Bottom line, if your basement is finished and you use it by all means go radiant heat. If you are heating your unfinished basement with radiant floors and expect the heat to travel efficiently all over the main and second floor then it becomes inefficient, not to mention in my case heating a 3,000 sq ft basement for nothing (the plate heat exchanger keeps it plenty warm). Sure the home will eventually be warm but the basement will be 90 degrees and you will have gone thru cords of wood.
The heat in the basement slab will not even transfer efficiently to your basement walls if your floors have rubber expansion around the perimeter (reccomended) and your exterior basement walls aren't insulated underground.
My ranch home is 7500 sq ft. 3000' basement, 3400' main floor and 1100' second floor bonus room. The main floor and the second floor have the water heat exchangers in the furnaces, and the basement is radiant. All heated with a boiler (either indoor gas, or outdoor heatmaster 10,000e). I have 6" insulated walls and 11" insulation in ceiling.
We keep the main floor at 68* using the main floor air ducted furnace. The second floor isn't used unless we have company so that furnace is set at 57*. The basement stays around 64* because it's underground mostly and all of the water running through the pipes and plate heat exchanger becomes radiant heat.
If I turn off the main floor furnace and try to heat with the radiant floor basement it doesn't work because in order to transfer that type of heat (radiant) up to the main floor ive got to get my slab up to at least 85* and the wood consumption almost doubles (now I'm heating 2 times as much house). Not to mention the furnace isn't running so I need to turn the blower on to get air cleaner and the humidifier working.
Radiant heat is not for all rooms/homes.
If I were to get a redo I would have put radiant heat on the main floor (basement ceiling) and basement floor.