Cold Feet

[yogi]

You might be wondering why I'd ask you how to cure cold feet. Strange as it might seem, you are likely to be the expert on this.

My wife of many years has a shower in her bathroom. We installed a heater in the ceiling light in order to warm the air for her after shower experience. That works fine, but now it is winter and the floor is cold. There is a heating duct under the window, but as you probably can imagine that does not keep the floor warm. The flooring is linoleum and she does have an area rug right outside the shower door. But, she still freezes her tootsies when she steps out into the main room. I've seen mats with heating coils that can be placed under these area rugs. That seems to be the preferred method of keeping one's toes toasty warm after a shower. However, there are no electrical outlets anywhere near floor level to use for such a mat. I suppose the entire floor could be replaced with radiant heat, but, is that really necessary? Any "out of the box" suggestions you might offer would be taken into consideration. Practical advice would also be appreciated.

[Kellemora]

Do you have a basement under the bathroom?
If so, you can buy some flat steel sheeting to tack up under the floor joists.
Then, from the ductwork that goes to the bathroom vent, have it pass into each of the gaps between the floor joists first, then go to the floor vent.
Put it under the shower floor and the floor outside the shower, might take doing this to between three or four floor joists.

If that is not an option, you could buy a small heat lamp and mount it in a box to set on the floor and direct the light to the floor area she steps out on. Just make sure to turn it off before you turn on the water in the shower, because one drop will cause the lamp to break and you don't want broken glass in there.
Those red heat lamps heat up the floor itself really fast. Faster than an electric heater would.

Another option is to put one of the plastic covers over your heater duct to make the heat blow across the floor.
They are super cheap, usually adjustable to width, From the end they look like the letter C sorta. Think of them like a hood open on the bottom and front to direct the heat from the vent.

WE have the electric heat in the ceiling also, along with two main lights and one night light I have set to run 24/7.

[yogi]

We DO have a basement and I really like your first suggestion. The floor joists, however, run perpendicular to the shower door. This would prevent routing the furnace hot air across the necessary part of the floor to heat it up. The heat vent is on the outer wall and the first joist is no more than 24" in from that. The exit from the shower is at least 4' from that same outer wall. Also, that same heating vent provides the cold air during the summer. That would cool the floor which is exactly opposite of what wife is looking for.

I've seen those red heat lamps and the thought did cross my mind. It's an option we would need to plan on a bit. An alternative to that lamp would be a towel heating rack, or so I read in a couple articles on the subject. The heating rack would not only warm things up in the room but also provide warm towels. The problem there is where to place it. The only available space is under the window and above the heat vent. The toilet is on that end of the room and depending on the width of the rack, it might interfere with sitting on the throne.

The air deflector seems like the best, and cheapest, alternative. We use them in a few places to keep the heat from going up between the curtains and the windows where it does not provide much heat to the room. In the bathroom the distance from the vent, and the deflector, to the shower door would be about 48". I suspect that would warm things up slightly, but not sure how much. However, it's worth trying in that it costs next to nothing to install.

Thank you for the inputs. That steel plate idea is a stroke of genius.

[Kellemora]

Don't know if I could explain this in writing or not.
You could install a damper in the existing ductwork, just beyond where you add a take-off to feed under the floor joists.
Or another way would be to install a Y diverter so you can select it for summer or winter, heating or cooling season.
You only need to use flex-duct to feed under the floor joists, then out the other end back into the duct work to the register.

A heat lamp is fairly small, and perhaps could be place under the tank on the toilet shining toward the floor outside the shower?

I also thought about using heat-tape on the back-side of throw rug you set outside the shower door.
We have a thick fuzzy rug that hangs on the shower door we put down when we get out of the shower.
It wouldn't be any problem to add a heat-tape to the back of it, with a cord with an on/off switch in the cord, and have the cord long enough to reach over to the sink outlets.

Or heck, just buy a heating pad and put it under the rug, hi hi.

[yogi]

One of the popular solutions to this heating challenge is exactly what you suggest about a heating pad. Lowes, Home Depot, and Walmart sell heating pads designed specifically for this purpose. The idea is to put down the heat pad and then put the area rug on top of that. It's a great solution if it were not for the electrical problem. There are no outlets near floor level, or even near the shower for that matter. Something would have to be installed in order to power the heating pad.

Along the same lines all three of those stores offer heating tiles that snap together. I never heard of such things but apparently they have been around for a long time. Like the heating pads I suspect the tiles need a power source too which would require an electrician in my case.

