Engineered wooden floors and UFH

[Allfurcoatandnoknickers]

We inherited a pretty bad ceramic floor with heating mats underneath. The sub layer was poor so we had to have screed put down before the engineered wood went down. We turned on the heating mats (which were checked and working ok) and can't feel anything coming through. They were set to 20c - do they need to be higher to get any heat through - anyone had any experience of this, or do we have to accept that we won't be able to use it any more as the floor is possibly too thick?

How long has it been on for?

I have wet ufh and often think it's not really on til I step on the same flooring in the next room that doesn't have the ufh and realise the difference. Check the info for your flooring and make sure it's suitable and what the max temp is before messing with it in case you damage the floor.
It's my understanding the electric mats are pretty expensive to run so keep your test short unless you actually need the heating on.

It was on most of yesterday afternoon at 20c and we couldn't feel anything. I've tried it again today at 23c and it's been on about half an hour so will check it again. I'm reluctant to have it on any higher as I know it can damage the floor, and have contacted the heating mat manufacturer for further advice.

in your position I’d just whack the temperatures up as high as it can go and see if that gives off any heat. If it’s still as PP mentioned the same temperature as the non heated floor then you have your answer.

Hope you work it out

Wood isn’t a good conductor of heat.

Yes I know but I would expect to get some heat through

Don’t turn on and off. You need to out them on at a lower temperature and leave them on for them to work efficiently and heat your room.

20c - is that the temperature you are aiming to get the room at? What temperature is the room at?

20C for the heating elements would be rather low to feel heat - your body is at 35 and anything below that won’t feel hot to touch

if you set it fro 20 and the room gets up to 20 the floor might not feel particularly warm but the room would be fine ?

How thick is the engineered wood? The thicker it is the longer it will take to warm up and the more heat that will be lost to the subfloor rather than the room above, unless you have good insulation.

We have wet underfloor heating with 10mm engineered flooring. We deliberately got the thinnest we could find because wood can be really slow to warm up. It takes at least 30 minutes after the heating comes on for the room temperature to increase and even now after an hour, the floor itself doesn't feel warm to the touch.

I'm assuming that as you mentioned mats that you have electric rather than wet? I hope you have radiators as well because I think heating a whole room could be very expensive.

Sophie Robinson (interior designer, I follow her on insta) took up her herringbone engineered floor in the end because it stopped the heat from the underfloor heating from coming through, I seem to remember.