The idea of this steel, hydronic stems from passive solar studies. To use the sun's heat wisely, you need a mass within your home. Like stone. Steel is an excellent mass. Stone isn't a very conducive flooring structure material in a bus for obvious reasons. I have an infrared heater in my garage. In the open, it does alright. Underneath my 1/2" thick, steel fabrication table, it does awesome. The steel heats up and radiates the heat for hours, even after the heater is shut off. I'm able to run the heater on a lower setting and the garage is quite comfortable while the outside air is in the single digits.
I can't bash the typical PEX system used in hydronic, radiant floor heat. It works and people everywhere are satisfied with it. PEX has been used in a few bus builds and does the job.
To make a greater comparison between PEX and the steel floor, I gotta point out my reasons. PEX is a plastic. Cross-linked polyethylene, to be exact. Plastic is an awesome thermal insulator. It doesn't, however, transfer heat as well as a material such a steel. Upon reading many articles covering industrial radiant heat floor employing PEX, you'll find the one of the materials used to insulate the PEX tubing is more polyethylene. Its flexural stability makes it incredibly versatile for convenient routing. There inlies the trade-off in labor. You fabricators are reading this and wondering what I'm smoking to go forth and weld all the strap and washers, right?
I did a lot of pricing and came to the conclusion that my steel floor versus a PEX floor in a bus ends up costing nearly the same, give or take a Benjamin or two. Once you purchase your plywood, foam board, fasteners, adhesive, tubing, fittings, manifolds, valves, heat source, solenoids or whatever you decide to use in addition to other nickel and dime pieces, you're into it deeper than a spacer, for sure. I got the steel for my floor down to around $1,500 for the 40 foot length. I haven't recalculated to cost for the shorter floor. The weight is right around a ton for 40 feet.
With what materials I have in mind for the steel floor, the total floor thickness is about 0.292". What I found in the PEX bus floor builds was they were loosing around 3-3.5" of headroom, once all said and done. 3/4" plywood, then polystyrene foam board and a top layer of 3/4" plywood, plywood with the channels cut for laying the PEX into, then one last layer of playwood takes up some space. The foam board is necessary to keep the heat migrating upwards, otherwise you loose some heat that radiates into the underbelly storage bays. Same reason why you put foam board or fiberglass batting between floor joists in you radiant heat home when the floor is over a crawlspace. Floor covering thickness for both style floors varies a bit, but they'll otherwise be about the same.