Too late for me now, but I wish I had done it. I'm in San Francisco's foggy part. It's very cool here and my furnace does run some in the summer months especially. My fuzzy robe does a pretty good job, but my bare arms really don't like touching the cold counter.

Always better to install it and then just not turn it on if you don't like it. You really can't add it later without major $!

No, not needed in socal. Plus I like the coolness of counter tops.

Floor, is another story. I wish i had heated my travertine floors. will do that in the master bath

fori - agreed! :-)

marcydc, I think that if you think it is important and you think you will benefit from it, then you should do it. There are a lot of things in houses and kitchens that come down to personal preference and what one person may consider a necessity another may consider a luxury. Do what you want to do in your kitchen. Your post question asked if we would do it in our kitchen and I would have to say no, I wouldn't, but I'm not you! :-)

geokid, i think you are confused. I answered the OP (musko). My granite is long installed and I'm not going to remove it now!

I am in Calgary. I personally would have never even thought of such a thing. How expensive would that be? I'd probably not bother but if it's something that appeals to you, isn't a huge PITA to do, and isn't a massive expense, I don't see why not.

It's not something that ever even crossed my mind. I like the coolness of countertops, though. It's one reason I'm not a fan of Corian. I feel the same way about crawling into crisp, cool sheets in the evening, even when it's cold outside.

I wouldn't do it if I had plans to roll pastry on the countertop.

Part of my island has a heated ctop as part of this remodel but it's not a seating area.

Don Silva? with this old house did his and apparently likes his very much. There are a handfull of people you can find online who have done it.

I think it's a good idea, myself, but to each their own.

A heated area doesn't have to be "on" all the time. So you could leave it turned off while making pastry and for most of the year for that matter.

My first thought is wondering how long the heat is expected to work. It if ever failed, you would not be able to do much about it.

We had expected to get stone for the kitchen but changed plans. Now that I feel the difference between our bathroom's marble counter and our Corian kitchen, I have to give the edge to the Corian and it makes me happy we went that route. It feels better to bare skin by a mile, IMHO. If I lived down south, I'd probably feel differently. We are in NY so have a real Winter and cool Springs and Falls. You have to figure out how many cold or cool months you get in your area and choose accordingly. I'd rather the material I got not need an extra heater or chance for something to break. I like to keep it simple.

Sorry, marcy, yep, I was confused! I meant to write musko. Don't know how that happened.

I thought about plugging in a heating pad and duct taping it to the underside of the eating/sitting area on the island. It does get cool when you have the heat off all day. I thought I would lay on the island to keep cool in the summer, but it didn't seem as cool to me then.

I do have granite and while it is cool to the touch, it doesn't feel cold. I want a cool surface because that's the best surface for baking any type of pastry. So you may want to consider that if you also bake. As the other posters suggested, I'd go with the radiant floor heating.

BTW I live in Toronto and although my fellow Canadians on the east coast think we're sucks when it comes to the cold (I am....hence my decision to live here)it does get cold - in the minus double digits - in the middle of winter:)

I had an interesting conversation with a friend tonight who happens to be a mason. He said that soapstone holds heat 13x longer than brick - they use it to surround mason stoves in Finland and heat large open concept homes with this method. Very economical but the stoves themselves are $$. So - if the soapstone gets heated up , then the electricity can be turned off and you would have hours and hours of warmth from the stone. Sounds pretty efficient to me and not expensive to have the stone warm. Granite on the other hand will cool to the room's ambient temperature quite quickly once the source of the heat has been removed.

My perimeter counters will be marble and not heated so my pastry is safe :)

clax66- I'm on the coast so we have slightly warmer winters than some parts of the Maritimes but it feels colder because of the moisture in the air. We lived in the very cold Muskokas for years and it doesn't get that cold here but the cold damp seems to get deep in your bones and hang there for a long time.

I'm the kind of person who stands in front of the fire until I get sooo hot I have to move - warm soapstone sounds like a luxury I would love !! Of course I would have to resist the temptation to drape my body across it.!!

