What is the most efficient way to run wet underfloor heating?

Yadmiles

Hi, 

I realise this thread is old, but I’m posting an answer here for anyone that might still be looking. 

The solution to controlling your UFH downstairs separately from your radiators upstairs is to use zone valves. I did this in my house and it worked great. 

Zone valves attach to the pipe work coming off your boiler and allow your boiler to be controlled by two separate thermostats. In this scenario you would install two zone valves: one going upstairs to the radiators and  the other going downstairs to the UFH.  This would allow your UFH to come on without switching on your radiators upstairs. Each zone would be controlled by an independent thermostat. 

In our house, we had two zone valves each connected to a hive thermostat: one for upstairs and another for the UFH downstairs. This allowed us to switch on the UFH downstairs without having any of the radiators on upstairs and vice versa. 

To anyone thinking of installing UFH a heating engineer is crucial. Heating engineers are a blend of a plumber and an electrician. With zone valves the plumbers didn’t want to get involved in the electric wiring side and electricians didn’t want to get involved in the pipe work. Our heating engineer did both. 

Hope this helps someone. 

Yad