UFH

[Freshair1]

Had a quote for 40m2 approx. 4k not including screed. Jeeeesus..is it really worth it?

I have had it in two properties. Second floor flat: both electric and water. Bathroom floor tiles, carpet, porcelain tiles. Unbearably hot. Underneath the only place our sofa could go, it would get so hot that I couldn't sit in the corner at all. The heat spread over the seat and even up the back.

House, ground floor, water, four zones on one floor. Flagstone, engineered wood flooring, sort of earthenware floor tiles. Unbearably hot on all but the engineered wood - that flooring/room takes 1.5 hours longer to heat up than the rest of them and the room stays two degrees cooler than the rest of the floor. There was a recent thread 'why isn't my UFH getting hot enough' and it turned out that person had engineered wood flooring too.

I can't have it on in my kitchen because I can't stand in front of the cooker (flagstones, it retains heat and builds up). Same with the flat and the porcelain floor, with the only difference being I could cool the floor pretty quickly. In my current house, I can't. I can only turn the thermostat down by 1.5 degrees and in 48 hours the rooms will be a bearable temperature again. Currently I am having to do this up down process every 2 or 3 days.

I absolutely hate it, and the only circumstance in which I would ever move to a house with it in the future is if I was buying an 18c stone cottage when it would genuinely be really useful because they cannot hold heat at all.

We have it. Love it.

Same here

We have wet UFH in our extension (kitchen and living room) and really like it.
it took us a while to get used to the idea that we need to leave it on all the time, it’s set to 21 during afternoon/evenings and 18.5 the rest of the time but it’s quite often not actually on as it’s retaining heat. If we let it get much below 18.5 we found it more expensive to heat it back up and it took ages. You can’t just give it a blast in the evening like you can with rads.
I don’t like hot feat and feared a hot floor but I’ve only found the floor to be noticeably warm when the outside temp has been negative as it’s working a bit harder. The rest of the time the tiles in the kitchen are a lovely temp and I can’t feel it on the carpet.
I would say if cost of heating is a huge concern to you then maybe rads are the way to go as you can heat the space only when you need it. If you are ok with slightly higher bills but for that you have a nice temp all the time UFH is lovely.

We have it in the place we're renting while our actual house is being renovated (in which we're also installing it). I LOVE it. I'm usually freezing all the time, but not anymore. I love the type of radiant, gentle heat it gives. I love not having to wear 3 pairs of socks and heavy duty slippers.

It does take a while to get used to it. At the beginning we spent a lot of time feeling either too hot or too cold but now we've cracked the temperature settings so it's consistently comfortable.

Is it really expensive compared to heating with radiators?

I think it works out a bit more as it’s on 24/7… but it means it’s always a nice temp. So I would say the cost per hour of being warm is less (it’s very efficient and in a well insulated new extension so although it’s on it’s not really working) but overall costs slightly more than rads.

Sorry that was not very scientific 🤣
We only have UFH in the extension but I can’t tell you how much of our gas usage is specific to the UFH so it’s hard to tell exactly what it costs

@emmyren4 is your floor real wood or engineered? We're wondering if we can reuse our old pine floor when we put in wet underfloor heating.

Ours is a total redo. Stripped back to brick and all floors etc off.
A builder who was quoting said we should use engineered but I don't want to lose the original Edwardian pine boards.

Is it really expensive, you ask.

Well, for me, it's not cheap. Because of the heat retention previously mentioned and because our upstairs thermostat for radiators is in the hallway too, our upstairs gets hot, in the hall only. So to get our bedrooms to be not freezing (16 up, 23 down, over 20 on the landing), we have to crank the hallway to turn the bedrooms on up to 22. Do that for a few hours, turn it down.

It's a constant cycle of doing this. Thus, over the last week, oil has cost us £11 a day to heat half a house downstairs whenever it thinks it needs it, and half the upstairs for a few hours a day.

It's really important where your thermostats go.

Our downstairs thermostat is on an external wall, which is REALLY stupid. It needs to not get cold. That's why when it drops outside, our downstairs turns on to a fiery rate, even though the thermostat is set to 20.

Make sure your upstairs thermostat is not going to get an excess of residual heat warming your upstairs thermostat. I have to keep all room doors open and even had a discussion about opening the loft hatch to blow in freezing to the upstairs landing. I have had to open windows twice where it has gone from 18 to 23 and become unbearable. So I am having to find ways to basically throw away heat to not be deeply uncomfortable.

