I LOVE heated wood floors. Had them in my last house and can't wait to put them in here! We had warm board and fins with 'finish in place' hardwoods.

We are installing Radiant Complete under our solid hardwood floors. We looked at Warmboard too, but went with this instead. Installation is supposed to be easy. The company helps with specifications and is very helpful in the design and resources needed. The 3/4" radiant heat panels are screwed to your subfloor. They have grooves in them for the pex to run in. Then your hardwood floors are nailed right to these panels. Their website is radiantcomplete.com - talk to Jason or David - they are very very helpful.

You might want to visit the Farm Chicks blog. Choose My farmhouse and then choose kitchen and you can read about their decision to go with tile that looks like wood so that they could heat the floor. It looks great online. I actually saw some tile that looked very much like wood flooring at the Ann Sacks showroom and it was very beautiful.

We have heated kitchen floors and didn't use engineered wood. As long as we don't turn the floors above 85, we were told it was fine. We went w/ the narrower planks instead of the wider ones I wanted because we were told that would help w/ having the heated floor under the wood too.

You are talking apples and oranges here. Hydronic systems use a boiler with pipes full of water to heat the room. The warm floor radiates the heat into the room instead of a radiator. That's a whole house heating system decision. You don't put in a boiler just to have warm floors in the kitchen. You can do this type very carefully with wood floors.

Another type of heated floor is electric heating cables that give you a warm floor, but do not give off enough heat to heat the room. This is designed for a tile installation, to keep the tile from feeling cold. It is not designed to be used with wood.

I have no expertise in this area, but we decided to go with radiant heat in our new kitchen (renovation / extension) that will run from a gas hot water heater as I understand it (I have oil heat in my house for main heat source, but also have gas line in bsmt for dryer and it runs upstairs for cooking).

While my plumber says tile will be most efficient, my GC says that 3.25" inch quarter sawn oak floors work wonderfully with this system. He says you can't go wider because it will buckle.

We looked at engineered floors and found one we really like, but its limitations for refinishing were a drawback.

Ultimately, we are leaning towards a wood look tile because of our dog and previous burst pipes that would have ruined wood floors. The tile we are probably going with is made by Florida Tile, Berkshire collection. It has somewhat of a grain and looks quite nice. I have seen some other nice wood look tiles, but for the price, the Florida tile looks like a good value at about $7 a square foot (only priced at one shop so far). It will come it at almost the same price as the quarter sawn oak once its stained, which is about $4.25 per sq ft, but then you have to add refinishing cost.

Good luck!

We have radiant heat and wood (oiled pine planks) throughout except the bathrooms. No issues.

Hydronic heat a small area (using a HW tank, not a "boiler") is possible, has been done and in some places is common enough not to be deemed unusual.

As mentioned above by others, heat under wood of any kind is OK to do. Engineered planks have some advantages.

Any salesman is allowed to say anything negative about heat if he doesn't sell it. No laws prevent it. Worse weasel words have been uttered by other salesmen, in many other circumstances. It happens every day. You know how the world works.

I used to own a house with whole-house hydronic under-floor radiant heat with oak strip flooring everywhere (T&G boards @ 2.7.5" wide), set on a slab. It was fabulous! No issues with getting the heat in the living space. However, the installation was incorrectly done with plywood subflor edges not at right angles to the strip flooring. This allowed some shrinkage between a few boards during the heating season. The cracks closed up every summer, then re-opened every year. No big problem and compared to the between-board cracks in my 175 y.o. northern NY farmhouse wide-board floors, the cracks were minimal but still noticeable on a strip floor.

There are technical issues (still-unresolved) preventing me from installing a hydronic system under the floors in the NY farmhouse. But I am actively working to solve them as radiant floor heating is the best in the world.

Green designs comments about the difference between a whole-house hydronic heating system and a single room warming solution are right on the money. Why not just have a wood floor in the kitchen sans heat. I think tile might need heat, but I can't see wood needing it. My kitchen has a wood floor and few houses are as cold, or as cold-challenged as my NY farmhouse which has no central heat. I've never felt my floors were too-cool for comfort in the kitchen. I don't go barefoot in the winter, though.

L.

We used electric heat under our solid oak floors in the kitchen addition. We are in Canada and used a product from Warmly Yours. It is safe to use under solid wood flooring and we have had no problems with it. Our planks are 3" I think. I would not shy away from heating your wood floors even if they are not engineered - just check with the company and make sure solid flooring is ok with their product.

I have hydronic radiant heat in 2 rooms under 3.25" oak flooring in a 2 story addition (kitchen and bedroom) that is 7 years old. No problems.

The target temp of the floor is 82 degrees which is cooler than a room without ac in the summer.

Don't put the tubing under appliances; they generate enough heat without trapping more under them. I avoided putting tubing under cabinets except the sink cabinet on an outside wall.