You actually have a choice between them as you can use a water heater or tankless for radiant floor heating and not just a boiler.
Can i use a tankless water heater for radiant heat.
Tankless water heater can be used to produce radiant heating.
Make sure you invest in a high efficiency tankless water heater.
Water heater for radiant heat water heaters are good for radiant floor heating because they maintain a low temperature.
You ll need additional controls to temper it properly and on a really cold day it might take a couple of passes through it to get up to temp.
However it is important to understand that not all of them are suitable for this task.
Ft lightweight 60 lbs can mount conveniently on a wall vent.
You really only need a maximum of 120 f for your floor.
Takagi on demand water heaters have many excellent features.
A tankless is designed to take in cold water and raise it about 70 degrees or so.
Sample temperature curve for an on demand unit.
Most heating guys will tell you that you can t use the lowly water heater to fire your hydronic heating system but they often don t give any good reasons to back up their claims other than they ve always used boilers.
Today tankless heaters are low cost high efficient units that are cheaper to maintain operate.
Depending on the heat load the radiant floor heat supply will wander all over the place.
The reasons are outlined below.
So using the unit for radiant heating generally has little or no effect on the sizing calculation.
They have become the standard heat sources for radiant heating applications.