Abstract
In order to improve the performance of the floor heating system, it is very important to investigate how the heat loss is caused and how the energy consumption of the system could be reduced. Therefore, the heat loss from a hot water floor heating system was investigated in a residential house in Japan. Through the investigation process, several improvements were made in the heating system. To know the effect of the improvements, the upward/downward heat flows from the hot-water panel and the heat loss from the piping of the floor heating system were calculated. In result, insulating the piping and attaching the insulation below the floor improved the upward heat flow rate from the panel. However closing the ventilation openings hardly improved the rate of the upward heat flow from the panel. Although insulating the pipe and attaching the insulation below the floor improved the upward heat flow, heat loss from the piping was still high. To reduce the heat loss from the floor heating system, it is much effective to insulate the piping, compared with the improvement of the insulation and structure of the floor.
