Warmboard Claim on Performance
“Ecowarm claims there is very little difference in performance between products. Ecowarm claims their aluminum is “thick enough for effective heat transfer,” and once steady state is reached, there is minimal difference between products. But that’s like saying, “Once your car is going 65mph, the type of car you drive doesn’t matter.” That’s not the whole story. Comfort, horsepower, fuel efficiency, safety, handling – these are all relevant factors.
In your home, as occupants come and go, or as the weather changes, heating needs change – often rapidly. It’s not uncommon for many parts of the country to experience 30-50º temperature swings in a single day. Warmboard-R’s surface is very conductive, enabling it to respond quickly to your needs.”
Ecowarm Response to Performance Claims
Warmboard’s statements are extremely misleading. The Warmboard sales video comparing Ecowarm RadiantBoard to Warmboard R uses their in-house comparison testing. It demonstrates excellent response time, but not efficiency. This testing method is not used or accepted by the radiant heating manufacturing and engineering community, or our industry’s association.
Warmboard testing presumes that there are often circumstances that require rapidly coming out of a deep setback condition. In a well-designed radiant system, this is not true. Warmboard uses high temperature (120° F) in their testing to demonstrate responsiveness and to create stripping conditions as well – again, a rapid temperature differential not seen in well-designed systems.
Again, Warmboard regularly conflates the speed of system acceleration with system efficiency and system performance. As the folks at Warmboard are prone to use automotive analogies, there is a reason drag-racers and exotics are known for acceleration and not prolonged efficiency.
Heating systems in modern homes are designed with a high/low temperature. Homeowners set their desired range, and the system will either heat up or cool down within that narrow temperature range. Warmboard’s testing reflects the response requirements of outdated, on/off heating systems – which have been obsolete for decades. We rate this claim as disingenuous. Ecowarm was designed to not only respond quickly, but to maintain excellent efficiency.
Ecowarm Performance Chart
Warmboard Performance Chart
Warmboard claims it requires lower water temperatures than Ecowarm – between 10–30ºF. This is simply not true. The published performance charts of Warmboard itself do not support this.
Ecowarm Response: More Performance Claims
The value of hyper-acceleration is overstated by Warmboard. Weather does indeed change very rapidly sometimes, but a well-designed radiant system employing a weather-responsive control, as recommended by the RPA (Radiant Professionals Alliance) and our design guidelines, does not require the hyper response time promoted by Warmboard. Their testing protocol reflects the response needs of an old-style on/off heating system.
Modern heating systems, whether furnaces or heat pumps, use variable speed, variable load logic, and so should modern radiant heating systems. Good response time is helpful, hyperresponsiveness is excessive. A more fitting analogy is that Warmboard represents an expensive 200 mph sports car that is operated in a 40 mph speed zone.
A weather responsive system constantly idles the water temperature of the system water just below a useful output temperature during the heating season and quickly raises or lowers the water temperature only as required in relation to the outdoor temperature. These weather-responsive controls themselves offer a 20% savings in operating costs beyond the benefits of thin mass, aluminum-clad radiant panel systems such as Warmboard or Ecowarm RadiantBoard.
Warmboard employs a test system that requires super-fast heat up because it accentuates a strength needed for older non-weather-responsive controls that resulted in deep setbacks, modern systems do not suffer from this characteristic.
One does not use more energy waiting for a system to respond as claimed. A less responsive system is delivering useful energy, just at a lower rate than a more responsive system. There is a benefit to a responsive system like Ecowarm RadiantBoard, but an expensive hyper-responsive system is, in our estimation, an antiquated approach and overkill with weather responsive systems.
Comfort should be measured by consistent, even floor and interior temperature, not acceleration to compensate for old technologies.
Comfort should be measured by consistent, even floor and interior temperature, not acceleration to compensate for old technologies.
Warmboard publishes several in-house videos that demonstrate the excellent acceleration qualities of their product, which they claim should be the central means for assessing the performance of a radiant distribution system. We at Ecowarm RadiantBoard, along with much of our industry, do not agree this is the defining feature of system quality.
Fast acceleration is helpful, however these Warmboard videos conflate the speed of system acceleration with system efficiency and performance by aggressively promoting a very narrow range of conditions under which a radiant system may operate, rather than a real-world, year-round range, thereby vastly overstating the importance of hyperresponsiveness to the overall performance of a well-designed system.
Warmbard’s videos aggressively promote their hyper-responsiveness using narrow, out-dated conditions that no longer exist in modern homes.
While conductivity is good (and a feature of both Ecowarm RadiantBoard and Warmboard systems), today’s climate-responsive controls render hyper-conductivity and acceleration an expensive low-value feature. Smart radiant systems now use climate-responsive controls that allow water temperatures to vary gradually in response to outdoor conditions while minimizing the cost of operation and maximizing comfort.