I get in a right old kerfuffle thinking about all this stuff. One day the building inspector say’s do this, the next inspection another ones says don’t do that. Live off grid and do what I bloody want I reckon 😂. Cheers Rog.
I am fully impressed! It's just a complete th-cam.com/users/postUgkxGqOCINHE0Z0E5gxzSdNi9NWGugRY5Hm2 plan with the best resources and step by step instructions . These shed plans are so satisfying as if the sheds build themselves on their own. Worthy work Ryan!
I installed underfloor heating in our kitchen extension three years ago , and I can honestly say , it’s the best thing we ever did . Our heating comes on at 6 in the morning for an hour or so , we set the thermostat at 19 . But due to the tiled floor being like an enormous storage heater , by 9am the temperature is over 20 degrees , and stays like this all day . Fantastic
My mate has underfloor dowstairs. Its great. 19c in his house feels warmer than 19c with our radiator system because the heat is rising from the floor, as it should do, not accumulate near the ceiling
I replaced all the heating in a 120 year old house with under floor, every single room up and downstairs, over 3km of pipe work. The high ceilings meant rads were next to useless and the floor was like ice anywhere round winter time, so now no rads in sight and I can say under floor is excellent, it is night and day levels of difference even when compared with particularly good rad systems. Highly recommend if you can. Manifolds also will allow you to easily add zones so the heat distribution can be controlled per room!
@@SkillBuilder I did not personally do the work (just lived through it), looking back I feel probably more insulation could have been added. However the house floors were all just floorboards on raised joists, so not concrete that will conduct all the heat to earth. The pipe work was set into that concrete style board with the pre cut grooves. My guess is some heat does escape down, but it seems ultra effective, so I guess not that noticeable. Upstairs I am less bothered by potential leakage downward since it will only end up inside the house either way... the ceilings do not get hot and I have checked with a thermal imaging camera. What I like is the old house was never designed to have radiators, so they would have only looked out of place and get in the way... I will say it is not for the faint hearted ripping all the floors up adding all the infrastructure, which means raising the height of the floor by 3-4cm shaving all the door bottoms down then putting all the skirting board back etc. This was done in conjunction with a new oak hard floor. I avoided carpets as felt this may be too insulating. One other thing people always forget to mention is that once you have this done you cannot go filling your house up with furniture that is flush to the floor as this just traps the heat... it became obvious that furniture needed to have legs of a certain height that will allow the heat to flow round objects.
I have underfloor heating to 3 floors for 15 years and the designers got it spot on because I have measured all the rooms in all weathers I totally agree with your accounts. In my system it is set on a very thick concrete raft and then 50mm of insulation set in a self levelling anhydrite screed. I think they did great job in the design since all the wall, floors, ceilings and windows were calculated for thermal distribution. The first floor ceilings were a Bison hollow core slabs across the whole width of 8 m span insulated and covered with the pipes embedded in the anhydrite screed. incidentally the pipe are just 10mm fast flow diameter that I held some reservations about but proved they got it right since there is more mass in the screed to act as a heat store rather than water and plastic. still not sure about that but hey oh it works. With the tiny condensation gas boiler it has been a dream to live in. Love your video as usual.
@@TheDankelsall Hi Dan, I did ask NHBC if there was anything else I could do back in 2002 but they said I still need ventilation and any heat recovery system simply would not be practical - so back to the future here we go:
Are bless , your never alone because we are right behind you . Yes a complex subject , yet with sound advice from you there can be light at the end of the tunnel . Best wishes and kind regards my dear friend , and may you continue to give sound advice to your many followers . 😀👍👍👍
Some great stuff in this! I agree that a hybrid system has a lot going for it- background heat with rapid response to peaks. My son fitted 270mm insulation below the screed, but with a wood block floor finds having high output rads great for quick adjustment of ambient. He has a data link to the combi boiler (had to go to a foreign source for the data structure- UK not keen on divulging this) and wireless links to all rads etc with full flow and temperature monitoring, and links to weather forecasting. Had to design/build it all himself- because a commercial version is not available! Like most of building practice, we are still in the last century...
