Bathroom underfloor heating - is it worth it?

[adogisforlife91]

The bathroom in our new house is the only room not to have been 'done' so I want to use our stamp duty saving to spruce it up a bit!

It has a horrible lino floor, which i'll want to pull up and tile. So seeing as the floor is being re-done anyway, thinking of putting down electric underfloor heating. There's nothing worse than cold tiled bathrooms at 6am in the winter....

Bathroom is about 3m x 2m - is it worth it as we are already pulling up the floor? or is the cost to run extortionate?

I love ours. But I walk around in my bare feet a lot. Dh wears shoes or slippers all the time so he doesn't care. We still have the radiator on to dry towels so we wouldn't use it as the only source of heat.

We have it and never use it. The bathroom is south facing and on the middle floor of the house so warm enough without.

For me it would depend on the cost of installing it. If it was £500 then I'd do it. If it would add £1,000+ I'm not so sure. The running costs of electric underfloor heating are pretty high & it's not a room you spend a lot of time in. However tiles retain heat a lot more than a radiator so you may find the room keeps warm if you have it on twice a day.

We've got three toilets in the house and I always deviate to the warmest one because of the temperature.

If I redid our bathroom I would put it in but would try for decent quality. In a previous house we had it laid in the loft shower room and it was quite uneven. The installer also placed the controller switch extremely low, so that toddler DD would keep switching it off. This meant we had to reset all the timings every time it was switched off, as the system was not sophisticated enough to remember it.
Those are just minor details but you have to look out for that sort of thing.
But overall it's nice to step on nice warm
flooring in the bathroom, so I would do it again but go for higher spec.

Yes. Underfloor heating generally is wonderful but in bathrooms I think it really helps to keep any risk of condensation, mildew etc at bay.

Electric underfloor heating is also relatively quick and cheap to put in - and for small areas like a bathroom is not ruinous to run.

I wouldn't put electric UFH in. Even in a bathroom it can be very expensive unless you use it very little. It isn't just about the UFH, it's also about the insulation that needs to go under it to stop heating the ceiling below.

Also..if you tile the floor, how will you gain access to any pipe work underneath. Over the years we have had to access u dear the floorboards several times due to leaks or problem pipes.

We had electric UF heating put in under our tiled floor when we had our bathroom redone a couple of years ago. Not a huge bathroom and of course, you don't install it under the bath or toilet.

Well worth doing. Set to come on for an hour in the morning when the weather is set to be cold so get up to a nice warm floor.

can't say I've noticed huge costs.

Absolutely worth doing. It’s one of life’s luxuries. You don’t put it under the bath or the shower so it’s not the whole area of a bathroom. It dries up spills of water and really doesn’t cost much to run when it’s a small area. But: it’s wonderful. You will regret not doing it if you have the chance. You will need to see what’s under the lino though. The floor will need to be prepared for the ufh and the tiles.

As Guymere says depends what is under that Lino...

We had already decided to replace the flooring so no brainer. The issue could be height once insulation boards, UFH and tiles are laid.

We also made sure that there are no plumbing joints under the bathroom floor

I have it and never use it, our bathroom is always warm with a dual fuel large towel rail on constantly. And I’m a chilly person, have heating on full and underfloor heating in other rooms.
I think it depends on the other heating in the bathroom and which way it faces, how big the window is (are there draughts).

Get a warmer floor instead such as a water proof interlocking system. You can then easily remove this when you need to access pipes etc as a PP said.

We put in electric UFH recently to our bathroom refurb, love it tbh. It’s not that expensive (compared to the cost of the refit), around £160 including a remote controllable timer (so you can either have it come on by timer or using an app on your phone). Ours was only a few mm thick so no problem for the tiler to install, and no pipes, etc just an electric mat. Not noticed any great cost difference in my electricity, and even if we did we’d just use it less.

I have it and wouldn’t want to be without it!

We’ve had it for about 15 years and it’s fab. Set on a low heat and it takes the chill off the floor. Takes a little while to warm the floor when you first put it on. Don’t do what my friend did - as it wasn’t warm she thought it wasn’t working so turned it up to max. Discovered it was when her DH got up to use the loo half asleep in the middle of the night and had walked halfway across the room in bare feet before he realised how hot it was 😂😂

do you have a hot-water cylinder in, or adjacent to, the bathroom?

I love ours, one of our autumn joys is switching it on for the autumn/winter. Our cats love it too!

I love ours. My bathroom is the same size as yours.
The thermostat is on all year so it only kicks in at a certain temp. Its brilliant.