My first thought is wondering how long the heat is expected to work. It if ever failed, you would not be able to do much about it.

Well, its under my master bath floor so it'd better last a long time :)!

It's just wires.
How likely are they to fail? While I realize things aren't made like the used to be, I have 100 year old wiring in my house. Its knob and tube and pretty scary looking if you actually open the walls..
I would hope this stuff has at least a 20 year life...

If it fails, I would have cold counters again and will turn up the furnace and burn some more gas instead of solar panels (still TBD) :)

The interior of my house is normally in the mid 60's year round. It's much better now that we actually have insulation on the side that gets wind/fog battering. My usually work at home outfit includes a wool poncho/blanket thingie :) I just think I should have done it so I can work on the laptop at the island without fingerless gloves and long sleeves fuzzy robes.

the question is about the counter not the floor.

in some regions houses are built to a certain standard that is not at all the same in another region. This difference is very apparent when you feel cold all the time even though the climate is warmer than in another region, where you feel warm (and "toasty") indoors. This has been discussed in the bathrooms forum when Californians ask about floor heating. The OP has the house she has, in the climate it is in. Her house may be new, well built, airtight, and warm. Or not.

people who have no experience with heating cables are not good advisors on this topic.
people often say "golly sheesh i would not want that" when they think about something they don't have.

a query about floor heating will need to deal with the subfloor, insulation, and structure.
a query about warming the counter does not.

warming the counter to make it absorb a little warmth is a fine fine thing to do.
it is hygienic too (and definitely not the opposite).

muskoka,

I'm in Maine, not terribly far from you on the coast, and I agree that granite is not a great choice for this climate. I had granite in a previous apartment, and just hated how cold it was in the mornings. I was forever rewarming my coffee I'd set down on it by mistake.

I suspect that folks who don't need to heat their houses, or live in more temperate areas, don't always realize that the heat is turned down at night, meaning that the granite really cools down and is very slow (like: hours) to warm up again even after the heat comes back on.

My current countertops are copper, which is apparently very conductive, and it warms up much faster in the morning than my granite ever did.

Are you wedded to granite as a countertop surface?

Nope - not using granite as a countertop. The island will be soapstone which apparently holds onto it's heat 13x longer than a heated brick - so chances are it won't have to be turned on too often.

circus - you confirmed what I was fearing with granite -too cold for me. I don't care as much about the main counters because I won't be sitting there.

davidro 1 - I think it's a fine thing to do too! My house is well built and insulated well but the cooler weather lasts longer than the warm weather here and the shoulder seasons can be damp and chilly - like the past 3 weeks for example!

I'm just outside Toronto and have been putting in floor heat wherever I can in my house reno's. One of my local tile shops has heated countertops and they're awesome. Makes signing credit card receips and stuff a joy. I would do it for sure. You could easily get a small Nuheat mat with thermostat (may not even be needed if you are already heating the floor) for fairly cheap. I say go for it. You won't regret it when you're reading the paper at the counter on those fridgid maritime mornings.

muskokascp, (a little knowledge = danger), soapstone does hold onto its heat or cold or temperature state for longer than a cement brick, but that means it will remain cool (feel cold when you put an arm on it) and for a long long time every morning, or whenever cold is radiating inwards through windows, or ... many factors... --- so chances are high, that you won't be satisfied with the installation, unless you make it a physically warmer counter. But many factors could change this statement.

repeat: soapstone does not "hold onto its heat" if this is to mean it is warmer than something else, because the truly most accurate statement is that it holds onto its temperature. Therefore it can be cold for longer than another object would be under similar circumstances. It is a bank of temperature. It is a storehouse of temperature. It is a radiator. It will radiate cold if its core temperature is cooler than you would like it to be.

