"Tom Newton" wrote in message ...
Hi Folks -

3. Now for the slab and heat, where I'm really worried -- first, although he
was able to jack hammer away the very poor concrete laid by the previous
owner, there was some incredibly hard concrete below that that made it
impossible to go any more than 2 inches deep (the house probably had a patio
or landing out back originally, the house is 90 years old)

4. With the slab cleared down to the 2" depth, he said "to be safe" he'd put
in 50% more "tubing" than would normally be required for the space - this
was to address my heating worries - and he didn't lay the tubing under the
24" cabinet perimeter. Is it correct to use 50% more tubing than is normally
necessary?

5. Ok, this is what I'm horrified of - he didn't insulate the slab.
Originally, he said he WOULD be putting some insulation on the slab, and
then lay the tubing on top. But after it was all done, with the rest of the
floor poured over it and the tile man had laid his floor and had gone --
after that -- I asked him about the insulation below, and he broke me the
news -- "we couldn't put the insulation bed under the tubing because that
would have raised the floor height too high -- you would have hated it."

Shocked and a bit worried about the lack of insulation on the slab, I asked
him if that would affect the ability to heat up the room satisfactorily or
create a heating cost issue -- he said "no, it won't be an issue, don't
worry about it."

Tom,

Unfortunately this response is not going to be much help for you
however for the group, we have solved this problem a few times by
insulating the slab under the in-floor radiant heat with one of our
multi ceramic insulations. Here is a link to some pictures of one of
the projects.

http://eaglecoatings.net/content/sun...adiantheat.htm

Granted this is not the optimum application for this technology. See
the Note at the bottom of the page!

ie. NOTE : In this particular application the SUNSHIELD 2000 is
completely buried in concrete and consequently only 2 of the 4
ceramics will come into play. The 2 reflective ceramics are
ineffective in this type of application because the coating is facing
direct contact, low temperature, front side conduction. This will
reduce the R value equivalency to approximately R10. Additional R
value equivalency can be achieved by adding more thickness.

An addition 7 mils DFT will only equal an additional RE3.

Prior to the application on the first project I worked with the
Engineering Firm involved and we completed a successful test of this
method of insulation using thermocouples buried in the test slab as
well as taking top and underslab temperature readings.

Hopefully this information will be helpful to others that are faced
with the lack of space constraint.

Best Regards,
Doug