Under floor heating - Pro and Cons.

[Starbear]

We plan to live in this house until we drop dead or our son puts us in a home. So we going for an extension and renovate this 1850 2 and half bedroom house. We don't want to make a mistake with heating. At present this house is freezing & the bathroom is an ice box. DH not keen on under floor heating. Mate tell me its a good idea. But she only know via info from the course she teaches.
Need to know the real deal please. YOu lot are the best.

I love it especially in a bathroom. The only downside is that you can't do a quick change of temperature by turning it up or down. We have underfloor heating throughout the downstairs of our house and in all of the bathrooms - we have radiators upstairs (because it's carpeted) and we have only had to turn them on when it gets really cold.

If you are planning on any kind of tiled floor then I think it's a must.

they can get air pockets which are not as easy to bleed as normal radiators and can be quite costly.

we lived i a flat which had this problem and the landlord wouldn't pay to fix it. bastard.

and there is nowhere to hang up laundry or to warm towels!

Keep going the advice it fab. Might just go for the bathrooms.

We had a big refurb last year and have it across half of downstairs. Its very useful in the kitchen esp as our layout doesn't allow room for rads.

We have engineered wood floors over and there are a few warm patches, but otherwise its just a very general warmth. We are virtually all open plan downstairs and lots of visitors have commented this winter that the house feels warm all over as opposed to a radiator driven warmth which can be patchy.

I personally don't like the feel of warm stone - all wrong and unnatural, but have friends that have love it and wouldn't swap.

The one thing you do need to be careful of is cranking the temp right up quickly as it will split the wood. This isn't a biggie really, just do it gradually. We have a few splits which I quite like, add character.

Thanks. Taffetacat We are going for engineered wood as I can't do carpet. I spill to many things on carpet. cheers

Just read the other posts oops

Re hot towels, we have big heated towel rails in bathrooms not underfloor heating.

littledawley We can't do a quick change of heating now anyway. it takes all day to warm up the house. By what I've read we will go for bathrooms and ecelectric heated towel rail so we can turn them off & on. Insulate the walls & floors better & go from there. Thanks for all your replies. DH going to insulate walls this Easter. Look out for the thread 'Where I can go with DS in easter while DH....