Underfloor heating house cold

[User12358]

I have wet underfloor heating in a new house with a combi boiler. Now that the weather is chillier I find the house very cold. I have the temperature set to 23 all day and night which I feel is too high to be feeling so cold. In the morning it feels OK but it seems like it is losing heat throughout the day. However the thermostat reads 23 all day. It's OK when I am walking round doing stuff but in the evening it feels very cold when sitting down watching tv. We don't have a fire as we were told house would be so warm with underfloor as its well insulated. I work from home so also quite chilly sitting at my desk. To be honest I miss radiators where I could turn on the heat and feel it. Also worried what my bill will be with it set to 23. Has anyone had experience of this? Do I need to get used to it? It is not freezing but never warm and cozy.

I have lived in two homes with UFH and have only ever had the opposite problem, it gets far too hot, even at far lower settings. Does it feel warm underfoot?

Do you have a temperature gun to check the temperatures across the floor?

Do your thermostats happen to be in a stupid place, i.e. an external wall, or inside a cupboard that gets far too hot (perhaps with heating pipes in it)?

What's the home's insulation like?

My house is large and has a big open plan lounge/kitchen/dinner. We extended an old bungalow and are insulated to the enth degree. We like it warm and our heating (also wet underfloor) is set at 23 degrees. We’re cozy, something doesn’t sound right if you’re cold. If it’s a new build perhaps have a word with the builders.

I didn't think UFH worked with a combi boiler? I must be wrong otherwise they wouldn't have installed it? We had UFH and it was great, but not with a combi.

Do you have a thermometer? Put it on your desk, or elsewhere around the house, and find out what the temperature is actually doing.

Very different problem if it is 23 everywhere but you feel cold, or if the measured temperature is really dropping during the day like you feel it is.

It's not a new build but well insulated. It is very open plan with large rooms. The only room that feels warm is the utility room which is small and enclosed.
Very rarely feel any heat in the floors although system almost always calling for heat.
I will get a room thermometer and check it out.
Just wondering if anybody had experienced something similar?

No, I don't think it's normal to not feel any heat under your feet when it's set to 23. I have lived in 2 homes with four different types of flooring on top of the UFH and every single one of them has felt warm when set to 21 - perhaps the engineered wood flooring section is a bit less obvious than the others, including carpet. With stone and marble the heat builds up, and it frankly becomes unbearably hot to stand on.

How long ago was it installed?

You can get a secondhand heat laser gun on eBay for about fifteen quid. This is how I know the temperature differences from one room to another and where there are fewer pipes due to colder spots. When my room is 22-22, the floors are usually 23-24.

You don't live in a high wind area do you? That definitely confuses our heating, but it usually makes it too hot after a windy spell, not too cold.

Thanks for the replies. It's not a high wind area.

Floor is mostly engineered wood so that might affect it. Sometimes feel a bit of heat in tiled areas but not very hot at all.

"Very rarely feel any heat in the floors although system almost always calling for heat."

It sounds like one of two problems, the system is not appropriate to the size of room/house or the system is not working properly. It sounds more like #2 to me but you'll probably need a professional to look at it.

Ah. Well that's definitely the one surface out of all four I have experience with that seems to let less heat through. The engineered wood part of our house is always 1-2 degrees colder than the rest of it, both the ambient room temperature and the actual floor temperature itself. Spent quite a lot of time measuring the heat differences in October with thermostats and laser guns. It also takes 1.5 hours longer to get up to temperature than the other areas of the house.

That room is almost always cold. Sometimes it gets less cold but it's very, very rarely hot.

I am so sorry :(

We have UFH everywhere and it’s very toasty when set at 23. Bedrooms (with engineered wood floors) are set at between 17 and 21 depending on time of day (and I sometimes run a fan when I go to bed to cool down a bit). It’s taken a lot of work to balance it right - we found there was a slow leak in the top floor which kept tripping the boiler, and the kitchen is very large and still heats up unevenly, but it’s not cold anywhere.

My advice would be to get a heating engineer/plumber in to sort it out. It may be something simple like balancing/expelling air bubbles, or something more complex.