Underfloor heating for existing floor

[Loopy9]

Hi everyone

I’m extending and would like all of the area to have underfloor heating. However one builder was not so impressed saying I’d have to dig up my existing floors and that would take an age. Surely someone has invented underfloor heating that isn’t too thick for existing floors?
If so please could you recommend them?
Many thanks

It would be electric which would cost an absolute fortune!

It's called underfloor heating because it goes under your floor!
Really don't get what you mean! Did you mean put it on top of your existing floor, then put another floor on top

We did this. We added an extension but wanted underfloor throughout. We had to pull up the old laminate as we wanted the same throughout the downstairs, so we put electric underfloor down which is in trays, put screed over the top then put Karndean on top. The screed made the floor higher but the karndean is so thin that it wasn’t much difference.

Sorry it’s not electric underfloor, we used a wet system!

We had the existing floor dug up - was expensive and added a week to the build, results are brilliant and it was worth every penny.

A friend has an extension and only the extension has underfloor heating but the same flooring throughout and you can vastly tell the difference and they curse not going the extra mile to put it all the way under.
It's Worth hacking it up and having wet system throughout the whole extension and existing room. Pain but worth it.

Thank you! Maybe we should consider digging it up then. Cheers

I installed a wet type ufh on my ground floor which has a wooden floor and put laminate boards on top in my hall and living room but tiled on top for my kitchen. If doing an extension, you can used the screed version instead of the pre grooved boards. I did mine with polypipe www.polypipe.com/housing/polypipe-underfloor-heating

The way it works is an extension to my Central heating so the ufh runs when the central heating runs. It is very easy to install on top of existing floorboards and is only 15mm high. No need to dig up any floor concrete or wooden to install this version of wet ufh.

You can put a floating floor on top, it will add a bit of height to the floor though, at least 20mm probably. Something like this: www.ufh.co.uk/floor-types/floating-floor-underfloor-heating

If it's a concrete floor and you want wet UFH, it is generally impractical to add it.

However, if you are having building work done and can accomodate the cost, noise, time and dust of having your old floor dug up, go ahead.

If the floor's coming up, you may want to renew any pipes, drains or cables beneath, because you won't ever want to do it again, and dig deep enough that you can incorporate a DPM and insulation slab.