Continuous or intermittent heating?: Uncovering practical heating control strategies amid common misconceptions about radiant floor heating

Practical heating control strategies offer significant potential to reduce residential heating energy consumption, yet traditional guidelines often fail to reflect modern occupancy patterns and user intentions. Consequently, many occupants adjust their heating systems based on habitual practices or misconceptions rather than accurate system understanding. Radiant floor heating (RFH) systems, characterized by a slow thermal response, are particularly vulnerable to such misconceptions, leading to inefficient energy use and compromised thermal comfort.

This study combined a large-scale survey of 473 households across South Korea with controlled experiments to uncover how RFH users manage their systems and how practical control methods can improve outcomes. Survey results revealed that despite a strong motivation to save energy, 41.6 % of users applied control strategies based on misconceptions, while 38.0 % expressed uncertainty about effective methods. Contrary to conventional assumptions, nighttime setback control achieved the best balance between energy efficiency and thermal comfort, outperforming continuous heating and daytime setback strategies. Experimental validation demonstrated that providing accurate, practical control guidance alone reduced heating energy consumption by up to 11.2 % while improving thermal comfort by 9.5 %.

These findings highlight the urgent need for system-specific, user-centered guidance to achieve scalable energy savings without requiring costly technological investments, bridging the gap between technical recommendations and real-world occupant behavior.