Which type of radiant are you looking at? With a new build I would hope you are looking at hydronic...but I don't want to assume. Make sure the slab is insulated BELOW the heating system because it gets expensive to heat the earth underneath the house. As for the flooring, you need to tell us which option you are after: whole home heating or 'foot warmer'? The 'foot warmer' is when you have ANOTHER whole home heating system (forced air, etc) and the floor system is simply there to take the chill of the feet/legs. This is the easiest one to work around as it doesn't have to do much work. That's when you can use things like carpet or wood or even laminate (sometimes even a high end vinyl). But the whole home heating system is another beast. It has PLENTY of work to do. That means AS MUCH HEAT as possible MUST PASS through your floors. That means you want as much conductivity as possible = concrete, tile or stone. You want a floor that heats quickly and throws off heat REALLY EASILY. Wood is a semi-conductor. It is a partial insulator as well as a partial conductor. It isn't very good at throwing off heat because it has insulating properties. A laminate floor (wood pulp with a paper photograph sitting on top) would be a better choice because it is thinner than most engineered hardwoods (7mm - 12mm is normal for a laminate). But they too are made of wood-based products (wood pulp = fibre board) and will have some of the same properties as wood floors. So...the question becomes what type of heating system do you have? Foot warmer or whole home heat? Do you have a whole home HUMIDIFIER? Or whole home air conditioning? Because a wood floor will need both...the humidifier in the winter (yes...floor heat dries out wood sitting on top of it VERY quickly) and AC for summer humidity (helps dry out the inside of the house to keep the wood at a consistent moisture level). Better check your home's full HVAC set up before going forward with wood. You need climate control, not just temperature control, to keep wood happy.

Thanks all. We removed the floor. Unfortunately as expected, that exposed more of a mess. Luckily, no "damage" to subfloor per say, but it looked like the previous folks who installed the floor used leveling "float" on pretty much the entire 700 sqft and in some place as thick as almost 1.5 inches. This made it very difficult to remove the layers of flooring (combination of engineered hardwood glued down and some solid wood nailed down to plywood, which was glued and nailed down to "leveling float", which was poured over OSB subfloor). The demo guy tried to get to the OSB subfloor as best he could but he stopped after 2 days of demo and when the OSB was starting to get damaged as it came up with some of the float. We have now moved on to filling the 3 very low areas with some plywood and then pouring self leveling float over the entire floor to try to fill in all to "holes" that were created by trying to pull up the previous float. I guess I am officially welcomed to home ownership.

Hi all, sorry I’ve been MIA. Millworkman, you are correct per the mfg directions that is how it’s supposed to be stacked and my husband did so because they didn’t. Timothy, we were going with what the flooring store owner directed. My husband gave me an incorrect subfloor number, it’s 7.5. They have not asked nor done readings on the concrete portion, which they did do a leveling job to. Charles, the inside of my house after 1 month of a commercial dehumidifier along with 2-3 household dehumidifiers makes it feel l like a damn dessert. I’ve been on/out for a total of 2 weeks and had dried out sinuses, chapped lips and overly dry skin. It’s not been a pleasure at all. We are in WI so pretty humid in summer. So here’s the deal, we asked 2.5 weeks ago to get the mfg reps out and are being ignored. Flooring store guy said it’s our house causing the increases moisture, it’s not. The house has only had 1 toilet and a laundry sink in the basement all this time and the house sat completely empty for 9 days with the AC at 72 and the dehumidifiers running 24/7 the wood didn’t drop below avg of 12. It’s been the flooring company who wants the engineered hardwood moisture reading to be down to the wood subfloor level. Its been 5 weeks of this. When we pointed out we were out of patience (asking for mfg rep to come out) over the entire deal the owner didnt respond well. We were told the floor was from last fall but was really mfg in January of this year. We were told warranties don’t really matter as they don’t cover anything. We originally wanted LVP since it seems the in-thing and its a second home. Our house has some subfloor issues, we took out a wall and a chimney. The new floor is going on concrete and wood subfloor over a basement. The flooring company said we would be better off with engineered hardwood based on the floor shape/prep and multi surfacesCRA, that’s how we got here. We no longer have any confidence with the floor or the company. If the floor is fine, why have they wasted our time and efforts with running our AC constantly and the cost of the humidifiers only to say well ok let’s just install? And why go forward with the guy who said warranties don’t matter and who not only opened all the boxes but tore open all the bags, would you still proceed? We are in the camp of the store taking all of the flooring and their moisture meters and give us back the deposit. We just ran out to the flooring store that was #2 on our list, we didn’t got with them because of their install lead time (which sadly/ironcially would be about now had we not wasted time with this other guy) and the salesman doesn’t engage with us and makes it seem like our 2200 sq ft job is beneath him. Because we had priced out LVP we wanted to make the change to engineered hardwood and during the visit floor guy #2 echoed Timothy above on temperature over moisture as the only concern. He noted that our estimate mentions the substantial floor prep that was required for LVP (which is why the flooring store owner who we lack confidence in said go engineered hardwood) and had concerns on putting engineered hardwood on the concrete portions. So now we are REALLLLLLLY confused. Our main flooring whether it is LVP or engineered hardwood will go on 2 concrete surfaces and plywood subfloors. Trying to do the concrete as a different floor type than the rest is just a no, it will be too choppy. Not seeing our floors and what we’ve been through what do y’all recommend? Our #3 floor store bid LVP but didn’t call out floor prep concerns and we know we have them so that’s why we skipped them. I’m ready for a 4th company but afraid they will only confuse us more. *made some edits to missing words and incomplete sentences

We converted our unfinished basement (on concrete slab) to an ADU apartment with radiant heating; we chose engineered white oak flooring for the living areas; no problems whatsoever. FWIW in the ADU we also have ceramic tile flooring in the bathroom and Marmoleum in the utility room, all are great with the radiant heating. I would not change a thing.