The finger feel (surface contact to your fingerprints) is not the same thing as the real temperature. Having a half ton object next to you, which is drawing warmth out of your body instead of radiating warmth to you, is another "feel" but this time it is not in your fingers. So, disregard the statements about it feeling warm. That is a psychological impression based on fingers sliding over the surface. Secondly, disregard statements about it "holding its heat"; that is a true statement which you have managed to turn on its head to make it mean the opposite of what it means.

HTH

If you do install it, I'd recommend making sure the system is programmable, so that you can tweak the timing to have the stone fully warmed just when you sit down with your morning coffee, not two hours later when you're at work. Finding out how long it takes to warm, how long it holds its heat, and how that fits into your schedule, may take some trial and error.

davidro 1 - obviously you know more about this than I do. I am not getting into a discussion on what feels like semantics to me. Soapstone in my house will not go below the ambient temperature in the room, it will however absorb heat quite quickly if heat is applied to it and it will cool down slowly radiating the stored heat until it is back to the room ambient temperature.

These are the soapstone fireplaces my mason friend was talking about - pretty interesting. Some are quite beautiful and so very different than the typical wood stoves we are so familiar with...but check out how heavy they are! Wow.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tulikivi fireplaces

I wear real pearls, stone beads, and synthetic beads. They are all at room temp when I don them. But the stone ones warm up to body temp the slowest. They make me shiver when I put them on and they are unpleasant on bare skin, esp in winter. Once they're warm they stay warm longer than the others do, but I've sacrificed my body warmth to them in order for them to be warm. They are small. A countertop is large.

If I sat at a marble counter with my arms on it, I would exude warmth into it for a very long time in order for the marble to warm up. In fact people stone surfaces to thaw meat because they have so much thermal interaction with flesh. My Formica countertops are more like the pearls or the other beads--they don't absorb as much of my body's heat and the countertops contain a lot of wood below the laminate so they feel more like furniture feels in a room.

Harrague mode on...
The thermal holding capacity of the countertop is the issue here. We had this discussion some time ago on the GW and I was told off by someone who has this in kitchen, because granite heating is considered to be a negligible cost. PLUS I got lots of lectures on how passive solar works and how it was the same thing. Well, I know about passive solar because I have a passive solar wing of my house. The warm-up occurs in sun area and the high-mass floor releases heat into the evening and night, evening out the heat and allowing us to save on heat bill. What does this have to do with countertops? Well, once the countertop is heated I assume it holds the heat well. Adds to the thermal mass of the room and exhales the heat into the room gently. MIght be a good process to store excess SUN heat gain in a winter kitchen, perhaps. But if you're putting warmth into countertops by electricity you're adding to the room heat by using electricity generated by coal (in my community). I don't see the parallel to free, non-hydrocarbon sun heat so please don't post any "it's just like solar" responses, folks. Stick to the reality of this being an electricity issue and think about your carbon footprint. If your electricity is generated by a dam I don't give a damn.
[mode off]

interesting conversation. I think I would definitely consider it - especially if you could tweak it.

in my old home, we had silestone counters. I also kept the house rather cool. There were mornings when the counters were just too cold for me. I will give a bit of a caveat about my advice though - occasionally my skin "hurts" - and is very temperature sensitive. On those mornings, putting my arms on the counter HURT. (on those same days, washing hands in cold water would be painful).

I **think** putting my arms down on warm counters would give me the "heebie-jeebies"... but there is a world of difference between warm counters... and counters that just aren't cold.

mnerg pointed out the tweaking needed.

florantha's post was totally correct.

In muskoka's post, here is the non semantic part which is totally wrong.
Please open your mind to this.
: "... Soapstone will absorb heat quite quickly ..."
If florantha and many others repeat themselves, perhaps you may hear it.
If you re-read what I've written, you might get it.
Do not get upset at the truth.
The manner of presenting it is quite fair to you. So, you have that too.

Soapstone is a stone, and it is similar to all other stones, with a few differences BUT not the "it warms up faster than" difference. I have no idea where you made that logical leap, but it did not come from slow pondered reading research and seeking confirmation from others (I'll bet).

