The truth about electric under floor heating?

[sluj]

I need to make a quick decision, do we bother or not? It's for a new 25m2 kitchen / diner extension. We can't have one connected to the central heating as our boiler barely copes as it is due to weird layout of the house. There are 2 radiators but they are suffering from the poor CH too.
I like the idea of UFH but I am worried I will need to have it on very early and all day and it will cost me a fortune.
Can anyone offer an opinion please?
The alternative is a high wattage plinth heater for a speedy warm up in the morning but I will ask for opinions on them in another thread.
Thank you

I've got it in my home and we pay £700 pm for electric. We're electric only so that covers all energy use but still!

The effectiveness of UFH depends on the level of insulation under the concrete slab and the type of covering on the slab surface. UFH is primarily to keep the floor and the thermal mass of the concrete slab at a constant temperature of 19-21'C. If you want quick intermittent heating for short periods in the day then UFH is not the correct type of heating for your situation.

@rainbowandglitter

I've got it in my home and we pay £700 pm for electric. We're electric only so that covers all energy use but still!

£8,400 per year on electric??

It's only that much during the winter months when the heating is on but yeah it's pretty bad. We're looking at getting oil installed in the autumn so we don't have another winter of this but it's £10k to have installed. Rubbish.

My mum has it in her kitchen and it takes ages to heat up and costs a fortune so she never uses it. I had piped underfloor heating put into my extension, with a separate control, expensive initially due to having to have a new boiler but it was amazing and the room was the most used in the house, it stayed hot for hours after it had been turned off. Sadly we’ve moved into a new build, we really miss it!

Hi. We had the electric UFH added when we had a refurb done. Complete waste of money. The instruction book might as well have been written in Greek. We managed to get it working twice but frankly, then couldn't be a...d anymore. As it happens we don't actually use that bathroom much due to some design problems so the whole project was a waste of money...hey...ho

@loopylindi

Hi. We had the electric UFH added when we had a refurb done. Complete waste of money. The instruction book might as well have been written in Greek. We managed to get it working twice but frankly, then couldn't be a...d anymore. As it happens we don't actually use that bathroom much due to some design problems so the whole project was a waste of money...hey...ho

I'm guessing macerator

Never again!

You would need an insulated floor.

We had it 8nstalled in our last house and didn't use it after the 1st winter due to cost even though it was lovely.
When we sold we did put that it existed in the small print of the details but then didn't mention it as it can actually put buyers off

No.
I used to sell it.
It's shite

I have it in my holiday cottage 50metre open plan room sitting/ dining/ kitchen before the price hikes it cost £300 quid a month to run. Big 12kw wood stove though so unless guests are in we use that.

We have it in our slate floored kitchen and love it. While I wouldn’t say its cheap its not as expensive as some of the comments on here but we have it on all the time, except in the summer, low. The floor isn’t exactly warm to touch but compared with the non heated bits it is if that makes sense. This means there is underlying warmth and so less extra heat is needed when its cold. I think if you expect the floor to be a like a radiator and heat the whole room then it would be expensive.

Saying that we also have it in the bathroom and it stopped working and we haven’t bothered to fix it but would greatly miss it in the kitchen.

I had electric underfloor heating in a former house.

When electricity bills soared to £750 a month (in a home with gas central heating) I switched it off before moving.

Not very planet friendly but can you install a second smaller boiler and run radiators off it?

I've got electric UFH in my bathrooms. It's expensive to run, so it's only on the timer for certain periods.

Wet UFH in our kitchen is amazing, but I wouldn't have installed electric UFH in a large space.

I'd stick to radiators with your set up.

We have it in a large kitchen extension which would be uninhabitable in the winter without it. On a timer and keeps the kitchen at a steady temperature during the day. Warm underfoot when you come down in the morning. It is fab and our bills aren’t that high. I’m dreading it breaking down as it’s a decade old now.

Have you considered infrared panel heaters? They heat objects/people rather than air. You only need to turn them on when there are people in the room and the heat is instant.

(Haven’t got any, but read about them when looking into ways of reducing carbon footprint)

If I could go back and re-do the floors downstairs and in the upstairs bathroom, I would not install ceramic tiles with electric under-floor heating! I would choose a warmer type of flooring and forget about putting heating under it.

The ufh is very expensive to run. We installed it, along with the tiles, 14 years ago during a refurbishment of the house. We've very rarely used it, usually only on Christmas Day or when we have someone staying overnight (which is hardly ever).

I'm guessing that in 14 years we've used it on maybe about 20 days altogether.
So our floors are freezing cold all the time! Thank goodness we have carpet in the bedrooms!

I have both. Water UFH to the whole downstairs of the house, Electric UFH to the bathrooms.

I love the water UFH and find it very economical to run.

Can’t afford to turn the bathroom heating on. The cost is astronomical.

We have it in our bathrooms - no idea how much it costs to run but certainly, it is a lovely thing to have. We have water ufh in our kitchen - it's lovely too - no complaints!

We have it in our large extension. We aren’t on mains gas so it is a sensible option for us. Our entire sub floor was redone to provide a suitably insulated base. We leave it on the thermostat all the time and the house is comfortably warm. Our electric bill is around £200 a month.

We occasionally supplement our heat with a wood burner and we have bottled LPG for some radiators. Over a cold winter we might pay £160-odd every 6 -8 weeks on LPG. I don’t think our bills are horrific tbh.

In the medium term we will probably install solar panels (as costs to install are coming down) at which point it makes even more sense.

Really interested in all these heating solutions as moving soon into an old house that will have to be pretty much set up from scratch hearing wise so a real opportunity to get the most efficient solutions.

@JangolinaPitt. If it’s really from scratch I’d really look at air or ground source heat pump as you can probably put the right radiators in and insulation. Also we underfloor heating downstairs. I wish we’d done that but we didn’t realise how much work our house needed till we’d started.

Thanks -yes definitely want to do that!!

Thank you for all your advice. I am going with the majority and not installing the electric UFH. Wet systems and upgrading boiler/pipework is not an option.
I have bought a 3kw plinth heater which is fully programmable with a thermostat. I can use it as and when needed plus set it to quickly warm up the kitchen 20 minutes before the alarm goes off if I need to. I think that will give me the instant boost I need now and then and the two radiators can take most of the chill off.
Thank you