Do you want underfloor heating in your kitchen extension?

[MusicMum80s]

We had it in our old house and weren't that fussed. We are doing up a new house and the budget is tight but wonder if I'll regret it long term not to have it installed...

No advice I'm afraid, just the observation that both my siblings have underfloor heating throughout their ground floors and their kitchens are always unbearably hot.

We had this debate recently. Eventually we decided against underfloor heating in the new extension. It is well insulated and we put a couple of good radiators in. It is lovely and warm and we haven't regretted the decision.

What I really like about underfloor heating is that it allows you to use the space better because you don't have radiators

We would have a lot less useful space in our kitchen with radiators

We went for underfloor heating because there wasn't room for radiators on the wall. We don't use it often and it's comfortable when we do turn it on. We would regret not having it in the cold weather and don't regret installing it.

My kitchen is large, with concrete slab tile things (I think they're supposed to look like real stone, but in reality they're just impossible to keep clean as they're too lumpy and have massive grout lines). It would be basically unusable without underfloor heating, as the same slab tiles are throughout the laundry and hallway, and in winter they are FREEZING and that's in an A rated/insulated relatively new build house. I have rugs to make it bearable, but that would be hassle in a kitchen.

The wooden floors in the rooms off the kitchen/hallway are fine - no freezing feet. It's just the concrete slabs that cause the problem.

So it depends on your flooring I'd say.

Our underfloor heating is electric and costs £5 PER DAY, hence we don’t switch it on much 😃

If it’s connected to the gas, as opposed to the electric, it is much cheaper to run apparently but we didn’t have that choice.

I have had both kinds of underfloor heating ( plumbed and electric) and will definitely not be installing either type again. I find it either too cold or too hot and when it is hot it makes us all feel a little bilious. Radiators all the way.

I love ours, it’s a large room and it heats evenly with the underfloor heating. Other than heated towel rails in bathrooms we don’t have any radiators in the house, it’s all underfloor heating - best use of the space because you don’t waste wall space because of radiators.
No regrets, I loathe cold floors and having cold feet.

I have had it in three homes (both types) and it has been unbearable in every one. With flagstones it takes six hours to heat up and 48 hours to cool down and is horribly hot. Can’t stand in front of the oven hot. Suspended wooden floor with Karndean and you can barely feel it. Carpet and porcelain tiles and too hot again (but porcelain at least cooled down quicker). My mum seems to have been the only person who got hers right but unfortunately she is no longer with us so I can’t ask how. I would just say if you are set on it, make sure you employ someone very experienced and are very careful with flooring type, the amount of screed, etc. 2/3 homes the coils have crossed between walls and therefore zones and that has caused massive problems too. Don’t have your hall heating pipes coming six foot into the lounge. So think about walls rather than installing pipes then bunging walls up. Also, we have 3 flooring types in our current house and it behaves differently across all three of them so something is always too hot or cold.

I had it in the kitchen in my old house and It must have been installed badly as the ceramic tiles always got covered in condensation when I switched it on, which made the floor wet and slippy. It was awful and dangerous! I kept it switched off. I didn't want to go to the expense of ripping up the floor to see what was wrong - so that's my question. What does happen if it needs to be repaired?

Love it.
Wouldn't be without it.
Cosy, lightly warm not boiling.
Bonus is no ugly radiators

If a large kitchen definitely, as with poster above we don't have in utility and the floor is freezing. We had in a smaller kitchen and it got too hot in there.

Never had it, don't want it, would put me off buying a house. (I have pets who would find it uncomfortable.)

We had the electric type in a kitchen - diner and it was ineffective and expensive to run. Just replaced it with a couple of attractive radiators, and the space is now much more inviting.
I replaced the flooring with LVT at the same time.

When I put in a new kitchen 14 years ago, I decided to get rid of the radiator and installed electric u/f heating with a tiled floor. It's the low wattage kind that looks like tin foil, so gives a gentle heat. Still a waste of money, as it's only ever been turned on in winter when the boiler's broken down and the entire house gets cold.

Loved it in any room you walk round barefoot. Otherwise, not warm enough or too warm and takes aaaaages to heat up.

Its a kitchen-diner with a seating area as well. Its about 35sqm and the flooring will mostly be wood. It wasn't boiling in our old house and worked well but the manifold leaked and is expensive to maintain and takes up a lot of space under the stairs that we could use as storage. I just wasn't that fussed.

Also, I'd prefer to use solid wood floor so we can sand it and repair it more easily with wear and tear as often as we'd like. You can only sand an engineered floor a few times before it needs to be completely replaced.

The only real pro I see is not having radiators taking up space as some of you have said.

We have it in the whole of downstairs after renovation (as added an extension). Concrete then wet system. LVT on top and spilt into three zones. Our house is an Edwardian semi with just thin concrete then soil, so it was freezing before, so we needed to add insulation anyway, but it was a big job. No regrets here. Of maybe one little one, I do kind of wish we'd put one additional individually controlled rad in the room we're in the most as sometimes you just want to give a quick blast, but underfloor takes a while to heat up. But otherwise very happy with it.

We have it under solid wood. The installation was a huge faff with them making sort of a honeycomb sub-floor under the wood, but we love the system. We just set it to come up to whatever temperature we want the room to be and it sorts itself. Like @Poonu we find it cosy, gentle heat - I dislike overheated rooms and find it perfect. We don't have any of the issues others are mentioning about it taking ages to heat and cool or getting too hot.

We also have it in other rooms with wool and silk rugs with no problems.