A job in an old Seattle house taught me to check for radiant heat before I start

Taylor Bell · 2026-04-18T23:25:08.564157+00:00

I was about to start laying engineered hardwood in a 1920s house up in Ballard last month. The homeowner said the floor was ready, but something felt off when I walked on it. It was warm in spots, not just from the sun. I pulled up a corner of the underlayment and found a mess of old, thin electric wires buried in a layer of mastic. It was a DIY radiant heat system from maybe the 70s, and the owner had no idea it was there. I had to stop everything, get an electrician to make sure it was dead, and then spend half a day carefully scraping up the mastic so I could put down a proper underlayment. That one check saved me from frying the system or starting a fire. Now I run a simple surface temp check with my hand on any pre-1940s house before I even bring the nailer in. Has anyone else run into a hidden system like that, and how did you handle it?

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A job in an old Seattle house taught me to check for radiant heat before I start | Flooring Installers - Topic Shares