The cooling floor has been developing rapidly in France for the past 10 years. The proof of these techniques, although old and born of several different procedures using metallic tubes in flagstone, depends on a number of tests proving the efficiency as well as the limits of the technology. Refers to the works of Shoemaker (1948) as well as the works of Missenard (1958). Discusses recent tests developed in a laboratory in southern France. This knowledge includes the use of the synthetic tubes so widely used in Europe for heating (heating floor). The originality of this proposal is to present a prototype of the cooling technique. A classic room in a hospital complex connected to a cooling floor and to cooling air is set up in the prototype to show the thermal response of this system through specific requirements (outside and inside). Shows the validity of this system with the measurements in a real situation. The most frequently used software for measurement is inadequate for a precise evaluation of this type of system. The dynamic package TAS (thermal analysis software) was chosen to simulate this cell.

KEYWORDS: year 1995, surfaces, cooling, floor cooling, France, hospitals, computer aided design, computer programs, testing, prototypes, heat flow, measuring, calculating, thermal properties, condensation