Abstract
A method of evaluating the thermal performance of floor heating systems is examined as a commissioning tool. A simple method is needed to check a floor heating system while in use by residents, because evaluation currently requires significant time and effort. Therefore, a commissioning process consisting of three steps was proposed and applied to four residences. The performance of a floor heating system was estimated in these three steps: (1) efficiency was estimated from the room temperature and the energy consumption with the floor surface temperature kept constant, (2) crawl space temperature was compared with the system on and off (a hot-water floor heating system raised the crawl space temperature), (3) heat flow from the floor panel was analyzed by a one-dimensional heat conduction calculation using detailed measured data. The feasibility of estimating the thermal characteristics of the floor was shown by fitting the average and amplitude of the measured temperatures to the calculated value.
