Repair original wooden floors OR underfloor heating?

[Smilon]

Help! If you had to chose, would you buy a property with refurbished original pine wooden floors, or, would you prefer underfloor heating (UFH)?

We are going around in circles deciding between putting in UFH with a new engineered wood floor, or, refurbishing our (quite damaged) original pine wooden flooring. Unfortunately you can't have both, as the pine would curl up move to much.

We are looking to do a major refurb of our mid-terrace Victorian house, built 1890

I can't say this would be a big enough factor to sway me. I'm sorry.

Underfloor gearing is horrible. It’s patchy, tales too long to heat up/cool down and is terrible on the boiler. I would actively avoid living in another house with underfloor heating.

My friend has had nothing but trouble over the last two years with their underfloor heating, even though they were very keen on it when they moved in. I would avoid like the plague.

I would prefer having water underfloor heating. I wouldn't want a house with electric heating (except maybe in the bathroom), as it would probably be expensive to run, and I prefer laminate flooring to solid wood or carpet.

I'd prefer original floorboards especially in a house of that era. I've never lived in a place with ufh but my in laws have it and it's so patchy. I know they spent a lot of money and got it done with all the top of the range stuff a few years ago and they are pretty unimpressed with it.

Just to clarify, we would have radiators heated by a gas boiler if we go the "restore the pine floors" route

We have UFH in our extension and I hate it, it doesn't seem to warm the room properly, just makes your feet hot! I'd always go for the nice floorboards

I always wanted floorboards but now I have them I'm finding them draughty and dusty, to be fair they need remanding and sealing but that won't help with draughts

I have UFH in the tiled kitchen and it's amazing - ticks over on low Sept- April 24/7 and is a lovely heat

I wish I had it everywhere

Thanks for your feedback everyone. It's looking like most people aren't too impressed with UFH, and we should just make our lives easier and restore the pine floor

I love my UFH. It's an electric one. It's reliable and kept on low heat constantly throughout the cooler months. Definitely does not cost much (but was properly laid to avoid the heat escaping). We've got it in tiled areas so hallway, kitchen and bathrooms. We still have radiators in those rooms, though.

Original floorboards look pretty charming but do have that beat up look. We restored them in the last house and it got pretty drafty but worked well with antique and vintage furniture, traditional rugs, art work and period features.

In the current house, we just put a quality wooden floor over the floorboards in the sitting and dining rooms as we wanted to achieve a more polished look. So that could be another option if you feel the original floorboards might look a little too shabby for your liking.

Thanks JoJo. Unfortunately our floor needs to be levelled, boards replaced and joists redone in places. Sonin our case, to lay a new floor overtop would require all that to be done anyway or we would end up with a wonky floor.

We might end up with UFH in the kitchen/dining space if we put tiles down in that section. We would have joists with UFH between, ply ontop and then tiles. Apparently having tiles on ply is a sure way to crack tiles tho, so can't win!

Where we had floorboards but wanted ufh and tiles, the builders took off the floorboards and replaced them with these green boards (not ply) that are commonly used in new builds. The ufh went on top and then this special Matt that helps tiles stick. And then they need to use the right sort of adhesive (there are different flexible and non-flexible ones depending on the su layer). So make sure you get someone who knows what they're doing to use the proper materials.

Also, I think ufh goes on top of ply or other boards as anything wood-related will insulate a bit.

But yes, if you literally need to dismantle your floors/ceilings and start again, they you could go with whatever you like the look of most.