Any stone, in general, will absorb heat AND lose heat the same way.
At the same rate.

It is generally true also that it will be "... radiating the stored heat until it is back to the room ambient temperature..." Soapstone in my house or any other house will not go below the ambient temperature in the room, except when it happens, because of its being placed near a window (seriously hotter than ambient temperature when direct sun shines on it, and seriously colder than ambient temperature under the exact opposite circumstance: night time in winter).

The electric consumption is real, and produces real heat.

the main purpose of the post about heat retention (and cold retention) is to make id clear that

whether it's Granite
whether it's not

whether it's Soapstone
whether it's not

it's still a stone.

And any talk of soapstone being "warmer" is irrelevant in this heat transfer discussion.

I don't get why warm stone freaks some people out? Does a warm driveway in the summer give you the creeps if you are barefoot? A warm fireplace hearth?

My advice to musk would be to just do it. If it interests you, then go for it. To decide later, after the stone is in, will cost you much more $$.

The fact that warmth encourages bacterial growth coupled with the fact that a counter is a place where food often will be could be perceived as creepy.

I'm just guessing... :)

To answer the original question, no, I would never do this. We get cold winters and I get quite cold myself in the winter. However, I would be terrible at turning on the counter heater with enough time to heat up before I wanted to rest my elbows on it. I never am at the counter at the same time, so setting a timer wouldn't make sense either...

Is there any concern with the granite cracking/shifting/etc. from the constant application of heat? Concern of the cabinetry finish getting abused by the proximity to this heat? etc.... I have no idea. Just wondering.

Some detail if anyone is interested.

Specific heat is how much heat energy is required to raise the temperature of a given mass of the material. The higher the number, the heat energy it takes to warm the material up, and then how much heat is stored in the material after it is warmed.

Remember this is per unit of mass - so, the specific heat of aluminium is similar to that of stone, but aluminum has much lower density (mass per volume) so a 1'' counter made of aluminium would have far less mass than the 1'' stone counter, so it would take far less heat energy to warm the aluminium counter.

The specific heat is similar for most types of stone and brick. See ''granite'', ''steatite'' (soapstone), ''brick'', etc at (either column works, just different units). Also, the density of soapstone is slightly more than granite, but not much more(roughly 10% more).

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-solids-d_154.html

The thermal conductivity is also similar. Thermal conductivity is how quickly a material absorbs or transmits heat when touching another material. So metals like copper, aluminium, etc have very high thermal conductivity, stone is quite low.

See ''granite'', ''brick'', etc at
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_429.html
and for 'steatite'' see
http://www.insaco.com/MatPages/mat_display.asp?M=Steatite

What does ''similar'' mean? Not ''identical'', there is a range for different types of granite, steatite, etc. But those ranges are similar, and significantly different from other counter materials (look up ''hardwood'', ''softwood'', ''wood'', ''steel'', etc).

Therefore, I can't see an inherent reason why a soapstone counter should feel warmer than a granite counter - except that if the soapstone counter is honed and thinner, while the granite counter is polished and thicker, then there might be an real reason for a difference (different mass, different conductivity).

Remember that most of us are pretty bad at judging heat by touch. Have someone dip their finger in glasses of water and in running water, of temperatures varying by 10-20F, and see how accurately they can estimate the temperature.

(When developing film, the standard development times are calibrated to 68F water, and I was always depressed at how hard it was to gauge water temperature by touch - when your hands are cold, 68F feels warm, when your hands are warm, 68F feels cold, etc. That's why you use a thermometer.)

I think subjective factors also muddy our perceptions, and a glossy shiny granite counter may ''look'' colder than a matte gray soapstone counter.

Anyway, the above is just for interest. If you want stone, want the counter to be warm while keeping your house cold, and don't mind spending money to get it (at installation and every year forever), then go for it.

i didn't read through the posts but ...why would this be necessary or wanted? are you going to sit on it?