I got so pissed off today that I covered the downstairs one with sellotape to stop it overheating and had discussions with the other half about putting a fan at the one upstairs, literally blowing a fan at the device, so it thinks the space is under 20 degrees and actually turns on.

So, smart design is really important. We are either far too hot or far too cold and pay £11 a day for the pleasure of never being at a comfortable temperature anywhere in the house, pretty much ever.

It's one of the main reasons I have done nothing but househunt for 10 months solid and have almost made some terrible decisions. It's horribly uncomfortable.

After reading kievlovertwos response I realise I missed a key bit of info… we have our underfloor heating for the kitchen and living room on a separate thermostat to the rest of the house. We can have the extension warm but the rest of the house cold which keeps the cost down and stops us boiling alive.

I would say "it depends".

If you are in the house a lot, e.g. WFH, SAHP, (semi-)retired, etc. then I would say "definitely" from a quality of life perspective. The soft, all pervasive warmth of UFH is a much nicer quality of heat than you get from radiators.

We've had it in our last two homes - an architect designed new build and now an old converted farmhouse. I don't think we would buy a home without UFH, now!

@GoldenTea we have installed ours under original Edwardian pine floor. It is a suspended floor installation and We have metal heat spreader plates. It works really well but was a total pain to lift and relay the floor and it did get damaged a bit when we lifted it. It also took ages to lift and relay.

@emmyren4 have your boards been damaged by the heat or was it just a pain to install?

Be really careful you get what you pay for

I built my own home had a quote from the installers of my heat pump to lay ufh. The builder he could do it cheaper and knew how to lay it ...went with builder. He did not get use room plans as is best prapctice and just laid the pipework how he saw best . The screed depth laid over it at between 100-150 mm as opposed to the spec of 60/70 mm. My heating doesn't work ! It's ff freezing ! .I have friends who love their ufh heating but only because it was laid correctly.

@Geneticsbunny thanks, good to hear that. I think we're prepared for upfront hassle, but I was worried whether it would actually work.

We have suspended floors but will take everything off, put down screed and ufh then lay the original floor on top. We'll insulate underneath.

We'll probably lose a portion of boards in the uplift but we'll have boards from another room that we can add in where needed.

We didn't screed, just insulated underneath and used spreader plates. It means the heating is very responsive, it can be turned off easily if needed. We couldn't screed because it would have caused us damp issues.

We’ve got wet ufh in our large extension. Not expensive to run and keeps a nice even temperature under karndean.

rest of house is old, has radiators and is draughty and we now spend a lot of the winter in the extension.

2 small bathroom with electric ufh under tiles on timers. Make a difference when on, especI ally in very cold room with 3 outside walls even though we packed it with insulation.

Hijack away. 😃

We have a detached house. Radiators upstairs so it's always warm upstairs. The downstairs is being worked on and remodelled hence pondering UFH.

I'd say it's definitely worth it...also gives you more wall space for sofas or whatever....and £4K sounds reasonable too...

@Geneticsbunny thanks, v useful. What did the ufh pipes rest on? Was it just chipboard on the floor joists with spreader plates on top?

I'm assuming you needed to pull up the floorboards, then put them down on top? I'm asking as we're wondering if it's possible to fit it all from underneath without removing the original boards at all.

You can definitely fit it from underneath. Ours was top down and the spreader plates just sit on the joists. Ours is from these guys https://prowarm.com/ they have been really helpful both when we had questions during installation and when we have needed to replace odd valves ourselves. They showed by oh how to replace something in store with a dummy system they have there.

We don't have screed. Just a couple of mm self leveller, very thin. The pipes are sunk into Styrofoam type mats. It's super responsive as a result, we use it like a radiator. I switch it on when I enter the kitchen, and by the time I made coffee, emptied dishwasher etc it has come up to temperature (up by 2 -3 degrees). When we leave for school/work, I switch it off. It's well insulated, so even if it well below zero outside, the room temperature only drops up to 3 degrees in 24 hours, so it's fine to switch on and off just when needed. It's quicker than radiators to heat up, as it's such a large area. It depends on pipe diameter and flow temperature. As it's in an 18th century barn, we went for a high heat output version. But not sure how much wood flooring would reduce heat transmission. We have flagstones, which transmits heat the fastest and makes it most efficient.