Who has concrete floors and...

When we end up building our new home I am leaning toward concrete slab floor because... I have a dog that will be inside all the time and probably others that will come in and out. Carpet is out. I hate carpet with a passion. I dont want to do wood floors because most of the cabin we will build will have wood everywhere. I love the look of slate BUT i dont like the look of squares all over my floor. I think a acid stain on the concrete floor would be pretty and it would be continious, not like the squares in slate or tile. My concern would be the cost of radiant floor heat and how hard would it be to do it. Also the cost of keeping the floor warm... how much gas would you use? How would that work with a tankless water heater? (girl question)

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IT STARTS WITH A DREAM...

Hopefully SolarGary will see this and can comment.He knows this type of subject well.

BooBoo

We use tankless to heat ours. It works well and is very cost effective. You can set the heat at a lower temp( 110 is what we use) and not have to have a mixing valve. I installed, vented plumbed and wired our tankless and it was no big deal. Ours is propane and that was the only part I did not hook up.

If it is well insulated your cost should be low.

We have dogs would love to run in the mud. The cement floor is very easy to clean. We acid stained it ourselves(my husband really) It does not all look the same. We used two colors and it looks more mottled that uniform. Very nice looking. Ours is rust.

Jill

That is largely why we are going with concrete.



I used concrete stain, but I found that the sealer wants you to wait 30 days before applying. and as we waited 30 days the black stained concrete seemed to fade to grey. So I stained it again and sealed it a week later before too much of the black had faded.



I did ours. It was 'easy'.

I built a wooden subfloor and hung the PEX underneath for most of the house. Down in the sunken livingroom, I put the PEX on top of the subflooring and poured concrete right over it.

We are going through a lot of gas now to heat [and wood], but I don't have the walls done yet, so I really can't say. Radiant floor is supposed to be the 'best' kind of heat, and cheapest. We are using a 40-gallon propane water heater, and it does keep the floor warm so far.

I think that the overall cost of heating a home is going to depend first and foremost on your insulation and how much thermal-bridging you have. I hope that when done with our R-40, our costs should come down a lot.