Water Underfloor heating - increase in height of floor surface ?

sparkie7203

Hi,

I am considering fitting water underfloor heating. What may put me off is the fact that I have currently got concrete floors and relatively low cellings. I dont want to lose too much height to my cellings due to the increase in depth due to the underfloor system. How much will I lose if I have underfloor heating provided by water ?
The alternative is to reduce the floor depth. I'm no expert but I presume that this is very messy and expensive ?

Akiriano

By no means an expert but i would imagine you should expect to lose between 3-7cm if its laid on top of existing concrete floor. You could avoid that by lowering the floor but this would most like significanly increase the cost and time.

Gloomendoom

Underfloor heating really needs to be installed on top of a layer of insulation. Otherwise you are going to waste a lot of energy heating the slab and what's underneath.

brig001

I would allow at least 3" of Kingspan or Celotex.
You can then use pipes in screed, which will add another 3", so 6" total, or put a timber floor on top with spreader plates which will add another 2", so 5" total.
Without the insulation, you will be throwing money away.
HTH, Brian.

knowloads

Agree with Brig001, why not go for electric, the foil system is only mm's thick, and warning, not all systems will heat the whole room unless run on high for most of the winter. (-£££££) The floor will be warm, 3ft above it, has little impact. Manypeople think its for warming the whole room, OK if room is already insulated.

robv_3

There are systems around that result in the floor being raised by 25mm or less. As with most electric system they are limited by the lack of insulations.

Sure at some point saw a wet system that would only add 12mm using 10mm pipes.

ritesh

You mention you have a concrete floor. Is there a layer of screed on this and if so how thick is this.

If the existing screed is quite thick you can knock this out and apply a new thin layer of screed mixed with a compound called RONAFIX. This makes it solid!

You will need to use a layer of insulation underneath the underfloor heating. in total you will loose about 50mm.

sparkie7203

ritesh wrote: »

You mention you have a concrete floor. Is there a layer of screed on this and if so how thick is this.

If the existing screed is quite thick you can knock this out and apply a new thin layer of screed mixed with a compound called RONAFIX. This makes it solid!

You will need to use a layer of insulation underneath the underfloor heating. in total you will loose about 50mm.

I suppose I am presuming that the concrete floor is the screed layer but I dont know how thick it is. Should this come off quite easily. The house is an old house (1850's) but has has some degree of modernisation over the years - not for a long time though.

romeospadre

Sorry for the hijack

Any ideas on the cost of wet underfloor heating?

Would I need to get the boiler checked to see if it can handle this solution?

Is underfloor heating a substitute for rads?

Ty

brig001

romeospadre, how good are you at DIY? It's not too hard to do (not easy either) and should only cost about £600 for a typical room for the materials depending on your heating system. I would only recommend it as a replacement for radiators if you have good insulation, otherwise the floor could get too hot. It is not as responsive as radiators, but not too bad if you go for timber floor instead of screed.

ritesh

sparkie7203 wrote: »

I suppose I am presuming that the concrete floor is the screed layer but I dont know how thick it is. Should this come off quite easily. The house is an old house (1850's) but has has some degree of modernisation over the years - not for a long time though.

I had to use a kango to remove mine and took approx 4hrs to remove screed layer from 50 m2 area (breaks included and removing the mess).