Supplemental heat for small bathroom/old house?

6 years ago

I'm looking at options for bringing more heat to the 5'x7' main bathroom in my 1922 bungalow. The little radiator near the door to the room leaves things quite chilly over near the toilet, which is on an outside wall under a window – not drafty, because of good weatherstripping and storms, but uninsulated.

I've just been reading a 2009 forum thread (http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2281630/underfloor-heat-or-other-options) about options for getting more heat to a small bathroom – radiant under-floor, towel warmer, Runtal omnipanel, baseboard, etc. – and consensus back then seemed to be moving towards Runtal. I'm curious about what the participants in that thread ended up doing – @peperidge_farm, @zeebee, @s8thrd?

This would be as part of a partial bathroom remodel – not down to the studs in the whole room, but replacing the floor tiles, so we could in theory do under-floor heating, and could run pipes or electric to a new heater. Thanks!

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geoffrey_b

6 years ago

last modified: 6 years ago

The wall should definitely be insulated.

The foyer in our home had no heat - and when it was cold we had ice on the door knob. I remodeled the foyer and put Warmly Yours heating mat on the floor and ran it about 3' up the outside wall. The portion of the wall covered by the heating mat, I used cement board, and tiled over the mat. It keeps the foyer at 70, even in the coldest days. With this you would have a heated floor and wall by the toilet. Naturally, it would be on a programmable thermostat.

The mat is easily cut (not the wires!) , have the installer place some of the mat near the front (and maybe sides of the toilet).

Warmly Yours Heating Mats

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Comments (12)

roarah
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
When my plumber did the heat exchange formula it was determined that under the floor radiant heating was not sufficient, i.e. To code, for my cubic area. So I did a heated towel radiator in addition to radiant floors. Boy is the room warm. I hardly ever turn the towel radiator on at all the floors seem to do the job as it turns out but boy is my towel radiator prettying! This is my hydronic towel heater rad. My room is 8x13 with a ceiling of 12 feet in center. With both the room is too toasty. This is by myson. It is in the 2 to 3000 range...
maddybeagle thanked roarah
maddybeagle
Original Author
6 years ago
roarah, thanks! That is a gorgeous towel heater. It would look amazing for the period of my house, too. Is it plumbed into your main hot water heating system? Is your under-floor system also hydronic?
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You are going to want more than 32" for the toilet. 36" is standard (and perhaps even code in some areas???? Not here in Maine but I heard people saying that on other forums...) We have 34" and it feels fine but I dont think I'd want to go much tighter. You could solve that simply by flipping the closet and shower. So, have your shower -rotated 90 degrees and witha glass end wall- at the end of the tub (which is a nice setup you can see in many bathrooms, the tub deck can actually protrude under the shower glass wall and be a ledge or seat in the shower). Then the passageway moves to the left, and you can steal a bit of space from the other closet for the toilet. Either that of have a shorter vanity. 48" isn't a size I'd fight for. It's too short for a double vanity, really (unless you're using one of the new two-faucet 'trough" styles) so why not go down to 42" and have a better toilet area? For resale, though, you should consider a double vanity. Some people I guess expert truly huge ones, like at least 5+' long. But you CAN get smaller ones, Ikea has some great ones for tight spaces. But if you're not selling anytime soon, do what YOU like!! (But I still think you'll want more toilet space...)
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I think most people with radiant heat are really glad they installed it. I know we really are glad we installed it in our master bath, and it's our only source of heat in there. It's hard to know exactly how it will warm your space, because it depends on a number of factors, mostly where the space is located in your house -- for example, is it on the second floor above living space (ours is directly over our living room), or over an unheated space like a garage? Also, do you have another source of heating in the bath? We do not, but it is surrounded by rooms that do have other sources of heat, so it is not isolated in that way. Our master bath is not huge -- the total is about 7 feet by 11 feet, tops. One big reason it is so comfortable is that our system, Warmly Yours, has a thermostat, like most of them do, and you can set the temperature for different times/periods of the day. We make ours get hotter an hour or so before we wake, and then go back to about 72 degrees the rest of the day. I don't remember the exact temperatures, but my point is, in the winter time (we've only had it since the winter began), the system is never really off, radiating a low amount of heat all day, so the bath is never really cold when you walk in, neither the floor nor the space. I think it's also supposed to be relatively inexpensive compared to other kinds of heating, but I'm no expert and I certainly have done no scientific tests on it. Anyway, my point is the bath is real comfortable, and we ar e so glad each and every day that we installed radiant heating.
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The nicest solution would be to install radiant heating in the floor. If you are tearing up the present floor you may consider this option. It may exceed your budget. The other option is to install a nicer looking radiator either on the wall or as a baseboard. Below is a link to a company that makes several types of radiators some of which can be custom ordered. You could even order one as a towel warmer and have it serve two purposes. Here is a link that might be useful: Runtal Radiators
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I had not thought about 4 year olds and their ability to imagine toys out of thin air! In DH's house, we have no curtains to deal with, just plantation shutters on 8 of the windows. And I did not put furniture along the exterior walls, as chance would have it. So that was not an issue for us. But I can well understand that it is a problem. Down south, our HVAC vents are mostly in the ceiling or the floor for elevated homes. In have seen a few with vents in the walls, but not many. My attic in Mobile has limited usefulness because of the ductwork and the inside half of the heat pump which is up there. When this house was built in 1950, it had a gas floor furnace in the hall. No ductwork at all, just a heating unit under the house in that crawl space, a grate in front of the only bathroom, and the hall made wide enough that you could walk without stepping on the grate when the heat was working. They took out the grate and replaced it with 1.5" wide oak to match the rest of the floor when they added a heat pump....but the floor will need repair soon, as it seems to be settling. I'm also thinking they left the old gas furnace under the house, something that I really do not like. In the days before whole house a/c, our homes usually had a whole house attic fan in the hall near the heating system. And that HUGE old fan was removed to make room for lifting the heat pump into the attic, and it was shoved into the back of the attic. This kind of thing really irks me, since I believe in clearing the decks before launching new home improvements. Sorry to digress here. No one-size-fits-all heating system is appropriate for all areas of the country. The need to COOL is more important here than heating. But this week, I can truly sympathize with you guys up New England way, where it is around 100 degrees and above, and no rain in sight.
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roarah
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
I did plumb the rad to my boiler system but the floor was cheaper to use an electric mat. If we could have forgone the rad were were going to do floor hydronic heating but our high ceilings and sq footage and three exterior walls with Windows made that impossible.
lazy_gardens
6 years ago
Could you apply insulation to that wall area - foam or granules blown into the cavity.
maddybeagle
Original Author
6 years ago
lazy_gardens, maybe, and we could see after opening the tiled part of that wall how feasible it is. I still strongly suspect that the existing radiator in its existing location wouldn't send warm, soothing vibes all the way to the other end of the room, though.
kats737
6 years ago
That is really pretty!

