Most Korean houses are heated by the Ondol heating system. There has been, however, no reasonable design procedure availabe yet for the system. The conventional design should be improved to have auniform floor surface. temperature distribution and to have a high thermal efficiency. Thermal efficiencies of the ondol were defined and the method of experimentation was studied. An experiment, using a life-size model which was well insulated, was performed to observe the variation in thermal efficiency as the length of fuel burning time was varied.