is now also durable and reliable, thanks to new materials and advances. This guide from master plumber, longtime contractor, and renowned how-to author R. Dodge Woodson brings plumbing and construction pros (and even savvy do-it-yourselfers) all the details and know-how needed to: understand and explain the advantages of in-floor radiant heating; install, test, and debug embedded and dry radiant heat systems in new or existing homes; create heating zones for variable temperatures throughout a house; offer hot water heating as part of your system; heat seldom-used areas and provide outdoor ice removal and other add-on amenities; select superior equipment--tubing, boilers, expansion tanks, pumps, and controls; troubleshoot and repair system problems; avoid common errors and mishaps.

About the Author
R. Dodge Woodson (Fort Fairfield, ME) has over 20 years' experience as a home builder, contractor, master plumber, and real estate broker. He is the author of many McGraw-Hill books, including Be A Successful Building Contractor 2/e, and National Plumbing Codes Handbook 2/e.

Customer Reviews

Cursory Overview
This book provides an overview of the concept of radiant floor heating (RFH) systems. Although there is useful information provided in the book, it is lacking for useful design tools. Those who are adept at surfing the web are likely to find as much information about RFH from a couple of hours of searching than is contained within this book. Certainly not written for professionals, the text is at times poorly written and somewhat repetitive. I recommend that interested home owners consider the books on RFH by Siegenthaler (Modern Hydronic Heating....) and Holohan (Hydronic Radiant Heating).

Learn from the experts!
I learned only one thing from this book: never buy a technical how-to book unless the author's experience and qualifications are given. R. Dodge Woodson dodged this point because he doesn't have any. As the author of several diverse titles in the McGraw-Hill "Professional" series, he is, obviously, just a non-technical writer. In this case, he has strung together useless platitudes based on what he understands from manufacturers' literature, which isn't much. He can't give any "real answers," as the book cover claims. Only the appendix of this book is useful. It contains data provided by the manufacturers, and that information can be obtained from them directly, probably at no cost! McGraw-Hill, years ago a premier publisher of informative and authoritative technical and scholarly books, should be ashamed of itself.

A Waste
This book will not benefit anyone. It is repetitive and lacking the necessary detail to truly plan and install a radiant floor heating system. It's unfortunate that books like this are not screened before being made available to the unsuspecting public.