My previous house had one of those dampers you talk about in the furnace piping. The reason for that was to direct the heat through one set of pipes and the cooling through another set. Now that you mention it, I can see how that could be applied to our situation.

I explained all the options to my wife, including ripping out the old flooring and installing hot water radiant heat. She seems to think it's too much trouble and will put up with cold toes.

[Kellemora]

My wife bought me a pair of slippers you heat up in the microwave and they stay warm for about an hour after you take them out.
It feels like they are filled with a sand-like substance, of which it really is I have no idea.
You only leave them in the microwave for 5 minutes is all.
I'm wondering if they make a tiny floor mat like that?

Another option would be to take a small throw rug and line the back with about 3/4 inch thick foam rubber.
That way the floor would not suck the heat out of your feet.

[yogi]

Odd as it seems, I got some of those microwave slippers for my wife about a year ago. They work really well and she used them frequently last year. I've not seen them yet this year. Heating those slippers is easy peasey, but I can't see how you could microwave an entire rug; not even a small one. I think you are right about adding some thick insulation under the rugs currently in the room. In fact I offered to get some indoor/outdoor carpeting to do something similar. It remains to be seen what route we will take, but I think now that her toes are warm she isn't thinking about it anymore. LOL

[Kellemora]

I've worn boots my entire life. If I try to wear shoes, I used to get pain in the upper part of my foot.
When I take a shower I'm barefooted, and get really bad foot cramps.
I step out of the shower onto a super thick fuzzy rug.
After I dry off, I sit on the toilet seat, dry my feet and between my toes real well, then put my slippers on right away.
My slippers were not cheap and have a good arch support in them.
My bare feet never touch a floor, except in the shower. I have slippers by my bed and when my boots come off, the slippers go on.
And for that 3am trip to the bathroom, the slippers go on first.
My wife even laughs at me when I'm getting ready for bed.
I take off my boots and socks, put my feet in the slippers to stand up and take off my shirt and unhook my trousers.
Then I sit back down at half mast, slip off a slipper, slide my foot out of the pants leg, using my other foot to hold the cuff so they come off easier. Then as soon as that leg is out, my foot goes right back into a slipper, hi hi.
I get the cover pulled back, my pillow adjusted, then slip my slippers off as I swing my legs under the covers.
As I said, my bare feet never touch a floor! Or the ground for that matter.

[yogi]

We certainly are all different with different needs. Bare feet on the ground up by Chicago could get you frost bite at certain times of the year. But, around here it's not unusual to see the neighbor kids barefoot in the cul du sac in November; wearing shorts nonetheless. I've come to think that going bare footed is a southern tradition, especially in places you can put your feet in the Mississippi mud. Then, I hear of people like yourself. LOL

Way back when I was an itty bitty baby mom favored dressing me in what is called a onesie. It's just a body suit made of something soft like cotton so that kids would not object to wearing them. The feet were part of the bottom pants and thus no socks were necessary, nor shoes for that matter. Most of those onesies had some kind of plastic material on the bottom of the feet to facilitate walking. After I outgrew those things, mom outfitted me with pajamas that had coverings on the feet. This was just a onesie cut into two pieces. LOL The house we lived in was not heated well and I loved to keep those pajamas on long after I got out of bed. When I outgrew those type of pajamas, my feet were very accustomed to be covered all night long. Thus I wore my stocking to bed and didn't change them until morning after washing up for the day. I can't say my bare feet never touched the ground. I have gone swimming in lakes, public beaches, and even the Atlantic ocean. I've also walked in the grass a time or two with my bare feet exposed. But, every night I don a pair of socks to keep the feet warm.

As an aside, my grandpa had a farm not too far out from Chicago. We would visit him often and at times he would take us around to meet the neighbors. We once met a family who had a young daughter about my age and she was all country. Her feet were bare and I just had to ask her if she ran around like that all the time. She said she like the feel of the dirt between her toes when she was working with the cattle and the chickens. And yes, she seemed to like the feel of the manure from both of those animals. She saw how shocked I was and laughed. She figured it was just the natural way to do things, and besides, it all washes off in the trough over there.

[Kellemora]

I think one of the reasons I became so paranoid about going barefoot is because of all the broken glass and beer can tabs I would step on which cut my feet.
I've had some very large cuts in my feet that required several stitches.
One time I cut the top of my foot and they were not sure if I would regain use of my foot or not.
So I have been very leery every since I was around 4 to 6 years old.
And also this is another reason I've worn boots most of my life too!

Ha ha, love it! Wash the crap off in the horses water trough, then you have to clean the trough, hi hi.