Underfloor heating

harryhound

ozskin wrote: »

Unless you have a specific manufacturer instruction to the contrary parquet is a no go, don't know of any parquet that is suitable, as most woods are unsuitable. there is some engineered that is guaranteed underfloor heating suitable but its a tricky area, and as wood is a good insulator, not the ideal material to put on top.

They say it can be done but some sort of flexible glue has to be used.
If the heat is under the floor it has to get out somewhere, if the underside of the slab is 4 inches of insulation then a centimetre of wood on the top surface is not going to make much difference - just need a larger area of floor with 35 degrees of heat under it?

My brother in law rented a place with a wood plank floor with under floor heating. It seemed to work OK when we visited him one Xmas, but I was not technically interested at the time.

missile

harryhound wrote: »

Wet underfloor heating works best in a super insulated home.
With a ground source heat pump, it is possible to use the floor as a night storage heater.
Not suitable for a poorly insulated draughty house.

Does anyone have experience of under floor heating with "Parquet flooring" (wooden strips)?

I have wet underfloor heating under Quickstep laminate. It works very well for me. I find the response time is not as quick as radiators but the heating is more uniform.:T

ema_o

We have 2m of electric flooring under our bathroom tiles and it is fabulous. We changed our whole heating from electric to gas shortly before installing this so I'm not sure what increase it made but bills don't seem too bad so I feel it is worth it. Missing it at the moment as we're halfway through decorating the landing so OH has disconnected the electrics for it so we can paint around!

Only use it in the winter and it is an added extra to take the chill off the tiles, we also have a radiator in there which I don't think we could do without.

Remember you only need to use it under the areas you want to warm, so that might reduce the cost of the area you're heating.

At my parents there were a few warm spots on the kitchen floor - I think where the pipework went to the radiators, and we used to fight over who got to sit and put their feet on them

kmmr

Hi,

I have recently installed both electric and wet underfloor heating. Under tiles and engineered flooring, so I can help!

Electric is in the bathroom, and we leave it on all the time. I don't think it is super effective, but it is fine for us as we have quite a small bathroom, but it has no windows so no heat loss. It never feels super warm on the floor, but the room is always comfortable.

We then have wet system in the open plan kitchen/living/extension area, which is quite a large area. About 40-50sqm. Kitchen area is tiled, and the rest has engineered wood flooring. The heat is much stronger in the tiled area (other than one patch they missed, but that is another story!) and the rest of the place warms up nicely. Toasty underfoot, and keep the room lovely and warm.

The rest of the house (corridor, bedrooms) has radiators. Now, this is a bit of a problem. In theory the wet UFH should be left on at all times, and you just set the temperature and it manages it itself - turning on and off depending on the ambient temperature. I think that is why it is so cheap to run - as it retains heat, and just needs a bit to top up the heat now and then. But this is a problem if you had rads on the same system. As they would then also be on all the time, and you end up with a too warm bedroom etc.

We have a workaround where the UFH is set low (7C, basically it just switches off) for the time when we have the boiler scheduled off. The room with UFH tends to drop to about 19C when the heating is off for the 5 or 6 hours in the middle of the day, and then warms back up to 22-24 pretty quick once the system kicks off again.

So, basically, I really like the UFH, but it is a different system and you need to work out how to use it. For it to work perfectly I think it really needs it own boiler, but hard to imagine that many houses get a second boiler for it! I know I am certainly not about to.

No idea about the running costs. My OH looks after those bills, and we have only been back in the house with the heating for the last 2 months or so. So, can't help you with that element. Can't imagine it is much cheaper, as we have the rads on the same system which would be using the normal amount of power. The electric is just an unknown.

