What's the best way to heat a tiny house?

You wake up. Looking forward to that warm cup of coffee to get your day started.  Hop out of bed, and put your feet on the ground. Your toes immediately recoil from the chilly flooring. Your home is colder than under your blankets and your mind starts trying to convince you to get back into bed. You quickly go to the thermostat and turn up the heat. For the next couple of hours, your home switches from too cold to too hot and back and forth, all the while you’re constantly putting on more layers of clothing, and then taking off more layers of clothing.

When it comes time to build or buy your tiny home, figuring out what type of systems you are wanting to go with is a big deal. This is really what makes your home a functional home. Without the systems, we might as well live in a cave! It always takes a lot of time, research, and really educating yourself on what will be best for you. Since Tiny Homes are used in a wide variety of ways, such as off grid, with solar, or fully grid tied, it’s important to know what your options are both ways!

Your heat source is a very important factor to consider when looking to go tiny. Everything from comfort, to upkeep and maintenance, cost of operation, clear to if it’s sustainable.

We’ve found that our favorite type of heat source is by far radiant floor heat. The science behind how it works is really actually incredible. The heat from within the floor, warms everything that it touches. This warmth continues to transfer to everything it touches, and then warms the air. So as you walk around your home, it’s a consistent temperature.

Opposed to standard air heating solutions like HVAC, or wall heaters, etc, These options only heat the air. Which does warm the objects slowly, but it takes a lot more heat, and starts making the room uncomfortably hot, and as soon as the hot air turns off, it starts cooling down again, and immediately starts on the path to becoming uncomfortably cold again.

I like to think of it this way. If you heat the air, it dissipates heat into the objects, and tries to find a way outside.

If you heat the objects, this radiates the heat off of them into the home, keeping it a comfortable temperature for a much longer period of time.

It’s pretty incredible how it works. And as the studies show, you can actually keep your temperature a few degrees lower than standard heated air options, and be more comfortable.

Another incredible benefit from having electric radiant heat in your floors is the fact that it naturally pushes out and removes any moisture from the floor. In a tiny home on wheels, this is a big deal, since almost every tiny home is prone to this. Whether it’s the roads you drive on when it’s wet or the lack of conditioned space below the floor.

Now, what’s different about Gold Heat? Can’t I just use any type of electric radiant floor system in my tiny home?

The Best Heating Source for Small Homes

From personal experience, before we ever heard about Gold Heat, we had tried a handful of different electric heated floor systems. They all had issues of some sort. Whether it was installation issues, or problems with them actually working, we ended up giving up radiant floor heat altogether. None of them worked well, and I believe the only one we actually got to work, gave out within the first year of use. This was because we were trying to fit a square peg through a round hole. All of these radiant floor heat products were designed and created with residential homes in mind.

So what makes Gold Heat special for tiny homes? You guessed it, they created their product for mobile living spaces. They have spent the last 19 years optimizing their products for mobile living. See they’ve been putting their heated floor systems inside of the Motor Coaches and luxury RVs for 19 years, with the best feedback in the industry!

Plus, Gold Heat just received a Top 10 supplier award from Newmar (which is extremely hard to do) based on Gold Heat customer service and being a reliable supply chain (even through COVID).

And the best part of Gold Heat, is they will custom make the heated floor mat to fit your tiny home layout! Once you’ve sent them your floor plan, they will create the radiant heat floor mat to fit perfectly in that space. All you have to do is roll it out!

And to top it off, just think about how your toes will thank you! In the words of Gold Heat’s engineer Jim P., “Keeping toes warm out there on the frontiers of freedom.” I think that should be their new tagline.

You can find out more about Gold Heat by going to their website!

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