Underfloor heating, Yay or Nay?

Originally Posted by specialone

Not true, sized correctly they will heat a room, big mistake most people make (i fit a lot of bathrooms) is buy one similiar in size to their old panel rad, size by btu's and not size of it and it will heat a room.

Ive got a 1500x600mm in a 8ftx6ft bathroom and it heats that fine, if you have a big bathroom, get a big towel rad or two.

Not in my experience despite the claimed BTU rating. Albeit I do live in an old building with no wall insulation. Maybe if I hadn't put any towels on it...

Wall insulation's a biggie, without that a lot of heat is just going out the wall it's on, and a lot more flooding out all the others.

I have no wall insulation hence why my house doesn't get over 18degrees all winter.

Originally Posted by Stenno

Not in my experience despite the claimed BTU rating. Albeit I do live in an old building with no wall insulation. Maybe if I hadn't put any towels on it...

So do i tbh, i only put two towels on though and fold them so its not completely covered.

[Gazza77]

We renovated our terrace house and installed water underfloor heating. There are advantages and disadvantages to it, however I'd say it was worth it. We have a stone floor downstairs which is excellent at retaining the heat (the pipes themselves are laid in screed underneath), with pipes laid in aluminium plates upstairs, under a chipboard floor, with underlay and carpet underneath. This is not as effective as downstairs, however is still effective. We're part way through our loft conversion at present, and that will have an engineered wood floor, so it will be interesting to compare the effectiveness of that compared to carpet.

Advantages:

Constant heat across the room, rather than hotspots near a radiator.
Cost effective to run - our 2 bed terrace costs us about £63 a month in total for gas and leccy combined, and that includes the cost of running a dehumidifier and an optimate on constantly for 6 months of the year, which does make our leccy bill rocket over winter!
In a small house, no radiators means that you have more space for furniture, as you don't need to leave a wall spare with nothing against it.
Keeps the house warm, although obviously insulation is a key part of this.

Disadvantages:

Costs more to install.
Doesn't heat up quickly, so you need to plan when you have the heating on in advance, rather than just turning it on/up when you feel cold.

We also have a mulitfuel stove in the lounge as a secondary heat source, so if it doesn't feel as warm as we want, we can quickly get a fire going for a quick and cheap solution.

[TSM]

Ide say if you have a house and have an existing hot water cylinder then dont replace with a combi, if you boiler packs up then you are left with nout but with a hot water cylinder you are sorted. Also the non-combi units are far simpler and somtimes cheaper. Also if you have an older pipe system dont go presurised as there is a high chance you will sping leaks everywhere.

The house has no heating at all (Aside from an old 3kw heater.) Combi system installed is about £2k with radiators etc . . but i think i would have a combi for hot water supply anyway and the odd roll out mat kit from screwfix for a few rooms. With the mats it's not just a case of lay insulation, flooring, connect up and away to go?

[flymo]

I have both types at home. Underfloor water piped heating for a large tiled kitchen/conservatory and the electric wire type for a first floor tiled bathroom.

The kitchen/cons was quarry tiled directly onto soil when we bought it, so cold and damp. We dug down and used hardcore, 150mm Kingspan, waterpipe fastened to the Kingspan and then finished with concrete and self leveler before the tiles.

In the bathroom, with it being a floorboard/joist setup we used aquapanel flooring, wired and then self leveled before tiling. see http://www.warmup.co.uk/

Got loads of installation photos etc, any questions fire away.

[tigersaw]

Is leccy heating still a nono? I've seen some pretty swish ceramic wall heaters, remote controls, plug straight in a socket etc.