In Europe, radiant floor heat is comon and wonderful.
In California, it has a bad rap because of a man named Eichler; he
built cheap and quick homes in the SF Bay ARea just after WWII.
They all had radiant heat in the floor. Unfortunately, they cut
corners to get these things built - the pipes are either cheap
cast iron or ungalvanized steel (I can't remember at the moment)
and worse, they added salt to the concrete to make it cure faster.
The pipes lasted an amazingly long time, given these odds; most
people didn't have to replace the boilers and pipes for 30 to 40 years.
If you build such a system properly, it should last a long long time.
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