What is wrong with the statement that "soapstone will absorb heat quite quickly?" and "it warms up faster" As a material it is a good conductor and it has a heat capacity of roughly 1.0 J/gK. I suppose because I didn't qualify those statement with a '....than material A' they seem airy fairy and made up.

"The fact that soapstone has a better thermal conductivity compared to other materials is a consequence of its dense structure and mineral composition. This characteristic enables balanced and rapid warming throughout the soapstone structure." This from reading and learning about it's characteristics and why soapstone is used in masonry heaters.

This is not meant to be a discussion of thermal heating and laws of physics - the basis of even attempting to heat a stone counter or a stone floor or a stone stove is because stone will absorb heat, store heat and release the heat in a way that will warm our living spaces and add comfort. Yes there is electric comsumption however, I believe that the overall room can be kept cooler if the stone I am sitting at is warm - ie - I will not feel chilled and feel the need to turn up the heat to heat the whole room if I am comfy at my island seat. I don't expect to turn on the heat and be warmed instantly so looking into a timer will be part of the process.

In answer to the response that floor heat can fail as well, then I have to agree. It is one reason we decided to forgo radiant heat in our master bath. We were nervous about relying on it for the room's heat. Once the money is spent and the floors are installed, if there is an issue with it, then you have a real problem. If I did have a lot of room in my budget and the radiant floors were where I would spend time every day at a predictable time in bare feet, I'd consider putting it in for extra heat. When the time comes to do our family bathroom we may opt for supplemental radiant heat because it is used more often, is a larger space and has the tub and shower in it, so we are more likely to be barefoot in there. We also hope to have a solar electrical system to offset our electrical usage by then for both cost and carbon footprint.
I just think that I'd want to know a warranty's length and what you would be reimbursed for if it failed during the early years. Knowing how less reliable things are these days makes me nervous to install something that can't be fixed. We all know of our mom's and grandmothers' appliances that lasted for 30+ years. I don't think any of us expect to get that kind of life out of new purchases.
I'd factor in how much it cost to get, and run, and figure out the expected life span. Then divide the total cost by the number of years you expect it to work. Then make your decision. Keep in mind that if you don't want to ever have a cold stone counter, and this product fails 10 years from now, what would you do? Would you have to rip out your counters, ruin your bs and have a big mess or would you be stuck with a cold counter you hate?
Personally, it is a lot easier to get a non-stone material if there is a spot you expect will have arms draped on it. Wood, Corian, etc... would be easier to get initially and would not have carrying costs in the future.
I think there are a lot of products one can buy, but that does not mean they are worth it in every case. It is your pocketbook and your kitchen, but you asked the question and have been given food for thought. If you only wanted responses that agreed with getting it, then you needed to specify that up front.

muskoka you are on the right track, and i hope i've helped to clear up the part about it being warm.... it's also not quite right to claim it's a good conductor... but don't worry, since you are on the right track.

Think of it as any stone not a special stone special for any particular quality or supposed quality.

since one can install a counter without any plywood underneath, it can be very easy to touch and see the heating cable/wires underneath the counter. I know I would feel comfortable installing them after the fact, just by going around the cabinet walls. Another objection raised and overcome.

if a cable fails, there are measuring instruments that identify the spot; you break the tile there, splice the cable together, and start again. Ta daa.

Uh, I've mostly been ignoring this thread after I commented that I had/have heated ctops in a part of my island because I'm not sure alot of what was being said was relevant or interesting.

However, I want to respond to the installation thoughts of Davidro1. He says "it can be very easy to touch and see the heating, cable/wire underneath the counter" and it pretty much freaks me out.

First, I would never, ever, ever advocate running hot electrical lines open to an area that is "easy to touch". That seems like a critical mistake in every way.

I can imagine the first time someone pulls out a drawer and pushes a spatula up against them. *shudders* How many of you have kids that play in/on/around the cabinets?

