Does anyone on here use or have any experience with UFH? I am considering it on the ground floor of our house renovation. If you have it are you happy? Would you ever consider going back to a standard radiator system?
We put an underfloor heating system into our kitchen family room when we renovated. It is a new tech solution so there was no need to wait weeks for the screed to go off. Basically, the piping goes down on insulated foam blocks. You then cover this with ttile matting ad cement to anchor everything down and tile the floor as usual. It wasn’t that much more expensive than the foo radiator that the Domestic Antipodean had chosen. It only took about a week from starting to lay the pipework to tiled floor finish. It obviously means that a wall isn’t taken up by the radiator which is useful in a kitchen with a wall of glass onto the garden.
I’m very pleased with it so far and would not consider going back to radiators in this room.
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Yep, we had UHF installed when we extended. Same as Ólan except we had screed poured after the 100m of underfloor heating pipe went down.
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We put wet UFH in through downstairs when we extended.
1 don’t get a fancy boiler - use a mixer/pump/manifold and standard system boiler
2 lots of control zones - 1 per room (we have heatmiser and it seems good)
3 check the screed composition. We got anhydride screed and it meant LOTS of floor prep for
4 floor coverings. We have amtico which works well but you’ll end up with a hard floor whichever (ufh friendly carpet exists but why?)
5 you don’t get anywhere ‘Cosy’ like radiators when you come in from the cold however the rooms will be nicer overall (more even) and you get wall space back
6 minimal furniture/rugs or it’s a waste
7 last but most important INSULATE!!! Ufh has a max possible temp rise as it only carries 50-55 deg water. Insulate like mad to make sure the room never gets much below zero and it’ll be toasty. This includes polystyrene under the slab so expect lots of excavation and disruption. Plus it’s a slow process bringing it online to dry out before you get flooring down etc
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I’m looking at a Dutch company called JK Heating that actually cut into your current screed
We have no insulation under the slab which has been my main issue. I have no intention of retrofitting insulation in the floor as you need to dig up around 200mm plus I have 150 sqm of floor. The cost would be huge. Their results show 10-15% heat loss through the floor for my floor type which is not enough to put me off. They have done hundreds of older non insulated floors like mine. Its tempting and well priced and as Olan mentioned I really fancy the extra wall space.
We intend to use a system boiler.
Ours seems okay. Needs a bit of help or settings changing when it gets really cold though.
Have only laid down the electrical matting type for bathrooms.
Slightly warmed the thick tiles up but not much else
I have it in two rooms. We had it put in the kitchen about 8 years ago over some stone flags. It’s the electric mat type and frankly it’s really expensive. A lot of that though, is to do with it being a Victorian house and not well insulated.
We also had it put in bathroom we did recently over some Karndean flooring but the Karndean is so warm we never need to use it.
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I’ve been looking at Karndean LVT so that’s good to know
Decent controls should sort that. Ours have a set temp/time and it works out when it needs to come on to achieve that based on the current temp and how long it takes to increase the temp by that amount… The ‘help needed’ suggests the room holds heat poorly so you’re out of the range the UFH can handle.
We didnt use to have a dedicated UFH pump, we had a fancy UFH boiler that ran at 55 deg. Nowhere downstairs got above 20 when it was below 5 outside, and it struggled to get above 19 when it went below zero. Since getting the new boiler and a dedicated pump/mixer we can get 23 with no trouble and even recently with it well below zero outside it maintained 21 in the main room
Karndean is fucking awesome.
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We would be having a pump/mixer installed
How does electric underfloor heating compare? Won’t be long before NAT gas boilers are the equivalent of diesel engines and installing a heat pump system will be expensive
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Most manifolds come with them pre fitted now, we did ours over 10 years ago and things have moved on. Think about where the manifold will be - with such a large area, you’ll have more than one circuit so remember the pipes will all come from the manifold and that area will get warm. Plus you’ll need the electrical control box next to it and be able to get into it now and again. Also, they should fit a drain through an outside wall so you can easily drain the UFH loops if needed.
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Nick @Myrman
We simply treat our underfloor heating as another zone. The whole kitchen space was really heavily insulated so the heating rarely comes on as we have it set to a constant 20C. We heavily insulated our house and replaced the boilers during the renovation so this coupled with using Hive has been great for our energy bills. The u/f heating is really economical in this setting.
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I think electric is supposed to be better in smaller areas but I will have a 2 large ground floor rooms kitchen/diner and lounge which are around 50sq m each.
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That reminds me I need to look at Hive. It didn’t suit me needs where I currently live but I will take another look.
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My parents have underfloor heating and they’re utter idiots about it. They don’t use the thermostat correctly, so my mother shoves it up to 25 degrees when she gets home, and hours later the windows are all flung open as the floor has become lava (it’s actually not hot to walk on, but it has a high thermal mass so just pumps out heat for ages).
If you’re not a fucking idiot I imagine it’ll be much better!
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ditto - mine have in their kitchen.
We have no heating in our kitchen - no free walls for radiators.
Also worth looking at is a swedish firm called kahrs, their flooring has a much better wear layer and cheaper too, especially if you’re going for a herringbone effect
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