Chaunceys

Hi
We are wood flooring suppliers and have got UFH under our engineered oak flooring throughout our showroom and our new offices. We find that it's great - and as we have used loads of insulation in the walls and ceiling this easily keeps the temperature a good level. We have only used hot water piping held in diffuser plates as the UFH method but I have outlined what we did on the trade newsletter archive of our blog if that's of any interest and will be posting short explanation films on our blog later this week.
We've also got advice on our website about UFH and installing wooden flooring over it on our website (go to underfloor heat in the green boxes at the bottom of the page) including a folder of useful fact & figures which gives recommended levels for temperature, humidity (ERH & ARH), thermal conductivity etc. Hope this will all help. Chauncey's Timber Flooring

Innys

kmmr wrote: »

Hi,


The rest of the house (corridor, bedrooms) has radiators. Now, this is a bit of a problem. In theory the wet UFH should be left on at all times, and you just set the temperature and it manages it itself - turning on and off depending on the ambient temperature. I think that is why it is so cheap to run - as it retains heat, and just needs a bit to top up the heat now and then. But this is a problem if you had rads on the same system. As they would then also be on all the time, and you end up with a too warm bedroom etc.

QUOTE]

I don't understand this. I understood that rooms with UFH had their own room thermostats independent of the main house thermostat. Plus, I thought it was possible to run the UFH off the boiler without heating up the rest of the house. I understood the manifold was designed to take into account the readings from the various thermostats and only send hot water where it was required?

kmmr

Innys wrote: »

kmmr wrote: »

Hi,


The rest of the house (corridor, bedrooms) has radiators. Now, this is a bit of a problem. In theory the wet UFH should be left on at all times, and you just set the temperature and it manages it itself - turning on and off depending on the ambient temperature. I think that is why it is so cheap to run - as it retains heat, and just needs a bit to top up the heat now and then. But this is a problem if you had rads on the same system. As they would then also be on all the time, and you end up with a too warm bedroom etc.

QUOTE]

I don't understand this. I understood that rooms with UFH had their own room thermostats independent of the main house thermostat. Plus, I thought it was possible to run the UFH off the boiler without heating up the rest of the house. I understood the manifold was designed to take into account the readings from the various thermostats and only send hot water where it was required?

That is probably true if you set up everything from scratch. We had older plumbing set up for the radiators that was retained.

But... perhaps that is not it. Perhaps there is a way I can set it up better!

We can always turn off the radiators in the bedrooms, but we want them to operate on a normal timer basis, so we can get up without too cold toes.

If we put them all at a low temperature, then I feel like we are paying for a lot of heating which isn't necessary while we aren't home, and not getting the nice burst of morning heat.

The balance is working fine at the moment, but we do still have a timer on the boiler, just co-ordinated with a timer on when the underfloor heating is trying to get to a higher heat. If the UFH thinks it too cold, it will go to the boiler to get hot water, but if the boiler is off, then the UFH just runs and runs... so we just match the timings.

noxon

We're doing a major house renovation and have just installed wet underfloor heating in our kitchen diner (~18sqm) where it will be the only heat source and after Christmas will install in our living room (~20sqm) where it will be the back-up heat source to a wood-burning stove with back boiler which we light most evenings. The kitchen flooring installation, solid sandstone, was only finished last week so we're still slowly ramping the UFH up and getting used to how to control it, but so far it appears to be working exactly as intended and we're delighted with it though I obviously can't comment on running costs yet. The layout of these two rooms if we had to fit radiators would be a complete pain in the behind.

We have retained the radiators in the hallway and upstairs which does mean we now have quite a complicated heating and control system. Instead of a straightforward hot water cylinder we have a thermal store fed by a conventional (old!) gas boiler and the back boiler from the wood-burning stove. It provides mains pressure hot water and feeds the radiators and UFH heating, which means three timer-thermostats that, in our setup, have to be synchronised with the thermal store timers and thermostats to ensure that the gas boiler is only on when necessary. We have also done huge amounts of work insulating loft, walls and under floors and installing double and triple glazing to make sure we're keeping in as much heat as we can. It took himself a long time to convince me the cost and disruption of doing all this would be worth it but I have been completely won over by how well it all works and how cosy our house is becoming. And the mains pressure shower!

samtheman1k

Moss5 wrote: »

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Central-Heating-Kitchen-Plinth-Heater/dp/B001S2FOF0

Your radiator pipes could supply one of these?

I used to have one of those, they do work, but they have a fan in to blow the air around...it can get quite annoying if your kitchen is within earshot of your lounge!