When I built my house I installed a full underfloor wet system from Nu-Heat, can’t fault it - just fantastic - I’ll never go back to a radiator system!
0:28 Looking at the pipes leaving the manifold... There must be a better way to distribute the fluids to minimise heat transfer between hot and cold? I'd suggest spray-foam but suspect that the concrete overhead would be too thin. Maybe there could be a moulded polystyrene panel that drops in that replaces the board below? Just to reduce the inadvertent heat exchanger that we're looking at, especially after the concrete's poured.
it is not an issue, it works well and you don't have to spend the rest of your life worrying about it. The mixer valve means the water does another tour or two.
@@SkillBuilder Thanks. Seriously though... I appreciate your work - you take us places we never go and I just chime in here and there; A bit of a PITA but really just food for thought. I'll throw some $ in your coffee mug after posting this. Just wanted to say thanks. Have a great break and lets see if next year is kinder... ;)
I have a large open plan kitchen diner/ extension. the kitchen diner half has two radiators and the extension has underfloor heating so in a hybrid system like mine do i just set the thermostat in the kitchen diner area to say 20 degrees and the dedicated stat fr the underfloor heating half to 20 as well? I've read something about having a setback temperature for UFH so im not sure what the best and most efficient way to control and use my stem would be. any ideas or help would be welcomed.
Really useful! Thank you. I like your pinching the return off the radiator idea. My elderly set up sort of has this by accident because they didn't insulate it. Consequently there's a few hot spots on the floor in the bedroom and bathroom where the radiator pipes warm up the carpet/lino that I've got into the habit of aiming for on cold mornings as it's sort of accidental underfloor heating.
I have the same- deliberately. When I installed the system, I realized the feeds (multi-system) and return ran under the bathroom floor. I did not insulate these (which modern regs require) and the result is a floor that is comfortable to bare feet. A feature that cost less than nothing!
I removed all my radiators and stuck in UFH, which is heated by my 30 year old Netaheat Profile boiler. The boiler does cycle but we used to run the rads for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening to get us warm for those periods. Now, we run it for 2 or 3 hours in the morning and again in the evening and the house stays warm all day and night. Turned the boiler down to 55 degrees, UFH runs at that temp too, 120 year old timber floor using spreader plates and air tight suspended timber floor. It has been a surprising revelation.
I've just moved in to a property with a combi boiler and underfloor heating. Am I right in thinking that in winter I leave the heating on all the time at say 21 in the couple of rooms I'm in most of the time and around 19 in the rooms I'm not in as much? It didn't compute when I was first told this as it sounded very expensive.
I’m looking to do this in a 120 year old tenement. It is elevated ground floor with a meter of clearance under the floor. Longer term I’m applying to dig this out for a basement. The floor is currently wooden joists and floor boards. Can i go under the floor and kingspan between all joists then lay the underfloor heating on top? Essentially wondering if the wooden floorboard separation between the piping and kingspan will cause any issue?
Our Friends had a burst bath tap in their bathroom a few years back . When the ceiling eventually caved in you could see a radiator in the middle of the room notched into the floor joists 🙄😳🤣🧱👍🏽
I set Ground floor to 45 and Suspended floor at 55 (all screeded) but plumber refused to service the Auto Air Vents. Now every Flow Meter is 1/2 filled with AIR. Is this ok as I do not want to bother with Services as it has a good BAXI Boiler plus new added Adey Micro2 Filter for my own annual cleaning?
I have underfloor heating downstairs. I put down 3" Kingspan, ran the pipes & 4" concrete over that + tiles. I didn't insulate the lower area of the walls (mistake). I lose heat by it radiating outwards through the walls. Silly me. My floor level runs straight out onto a patio & heats roughly 18" of it, outwards from the building. Put an insulation break between the inside & outside. Like a bathtub effect.
@@SkillBuilder A cement based screed. Not exactly sure what it was (a company did that part of the job). They put a lot in. The floor takes roughly 4 hours to warm up fully. It's been down for 6 years with no issues.