The electrical wire should be laid just like you would do your bathroom floor. You'll want a firm foundation such as plywood. Then probably a heat reflective barrier to force the heat upwards into the soapstone rather than down into the cabinetry. After that a ridgid substrate such as concrete board to lay the wire on and then you'll overlay that with whatever thinset you are using therefore fully encapsulating the hot wires and protecting them and other people from damage. Top off with the tiles of your choice.

Even if you are doing slab you'll still need the foundation and reflective barrier at a minimum. And I do mean minimum. Safety first!

If the wire breaks down the road then the worse case scenario is not ripping up your counters to fix it... it's just having cold counters.

And as far as soapstone itself is concerned it is much denser than other types of stones used for ctops (I can't really just say stone because soapstone is just a nickname for a group of different types of stone). It is this density that makes it ideal for stoves. It heats up SLOWLY and releases heat SLOWLY over a period of time. That's pretty much the lesson of thermal mass 101. The only ctop I have in my kitchen that isn't soapstone is the heated area. I don't want to have to wait that length of time for it to get warm.

In other words, just sticking open electrical mesh underneath a thick soapstone slab is NOT the way to go about doing this.

I am a huge proponent of heated ctops in the right circumstances but let's walk away slowly from the crazy guy with a hot glue gun, a home depot gift card and twenty minutes to kill.

you can add a flat surface cover on the same day, after the cable install. Fact. That is obvious.

Yes I would do it but it would have to have a separately controlled on/off switch. I was very close to doing it with my island - I had already installed hydronic radiant heat and I was going to pull a loop up to the island counter.

I was the gc on a 2 story addition that I moved the kitchen into and was doing a lot of diy; I was pretty burned out at that point so I skipped it. But there are lots of days that I miss it.

I say go for it! I live in the mid-Atlantic region and the granite island in my 1890's Victorian was so cold, I had to put a cork mat under my plate to prevent the food from getting cold. Can you say reheating mid-meal? I dreamt about heated countertops. It's fabulous idea!

If you do get heated counters...don't place anything on your counters that melts at a low enough temperature that it would melt when the counter heat is turned on...like butter or ice cream.

To simulate heated counters, warm your counter slightly. Perhaps use a large pot of hot water, to warm one spot. Then you can feel the difference after you remove the pot. Now, if you place your butter dish on your heated bathroom floor or hydronic floor, it doesn't melt. If you place it on your warmed-up spot of the kitchen counter, it will make almost no difference to the butter. A small amount of heat energy is a comfort not a problem.

People who don't have heated counters may overthink it. Heat transfer seems to be any easy subject, but people take mental shortcuts and come out with the wrong conclusion after some multi-stage thought processing. "Melted butter" is a conjecture of someone's thought process. Perhaps someone who likes to dig up factoids can find the mass, specific heat, melting point, etc, and multiply it all out to tell us how much heat energy is needed to melt butter, and then guess about the heat conductance factor and then guess how warm the countertop surface would have to be, and then re-estimate the mass specific heat of the stone and multiply to get the Wattage required to produce that temperature... Or not. Instead, real life counters can be observed.

The stone in question is a dense stone, and like the other stone (to which it was compared in this thread), either one "... heats up SLOWLY and releases heat SLOWLY..." This is the part that the OP didn't get, because she wrote a lot about it being warm. It's not warm; it's a stone, a dense stone, which exhibits the same heat transfer properties in both directions, being warmed or being cooled, spreading warmth or spreading coolness.

To be fair, I'll mention that it can be difficult subject to all. Even some who do have heated countertops can also get caught up with wrong conclusions. The person I just quoted above has written that she didn't heat her soapstone because she didn't want to wait. Since she has to heat the house anyway, it's a non sequitur to say one doesn't want one of the house's radiators not to be on.

