Under floor heating – Electric or hot water pipes

rasik

Hello

With Gas becoming more expensive and other alternatives in the market which is the best type of under floor heating system (Electric or water pipes)?

I want to have tiles for the kitchen\dinner (30sqm) but would like to have wood in living\passage area (50sqm). Not sure if wood finish is good idea…

1. Is it more economical to have? Electric than water pipes?
2. Which is more expensive system to install (percentage difference) (excluding floor finishing)?
3. I want to live in this home for the long term (20+ years). Which is more reliable\durable for the long term?
4. Material – would increase the cost of heating the living room?
5. Is tile the best for heating a room?

dave

rogerblack

rasik wrote: »

Hello

With Gas becoming more expensive and other alternatives in the market which is the best type of under floor heating system (Electric or water pipes)?

For the near future, if you use a reasonable amount of gas per year, it's unlikely electricity will be cheaper.
Simply as gas is a huge slice of electricity generation - and this isn't changing anytime soon.
Whatever the solution you choose, a really important bit is proper insulation under the floor.

tpt

water pipes in the screed is by far the best system. it is much better as a primary heat source than electric which is really only good as a secondary heat system to warm the floor, not the room.

That said it goes in the screed, so you would have to replace the subfloor too so the cost is far more unless you are building the house at the moment

rogerblack

tpt wrote: »

water pipes in the screed is by far the best system. it is much better as a primary heat source than electric which is really only good as a secondary heat system to warm the floor, not the room.

That said it goes in the screed, so you would have to replace the subfloor too so the cost is far more unless you are building the house at the moment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6kP6WXRMdM is a timelapse of adding underfloor heating to an existing floor using pipes through dry-mix.

frugalcoder

We put electric underfloor heating in our kitchen and back room about 6 years ago. One system is 2kW, the other 1kW. Each has it's own 7 day electronic timer, and we have economy 7 electricity. The system has an insulating panel, the electrical wire, and then tiles on top. It heats of fairly quickly, and has a large sunny window facing to the south.

It's more expensive than gas, which heats the remainder of our house with a 92% efficient boiler. Gas is currently 3.182p/kWh, where E7 electric is 5.174. We tend to heat the floor for 2 hours in the morning to take the chill off on E7, then switch on again in the afternoon at about 3pm-8pm, and when the sun shines the floor absorbs some from that as well. After 8, the heat is off, and we move to another part of the house.

The advantages are:
1. Electric raised the floor less than 1 inch, and had minimal disruption
2. We can completely switch off the heating in the very back part of the house, with no risk of frost damage, because there is no water.
3. In the event that a gas disruption occurs, we can still heat part of the house.
4. The individual timer control allows fine grained control over when the heat is on in the house.
5. The rest of the house heats up quicker, because 25 m2 isn't being heated by the gas boiler.

The disadvantages of electric:
1. Water based systems can be compatible with solar thermal or heat pumps.
2. Water based systems will lower the temperature of the water returning to the boiler, making it more efficient.

With hindsight, I might have tried to go with a water based system, particularly now that Renewable heat incentives are on their way.