Welcome to Warm Floor Comfort!
How to Choose Your Radiant heating floor mat
Dual vs. single side powered heating floor mat?120V vs. 240V?
How big?
To choose which mat to use for radiant in-floor heating, please measure the square footage of the 'walkable' floor area ONLY.
- The floor is to be heated only where it is not covered completely by appliances, shower stalls, cabinets etc. This is a radically different approach from the situation when the floor covering such as tiles are chosen and ordered when 110-120% of the TOTAL square footage is needed because of cuts, fitting etc. The In-floor heating mat square footage needed will be as little as 40% to as much as 80% of the final floor covering material.
- The next step after figuring out how much square footage is needed is to decide whether 9 Watts/sq.ft. mats are needed or 14Watts/sq.ft. are better. Both will do the job equally well, although 9 Watts/sq.ft. electric radiant floor heating mats will take somewhat longer to reach preset temperature.
- Finally, the total Amperage has to be calculated and based on this the voltage of the mat(s) chosen. 110-120V models cost the same and are laid out the same as 230-240V models. The heated floor mats are voltage specific.
ELEKTRA MD or MG mats? An electrical device with two power cords?
Like almost everything electric, the mat has the power cord (often called "the cold lead wire"). In this case and since it is to be hardwired to the thermostat, without any electrical plug(s).
If it uses one power cord (usually white), (like your typical household appliance) then the mat (or the heating tubing on the spool) is called single side powered. This is to distinguish it from a much thinner, very slim 1/8" mat called dual side powered, which comes with 2 POWER CORDS! Here is how:
The reason for this is to make everything so thin that it will disappear into the mortar holding the tiles.
Connection is just as easy as a hardwired wall light! Each power cord is 10' long and can be extended by approved methods.
MG mat, with two cords:
Radiant Heat Mats Connection is just as easy as a hardwired wall light! Each power cord is 10' long and can be extended by approved methods.
vs
MD mat with one cord:
MG mat vs.MDmat
Either mat can be 9 Watts/sq.ft. or 14 Watts/sq.ft.
Either mat can be for 120Volts AC or 240Volts AC.
MG mat (2 power cords)
(Largest mat: 133 sq.ft.)
MD mat (1 power cord)(Largest mat: 111 sq.ft.)
How the mat's heating tubing is composed:
MG mat heating tubing.
One heating wire powered at both ends. MG mats have two connecting cords. Sounds confusing? Connection is easier than it sounds.
MD mat heating tubing.
Two heating wires powered at one end.
MD mats have one connecting cord.
The heating wire is never to be cut like this.
MG vs. MD?
Which one to choose? Either one is good. Both will do the job equally well and both will last a long, long time. MG is thinner and easier to be covered by thinset. MD is a bit easier to connect.
Often, the size of the coverage will help to determine what kind of the mats to use. For example, pictured here are two MG100/12.0/240V mats covering 266 sq.ft. with some areas of the 290 sq.ft. room still not covered. If the ‘MD’ mats (single connecting wire) should be chosen, where the largest model is 111 sq.ft., then three smaller MD mats will be needed instead of two MG larger models, making the cost per sq.ft. higher and requiring more thinset.