Muskoka,
I live in northern New England and have granite counters. I have never regretted not installing heat for them. IMHO, this is a luxury not a necessity, UNLESS you live in an area where there are frequent and prolonged power failures. All this stone serves as a giant heat sink if you need to reheat your house after the temp has dropped way down. Since I already have a generator, this wasn't an issue for me. YMMV.

David...while this is not a common topic, it's not a particularly new topic. In at least one discussion on this topic before your time, some people here who do have heated counters mentioned it b/c it happens to them...yes, butter will melt with prolonged contact to heat. Butter has a pretty low melting point compared to things like cheese, etc.

Which brings up another thing...if you eat at the counter and put a cold glass of milk on the counter, it will warm up much quicker than if the counter was at room temperature. This may not matter to you, but I detest milk that's not ice cold (or that's not hot chocolate!)

yeah, it makes sense that someone somewhere once melted butter.... and it makes sense that some people think of heat under a countertop as the Strong strong heat you can get under heated buffet serving counters.

This thread does not say that heating the counter would make it necessarily that hot. Let's make a distinction.

--

Of course, it's a luxury, but let no-one be lulled into thinking that because it's soapstone it will be warm, or warmer than granite, or that it will feel warm. This is the situation: ".... The island is large and will be the main place for breakfast, lunch, snacks, homework, general hangout and we'll probably sit there when working on the laptop. I live in Nova Scotia..."

Hth

Davidro1, you will have to explain to me the physics behind soapstone's ability to in your words "radiate cold". LOL.
You are so NOT a physicist!
Only energy can radiate; heat is a form of energy, "cold" is relative, at most a relative state which connotes an absence of heat. "Cold" cannot "radiate". Cripes!!
Casey

hey, wow, this guy sounds mean....

relax and go rest; you can save it for other purposes.

--

the words are metaphors, representing an abstract thought.

cold = heat = energy.

(cold and heat being on the opposite ends of the scale, obviously)

--

please note that physicists use terms loosely to get to abstractions.
may writing this might make me a linguistics expert in some eyes.

lay off.

try harder to see the parts that you *can* agree
spend fewer keystrokes on the parts you would blast.
or, just don't blast; be happy.

peace.
or, not.

W.O.W.

This is quite the geology / engineering lesson. In all my time on garden web, I'm not sure I've seen something over-discussed / over-thought this much. Well, that's not true, but seriously, just heat your counters if you want to and be done with it already!

Interesting discussion. I live in a cold climate and never was concerned about the temperature of my kitchen and bathroom counters, granite or otherwise. While we are often close to these surfaces, we are rarely "on" them more than momentarily. If having warmer counters is something you really really want, well then, why not. Otherwise, coasters and table mats are good in any season ("sweating" glasses, insulating hot drinks, cushioning any arms that must lie on the counter, etc); in really frigid weather, long sleeves and cranking up the fireplace or furnace help the best, IMHO:)

The radiant heat cables in my bathroom floors are 40 years old with zero issues. The most common failure point of radiant is at the install phase, usually by the trowel scraping a bit too hard on the wire while applying the thinset. Install alarms can alert you to that so that the wire can be repaired then and there.

I am not reading many of the above posts but I'll give my 2 cents anyway.

We don't have it.

I saw a guy on on a TV show once who had it under his desktop, which was granite. He raved about how much more comfortable it is.

I assume it wouldn't always be on, so why not? I think in the coldest part of the winter, it might be nice. Maybe it could be even done in zones, so you don't have to have the entire counter heated whenever you had it on.

Ok there you go. My non technical help.

My two cents....I have had an unheated granite countertop in my kitchen for 9 years. We turn the heat off downstairs at night in the winter, and let me tell you that stone is *cold* in the morning. It's freezing to rest your elbows on when reading the paper, and it makes food on the plate sitting on the counter cold quicker too. If I had heat I would use it just to take the chill off on winter mornings - that's all I need. I don't know how they regulate heat on counters, but I assume it is like my bathroom floor, which we have on a timer to heat for about 2 hours in the morning and off the rest of the day.