underfloor heating and floor choice hell

[itsnotfairisit]

We are about to install underfloor heating and an air pump. It's doing my head in! Husband had done lots of calcs and claims wood - engineered - isn't as good as stone or tile. I HATE tiles in a house - they has a cold look. I'm willing to do stone through the centre section (it's an old farmhouse with a central corridor) - the thought being it'll be like a radiator in the core, but I want engineered wood in the rooms with rugs. He says rugs will be like duvets preventing the heat.

Arghhhh! I don't want an austere house, I want it cosy and colourful!

For context when I met him he had a flat (solvent chap) but didn't think it needed curtains and lived in it like a monk.

Can people describe what they have and how they make mixes of hard flooring work in underfloor heated houses? x

I have porcelain wood effect tiles , they look amazing and conduct heat v well. I wholeheartedly recommend them

Underloor heating (wet) and LVT. It's great, that bit of the house is so warm and cosy. The rest of the house is radiators...and takes longer to heat up and be cosy.

Yep same here, it worked really well. Heat from the ufh came through really well.

We have UFH with engineered wood throughout the ground floor except for the hall. The engineered wood doesn’t get hot but it’s always warm. The tiles in the hall get hot and my sons find it uncomfortably warm (they go barefoot, I’m always in slippers!).

Engineered wood with our UFH with micro cement in the kitchen. You can definitely feel it warmer on your feet with the microcement than the wood but the whole room hafts nice ambient warmth that retains the heat way better than our upstairs rooms with radiators.

Wet UFH and wood effect porcelain tiles here. I love them - so easy to keep clean, comfortable warmth and look fabulous. our energy bills haven’t shot up since switching from radiators.

We need to get a rug in the sitting room for aesthetic purposes and I hadn’t thought about the heat being able to radiate through - I’ll have to consider the pile depth.

We have UFH throughout downstairs underneath both wooden floor and stone floor in kitchen. We also have rugs in two rooms. Haven’t noticed any difference between either flooring, it’s equally toasty. That said we don’t have heat pump, we have gas.

Same here. Works really well.

Lots of interesting replies here. Thanks all.
We're seeing our heating engineer today. So will quiz him further..

Another vote for amtico. I love walking around barefoot. So warm! Works really well with our ASHP. Plus many visitors are surprised it's not real wood (to look at, it doesn't feel like wood!)

My friend said the same on wood, she said they feel the heat so much better in the rooms with tiles. Also sorry to do this but she recommends to people not to get ufh, she says it was a mistake and not as cosy as any other heating. She actually hates most modern day heating systems though and says she’d go back in time to oil!!

Ha! we currently have oil. And a very badly insulated house. We actually have granite laid directly on earth in part of our downstairs. That will be properly insulated now.
It does all feel like a leap in the dark. And of course in a few years time you won't be able to buy oil boilers anyway

Was she using it correctly? We have ufh throughout the downstairs of our house and its lovely and cosy, especially underfoot!

Didntask

I have no idea! She said most rooms are cosy with it but it doesn’t come close to what they had when they rented. I’ve no idea why!