Underfloor Heating - Type of flooring

Rodders53 wrote: »

I'd never choose to fit UFH having lived with it in our current house for nearly three years. *

Uncontrollable. Takes a very long time to heat up and then pumps heat out when you don't want/need it.

Yes floor tiles are cold in summer (quite nice sometimes) - but also can get pretty warm in the sun (solar gain). Engineered wood is slightly more comfortable to walk on, but also stops UFH from escaping as quickly into the room.

But the rooms with wood on top of UFH are nicer to walk on in winter and summer in my view.

BUT remember the floor should be: substrate over a damp proof membrane supporting: insulation (lots of it), the UFH pipework, a concrete screed to act as storage heater, the visible flooring on top. The floor should be at ambient temperature within a few degrees, more or less all the time.

* To be frank I don't think the heating designers/installers knew what they were doing when this house was built; and hence the whole system works poorly (using oil fired boiler and rads upstairs).

Our experience is probably the polar opposite. We've had it for 14 years in this property.

We have wall plates in each room that control that room as a zone. A bit like thermostats but not ugly! - you set the zone temperature and forget about it.

The heat is ambient and I've never experienced it "pumping out". To be honest, the house is a great temperature day/night/winter/summer and I don't even realise the heating is on/off.

Our limestone isn't cold as such, it's very well insulated and seems to be at body heat (if that's a clear way to explain it). I don't even notice the warmth/cool other than at the UFH manifold which is in a cupboard - I'm guessing the cupboard helps store the heat and it does feel warm in there - not surprising when its the point where every single pipe feeds back in/out of the system.

To add, if you are going to use a tile/solid floor then make sure your screed is dry and use something like a ditra matting under the tile.

We installed our own, we converted the barn and I can say it's something I could/would not want to live without. No radiators is a liberating thing when it comes to room design!

Which floor covering do you prefer? If your extension is a kitchen then tiles are obviously an option. And are you considering ufh as the primary heating source for the extension or will you have radiators?
I have electric ufh heating under tiles and would not consider a tile floor without it in future. Tiles are freezing in winter and electric ufh set to about 21 or 22 degrees makes them comfortable. For a kitchen you could also use LVT (Luxury Vinyl Tiles) with ufh and it can also be fitted under engineered wood, laminate and carpet.

With adequate primary heating from radiators say, floor covering other than tiles should be comfortable without ufh. But for tiles I would definitely recommend it.

I assume you are thinking of electric ufh rather than a wet system.
A wet system is much more expensive to install and probably not as controllable.

There are really only two important points to remember, all flooring & adhesive must be suitable for a contact temp of upto 40°c & should have a tog rating of less than 1.0 but never more than 2.5

Sorry to bring this thread up again but I’m looking at wet UFH system for our extension in the kitchen and living area. This maybe a silly question but do you still need rads if you have UFH. We are hoping to put down a seamless resin flooring or karndean LVT flooring down.

Thanks ��