Underfloor heating query

[Freshair1]

As part of our house renovation, the ground floor is being opened up. We are mulling over underfloor heating and it would be great to hear feedback. Pros, cons, what type etcetc. Tia.

We had a wet system retrofitted into our kitchen renovation last year. Was a sold concrete floor so extra work digging out etc, total cost was circa 6k for circa 35sqm . It was absolutely, 100% worth it. We previously had an electric system which was not nearly as effective and cost a fortune to run.

I looked at doing it as part of a renovation. I'd definitely have gone for a wet system as the pp did. In the end I decided against it as I had visions of having to dig up the floors if there were ever a problem. A gas engineer advised me that this happened quite a lot in his experience. I'm having quite expensive engineered wood flooring throughout, so it would have been quite an upheaval. But if you are having a heat pump, I understand UFH works particularly well with that, and depending on your flooring (and insulation levels), it could be a good choice, especially if you are short on wall space for radiators.

Be wary of areas where two zones meet and the pipework. I have lived in both a flat and a house where it's been impossible to sit on one sofa and v uncomfortable to sit on another. It could be a fault (but in two) or it could be where there's just too much pipework.

We have UFH downstairs under thick flagstones and the heat retention (when the thermostat is at 18) also makes the room uncomfortably hot. Can't stand in front of the cooker hot.

That said, my LL probably just installed a cheapskate system!

I've electric UFH in my kitchen, costs a lot to run, I'd go for wet next time

Electric is really expensive to run. We've got wet ufh in our extension and it's great - was put in before the concrete floor went in, keeps it at a nice even temperature and we spend a lot of time there in the winter when the rest of the house with normal radiators isn't heated. Reasonable to run. You need space for the manifold.

You can retrofit wet ufh too.

So wet ufh but potentially needs digging into floor which will be spendy. How much did everyone pay? We'd need ufh for a space of 14m2

We’ve electric in our kitchen. We haven’t noticed it being expensive to run. We put in in as part of an extension. My DH was worried about a fault so we didn’t install it completely through to our dining area. The biggest mistake of our extension in my opinion. I love it. We have it under slate flooring. We have a no shoes indoor rule and I find all our friends/family gather in the kitchen because they love standing on it.
My parents had their bathroom & shower rooms done last year & included because they loved ours. Theirs is under tiles.
As I said my only regret was not having it cover both rooms.

We're just getting towards the end of an extension and renovation. Our 60's house had no underfloor insulation so we decided to take the opportunity to rip out all the wooden floors downstairs and replace with concrete slab with insulation over, wet ufh and screed to the whole ground floor. We did quite a lot of the work ourselves (ripping out the old floor and laying all the celotex insulation, dpm etc) to save some money.

We found ufh systems vary a lot in price and quality, we were quoted everything from £1.7k to over £6k for supply only. We needed a complete replumb and rewire anyway so it wasn't a huge cost difference between ufh and new radiators in the end, but so shop around.

It was fitted end of May so we haven't actually turned it on yet, other than to test it, so I can't really tell you if we made the right decision BUT I'm a lot less apprehensive about winter this year. I'm on maternity leave at the moment and wfh usually, so it feels like a good solution for us, keeping the house warm enough for most of the day.

I should add those prices were for around 75sqm total, but of course the manifold cost will be similar even for a smaller area.

I’m looking at getting a quote for this https://instagram.com/overfloorheating?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
saw it on one of the grand design type, Homes I can’t remember why I liked it, but I did

We dug up a very cold uninsulated concrete floor 65m2 and it cost approx £30K. This excluded the UFH system (£5.5k) and the flooring on top

You need to dig down far enough to put in at least 100mm insulation.