Underfloor heating temperature help

scottishminnie

I appreciate this is a bit of a subjective question however I'm keen to hear people's experiences with under floor heating.

We've recently installed it in our en suite and have been playing around with the programmer to get the temperature quite right.

One of the factory settings is for 25 degrees C which initially seemed very high to me however I've left it at that. What did surprise me though was that when it did get to 25 (over a fairly prolonged period of time) the floor didn't seem the least bit warm. I would say (comparing it to one of the other bathrooms with tiles and no UFH) it had only taken the chill off the floor.

My experience of temperature setting has really been confined to our oil fired heating system and I maybe just haven't realised that the UFH will need to be set much higher to be noticeable however 25 degrees seems quite high to me.

Friends who recommended installing this all talked of stepping from the shower onto wonderfully warm floors which isn't quite what I'm finding.

None of those who waxed lyrical about UFH are around at the moment for me to ask what temperature they set to hence my question to the MSE community.

sunshinetours

Turn it right up and see if it gets warm at all. If it doesn't it may have a fault eitehr with thermostat or elsewhere. You certainly should be feeling it at least a little if leaving it on for a period. Does take a while to warm up though so you need to set to come on before you get up that sort of thing

aylesby

We have it in a kitchen and had it fixed at 20 this winter.

System

what's the floor finish you have?

Mr_Ted

The temperature of the floor, and heat up time to reach the set temperature will be relevant to the heat output from the source, so needs to be at the maximum boiler setting!
In saying this, it will also obviously affect all other parts of the system, not a bad thing as the whole system will reach temperature quicker, but consideration has to be given to the safety aspects of high temperatures at radiators and the possibility of scalding from them?
The correct zoneing and methods of control of the different circuits may be an issue that needs to be looked at?

abankerbutnotafatcat

As per previous poster, we have our kitchen floor set at a bit under 20c and it feels warm to the bare foot. We have unheated tiles on the bathroom floor above and they feel cooler but not cold. I think there's something wrong. As suggested, set it on max to ascertain if it's the flooring or the thermostat. I feel for you, I know how scared we were that it wouldn't work once the tiles were down. Good luck.

stevemcol

Electric? I have the 'warmup' electrical underfloor heating in the bathroom. I too would vouch for the 'wonderfully warm floors'. I have the stat set to 35 and it comes on an hour or so before we get up. Essentially, I'm using the stat just as a timer because the temp doesn't actually reach 35. The odd time I glance at it, I read somewhere in the low 30s. It's timed to switch off, just before we get up because the tiles retain the heat for ages.

cyclonebri1

The thermostat is measuring the temp of the room, not the floor, forget any feeling you have that the floor should feel warm, it won't.

What it is a a very large radiator operating at a much lower temp than a panel radiator.

Point of fact underfloor heating is a very slow form of heating as you have pointed out, it is also often not sufficient to jheat the room on it's own.

And why do you want the room at 25deg?, if that's your aim go flame thrower.:D:D

stevemcol

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

The thermostat is measuring the temp of the room, not the floor, forget any feeling you have that the floor should feel warm, it won't.

Depends on the system. Mine measures the temperature of the tiles.

TDPIX

What type of flooring do you have? Is there any underlay?

scottishminnie

Thanks everyone for your comments so far. I should probably have given more info so:

It's electric underfloor - not linked to the oil fired heating or the radiators at all.

The floor is tiled.

The control panel has an option for measuring either air temperature or actual floor temperature - I have it set to floor temperature.

It worked when tested before the control panel was installed. The fitter simply had a long cable to a socket to test and the floor was so hot you simply couldn't stand on it.

I increased to 30 late this afternoon and it was "just warm" for a couple of hours this evening.

I'll give it over the weekend and will speak to the fitter on Monday if it still isn't getting warm. 30 degrees is over 80 (for us dinosaurs who still work in old money) so I would have expected more than a tepid response.