Underfloor plumbed heating

[alexbury]

We are planning on re-doing and extending our kitchen sometime in the middle of next year, including underfloor heating. Had planned to go with electric UFH but we are now wondering about a plumbed UFH heating system.
Just wondering if anyone else has done this, whether they would recommend it, and any good advice about best installers / product to use? And is it simply joined onto your existing boiler system, or do you need something further than just installing the plumbing under the floor? Thanks.

Don't have electric UFH. It is so expensive to run that you will turn it off the day you get your first bill.

Wet UFH has additional controls that blend hot and cold water before circulating it through the floor, to avoid it getting too hot. You might have a small cupboard in a corner of the room or near the boiler so it will all be easily accessible for servicing.

It can conveniently be included if you are having a new floor, e.g. pipes laid before concrete is poured, or a wooden floor put down, and you have extra insulation under it. Not usually economical to add after the house is built.

If the floors are concrete there will be a time lag of some hours between starting to heat the floor, and the room being warm. So more suitable if you are at home a lot.

Not my field, you need an experienced local installation company.

Our builders put it in. It’s wet ufh, there’s a manifold that needs somewhere to live, and they put it in new floor of the extension. It’s rather lovely underfoot, doesn’t seem too expensive so far to run. We leave it on Louise in winter all the time and set it to go higher before we get up and get home.

You do not pour concrete onto the heating pipes! You might lay them on an insulated concrete base. Once the pipes are laid, a screed covers them. This isn’t the same as concrete.

You can retro fit but you will want floors to be level and you must make sure this is possible so the older floor might need to be lowered to allow for the pipes. So you have to be careful that where you have differing floor levels. Work is undertaken to ensure the pipes can be laid totally flat. Hope that makes sense!

Thanks for your thoughts and advice on this – subsequently realised that I could google it and find lots of other Mumsnet comments so do appreciate you taking the time to post on yet another thread on this topic (bit of a newbie here!)

It does look like wet underfloor heating may be the way to go if we can get levels to be the same. We had electric underfloor heating in our kitchen in the old place and it was so lovely that I'm keen to replicate it. But this house is quite a bit more draughty so I think wet underfloor heating will definitely be the only realistic option if the heating bills are to be kept within bounds by the sound of it.