What is Radiant Floor Heating and what are the advantages of it?? We get asked that often.

Radiant floor heating is the best heating system a house can have and one that you don’t realize it is there! Just imagine: no radiators clanking in the night and no vents whooshing like a jet preparing for take off!! No dust – collecting ductwork that runs up your allergist”s bills. That’s the advantage of radiant floor heating. It is an even blanket of heat, right where you want it. It’s also a highly efficient way to heat a house, increasing comfort as it reduces energy costs.

This is how radiant heat works – In a radiant setup, the warmth is supplied by hot-water tubes or electric wires buried underneath the floor. As the invisible waves of thermal radiation rise from below, they warm up any objects they strike, which radiate that captured heat in turn. Though the air temperature remains relatively constant, you stay comfortable because the surrounding surfaces aren’t stealing warmth from your body.

Contrast that with what happens in a conventional forced-air heating system, the kind found in most homes. Air blows out of the registers at a well-baked 120 degrees, rises to the top of the room where it quickly sheds heat, then drops back down as it cools. The air in the room becomes uncomfortably stratified: Your head can be bathed in warmth while your toes lie in the frozen zone. Then there’s the problem of cycling. “You turn on the furnace, it quickly takes you to 68 or 70, and then shuts off. The result is a phenomenon he calls “the cold 70,” which is what you feel right after the hot air stops pumping from the registers. Those jarring ups and downs are absent with radiant floors, which may reach 85 degrees, tops, on a frigid day. The warm air still rises, but it does so evenly over the entire floor, so the coolest air stays up at the ceiling.

There are so many things to love about the coming holiday season. Great food, great company, family, festive decorations; we couldn’t be more excited! But there’s a not so great factor attached to it all, too. That hefty electric bill you’ll be seeing. Looking for ways to keep your costs at a minimum this holiday? The expert electricians at Hoffman Electrical can provide some easy fixes!

Our professionals have been proudly serving Tampa and Clearwater, Florida for years now. When it comes to quality and top-tier service, we’re the name to know in electrical! And as  apart of our great service, we’re always looking for ways to help out. If you want to reduce your energy costs this season, we’ve got the solutions you’ll be happy to know.

As you go through your home and do some spring cleaning, you are probably doing some needed updates to your home. While you are taking care of jobs that have been stacking up for months, you should also consider evaluating the safety of your home. Things like smoke detectors are often overlooked. We are so used to seeing them in the corner of the room, you rarely give them much thought, that is until you need them. An electrician in Pasadena can install hard-wired smoke detectors that really can be forgotten about, but will still work. That is important. You can rely on The Electric Connection to send out an experienced electrician to complete the installation for you.

Smoke detectors are typically out of sight, out of mind, until they start chirping to remind you the battery is low. If the chirping is ignored, the battery will die and the smoke detector will become nothing more than a fixture on the ceiling. With hard-wired smoke detectors, you don’t have to worry about the batteries going dead and your home left vulnerable. The smoke detectors are wired directly into your home’s main power. As long as your home has power, your smoke detectors will work. There is also a spot for backup batteries in case of a power outage.

When the Pasadena electrician installs the smoke detectors, you will get the added safety feature of all the smoke detectors being interlinked. When one detector goes off, every detector that is hard-wired will sound. This can add several seconds to your alert time. If you have ever seen a house fire or been involved in one, you know how fast it can go. Every second counts. If you are ready to add an additional layer of safety to your home, give The Electric Connection a call today and schedule your installation.