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New shop build.

Brandon do you think the bubble insulation would suffice for floor heat?

My biggest expense with floor heat is the insulation under the slab. That's 1500 bucks at the very least.
 
From the things I have read / seen they do sand then the bubble stuff then metal stuff then the pex. Only addition would be the bubble stuff and the pex over what you have to do anyway.
 
One thing I should point out.

This is not a personal use only shop. I build stuff for other people.

While I would not rate it as a commercial type shop I will have stuff in and out
 
On the good better best line of thinking 2" blue board is the best, it's what we're using in my professional life under all slabs heated or not. New energy codes up here are super strict and we are using 2" blue dow under slab to help meet insulation package codes.

BUT:

I have 1/2" bubble insulation with the white face on one side and the foil face on the other, I placed it with the foil face up. Keep in mind I built in 2008 and that was right at the time that it was being realized that the insulation under the slab should be a foam insulation not a bubble with foil. That being said, my garage and basement heat fine, I did it like we had been doing under-slab stuff in the early 2000's and late 90's. Is it the best nope, does it work, YUP!

Take a practical look at it, like I said my opinion on floor heat is that it is great for laying under a truck and working, but sucks for changing the temp of the air space in the short term.

One quick story about in floor heat: I have a client that bought a house with more issues than Time magazine. The property is simply awesome but his new to him 13,000 SF house had heating and cooling issues big time. We found heat that was locked on etc. So in testing each zone of the house we manually turned on one zone at a time in the house and let them run wild for 48 hours, then walked with a infrared gun and mapped where each zone heated. When we got all done we found one area that seemed like it had no heat in the floor by looking at the map but when walking the rooms it felt fine. We kicked on the mystery zone for like a full week and found that it heated up and connected all the dots and we had a full house map showing each zone and that we had 100% coverage throughout the house. But then the room the mystery zone was in wouldn't cool back off even with the heat lines shut off manually. We thought there was some sort of cross over for a while, but we soon discovered that room had been an old garage or something and the floor was like 18" thick with heat in it. It takes forever to heat up hence the reason we couldn't figure out where the edges of the zone were with temp guns, but once we heated that 18" slab of concrete up for a week it took it like a month to cool back off since it stored so many BTU's.

My theory is even if you are heating the ground a bit it will warm up and become part of the thermal mass. Again is it perfect, NO. but it does work.

Edit: Having the floor mass warm will aid greatly in retaining heat when you open the doors to move stuff in and out. The air might get cold quick but that big slab of warm concrete has a lot of BTU's stored to give up.
 
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One quick note on the pair of walk doors.
You will want an astragal. Astragal is just the weatherstrip that seals the gap between doors. The present no interference when the doors are swung open.
What you want to avoid is having a mullion.
Mullion is a separate jamb piece that installs from the frame down so the doors close into it.

@blazinzuk When you get to that point of you want some commercial steel doors and what not let me know , that's what I sell. But cost effective would probably just be residential grade stuff.
 
I really wish I could I really really do. And maybe I will regret it but I'm not willing to wait to pour concrete. It would be next year working with trucks half in half out in 20 below temps sucks.

With my budget I just don't see it happening. If our house had sold for more I could at least put pex in but it didn't

Good insulation may or may not be in the cards. But ground protected from cold winter winds (by your building) is maintaining 50* a few inches down. That's a whoooooole lot warmer than the ambient temperatures during your winter. Insulating the floor is not nearly as critical as insulating the ceiling & walls. And the ceiling.

Even if you think you can't have any insulation, I'd still put the PEX in the slab. Losing heat to the ground isn't a loss in the same way that air loss is. You'll get a bunch of it back (slowly). The ground is a pretty crummy heat transfer mechanism compared to the convection losses of a 40MPH wind.

But if you don't put the pex down, you're just hosed when the time comes for heating.
 
One thing I should point out.

This is not a personal use only shop. I build stuff for other people.

While I would not rate it as a commercial type shop I will have stuff in and out

This is another reason to get it right the first time. You very well might have income depending on these choices you're making now. And if not income, you'll at least hafta deal with the headaches.
 
Ethan I'm gonna just tape seal them but I did see a slow set foam that a guy used. He put the foam in between the boards.
 
Maybe I missed it, but what are you planning on doing about the daylight I see at the bottom of the walls so the cement doesn't ooze out?
 
Just pushing dirt up against the outside.

Gotta do that today.

Floor is gonna have a 2" slope from the back wall to the front
 
One thing I should point out.

This is not a personal use only shop. I build stuff for other people.

While I would not rate it as a commercial type shop I will have stuff in and out

Can you say tax writeoff....spend a whole bunch, Uncle Sam will give you a kickback then. hahaha
 
Can you say tax writeoff....spend a whole bunch, Uncle Sam will give you a kickback then. hahaha

True to the extent that the business can benefit from the upgrades. But beyond that spending $$$$$$$$$ to get $ back doesn't make much sense from a math perspective.
 
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