This is NOT a beautiful solution, but I got an Econo Heat panel for my sunroom-turned-office and it works perfectly for the space. It's on a lux thermostat timer so switches on and off automatically to keep the temp livable.
geoffrey_b
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Where are you located?

I'm in Minnesota. In out last home I installed a fan / light / heater in the ceiling. It would get that bathroom toasty warm, in a few minutes.

This will easily heat a bathroom of your size.

Panasonic Fan / Light / Heater
maddybeagle
Original Author
6 years ago
I'm in DC, so I don't have anything like your level of cold! That's an interesting idea. I do rather like the idea of something that could be on a thermostat or timer that I don't have to switch on every time I come into the room, though – esp. for staggering in half-asleep and not having the shock of cold. ;-)
steve_o
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
At the request of a new person in the house who prefers it warmer, several years ago we installed an envi on-wall electric heater in our (Minnesota) bathroom.

At the time we installed the heater, we were not planning to stay in the house. So we were reluctant to install radiant heat or to plumb any more electricity or hot water into the bathroom. I had had a heated towel rack in another house and, well, it didn't do much for me, so we didn't consider one further.

We considered using a standard electric space heater, but the way the bathroom was configured, the few places where the heater could have been placed safely and comfortably and where it would plug in just didn't work out.

The envi is a resistance heater that uses convection to distribute the heated air. There's a thermostat so you can choose how warm it makes the room. It's noiseless and has not caused great joy at the power company because it does not use much electricity. Simple do-it-yourself install. We just switch it on and close the bathroom door when we go to bed for the night and, with the heat supplied by the forced-air system, the bathroom is toasty warm by morning. Easy solution for us.

envi Web site
maddybeagle thanked steve_o
maddybeagle
Original Author
6 years ago
That sounds like a great option, steve_o. Thanks!
wishiwereintheup
6 years ago
There are also kick space heaters that can be installed in the vanity toe space - with either electric heat or plumbed into a hot water heating system.

Supplemental heat for small bathroom/old house?

geoffrey_b

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roarah

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