Thoughts on wet underfloor heating.

[Imtoooldforallthis]

Considering putting underflow heating in our renovation build. Had a price through our builders of 11k for 60 sq Mt's. So lots of questions, does this price seem about right, is it an efficient way of heating a house. Would you recommend it?

We have underfloor throughout and it's great. No cold spots and the rooms feel so warm. We are at home most of the time so leave it on all day. You really can't flick it on and off like a conventional system. You do need a well insulated house to make it efficient and individual room thermostats. If you have smart thermostats you can set the rooms to different temps at different times of day. We have 3 manifolds. One in the boiler cupboard in the utility room , another in the same room and one upstairs in the linen cupboard directly above the boiler.
A word to the wise. Never loose the plan of the piping! Then neither you nor any subsequent owner drills through the floor!

We have wet ufh that didn't need screed, you could tile straight onto it. That made it slightly cheaper and quicker to install. We paid about 3k for a 35sqm room. It can, and should, run with a lower boiler temperature, so should be more energy efficient, but of course, as you really need to keep it on all day, it is rather expensive at present prices, so worth thinking about zoning, so that you could only heat parts of the house if you needed to, e.g. only the kitchen and have the option to leave e.g. living room unheated. That's how we do it, we only heat the kitchen diner and don't use our other more formal reception rooms in the winter, except on occasions when we light the woodburners.

We have wet underfloor heating in our extension and it is much cheaper to run than the rest of the house which is radiators although the insulation is also better. Make sure you insulate well under the heating. This can be tricky in an existing building due to floor levels.

Here is a picture of the manifold so you can see the size. We have since boxed it in.

I did a self-build with XDH and we had wet underfloor heating throughout. It was bliss, and cheap to run, and I miss it every day.

It was almost worth staying married to him to keep it.

We extended in 2022. We have one type of wet underfloor heating on top of the concrete slab in the extension which is excellent and gets the floors very warm. We have a different type (also wet) in the kitchen which is part of the old building and not laid on concrete. This is not as warm.

I can't compare the prices as our usage has changed a lot in the past year partly due to prices meaning we have turned the thermostat lower. The house is also bigger now, and is zoned so that underfloor heating is on a different zone to the rest of the house which has radiators. As a pp said, the boiler doesn't heat the water as hot for UFH so theoretically it's cheaper, but it is on for longer as it's not like traditional CH as other have said. But the room is better insulated so I think it stays warm for long.

So... I don't know if it's cheaper to run but I love it and would choose it again. Plus I like having the option to only heat the extension if prices go really high.