I’m doing an attic conversion and I’m going to use the mat I only need 2 m so not massive but I’m trying to keep the height down can I use king span under floor boards instead of a thermal matt or take the boards up and lay some kind ply/insulation board then electric matt , adhesive and tile ?
Hi Roger, i am installing underfloor heating - would 25mm Kingspan and the pipes laid on top of that be ok, it sounds like it will be much better than 4.0mm!. I spoke to a builder guy who said beware of bridging the damp course because the floor height will be 40mm higher than the damp course (We took up the old 20/25mm screed to help with the height - the Kingspan when fitted will be in the position that the old screed was if you know what i mean.
@@SkillBuilder None its insulated underneath cant be losing that much as ive had to set the blender valve to 45 and even my boiler stats at about 60 degrees. The slab heats up amazingly befor we tiled.
Hi. I am considering underfloor heating for my flat - from what I have read so far is that the electric UFH is not very efficient in heating up the rooms so would like to go for wet / gas UFH. The lowest UFH systems on the market seem to be around 2cm thick - but was wondering about the insulation required. Based on this video it seems to me that insulation of around 4mm is pretty much useless and something much thicker is required (around 100mm) - is that right? Did someone install UFH (in a flat with concrete floorings) with insulation of only 4mm or so - and was it a good choice? In terms of room temperature and heating costs? Keen to hear your opinions.
Hi Haken I have done a few jobs straight onto uninsulated concrete and there is no doubt you lose heat. The key thing is that the pipe is near the surface so you get a fast warm up time. This means you can turn it on and off at will but there is no thermal mass to even out the heat. I would love to do some tests to find out how much is being lost through the floor but it is hard to do. I will think about some test rigs but the bottom line is that people are willing to lose a fair bit of heat in order to get the warm floor. You are right about electric, it is crap.
@@SkillBuilder Thank you for fast response - need to do some thinking in the upcoming weeks, would be great if you could do some tests too - though appreciate it's not straightforward to quantify how much heat is being lost when uninsulated.
@@SkillBuilder I just spoke to a representative of an underfloor heating company - he told me that concrete is actually quite a good insulator in some cases (in my case particularly it's a flat on 1st floor - with flats above and below me) - and apparently the heat loss through concrete is only about 6-8% so not that bad. Am wondering what your thoughts are on that - as I cannot afford 10cm insulation, probably not even 3cm, best I could do is something like 1cm so am wondering if UFH in such case is something worth doing.
@@SkillBuilder I have a holiday chalet with no gas. We installed electric UFH throughout, insulation between the joists (although that is nowhere near perfect, think badly fitting jigsaw puzzle), Amtico on top (7mm dual overlay board in between which acts like the screed in spreading the heat) with tile in bathrooms and carpet in bedroom. A really good stable comfortable temperature and very comparable on cost to run compared to other standard electric heating. We get lots of positive comments about it when people stay in the depths of winter. Yes,😅 it's expensive compared to gas but that wasn't an option. It's also cheap to install and no floor build up either. We did have to upgrade some electrics as we have 2x10kw showers so the power draw with 2 showers and the UFH is too much so it temporarily flicks off the UFH but that is constantly on and off anyway to avoid going past 27 degrees floor temp. It takes time to warm up from cold like traditional UFH so we just leave it on a target temperature of 21 between 7am and 10pm and the thermostats in each room do the rest. People over the road also installed it after seeing ours but cut corners. One thing we think makes a massive difference are these dual overlay boards - they just added cheap LVT on top of the electric mats. I think they looked at them and thought they were ridiculously expensive MDF but they do a great job at spreading the heat evenly
I am planning a kitchen extension with underfloor heating, would you recommend i install a insulated block and beam floor instead of using standard concrete blocks?
If your laying one of the low build options over existing floor, maybe think about giving the floor a couple of coats of thermal paint before laying. The paint allows the floor to "breath" but helps reflect the heat back up by not allowing the "air moistire" to transfer heat down into it.
@@SkillBuilder some of the kit companies just suggest a floor sealant. I meant thermal paint over the sealant. And thought with joists the vapour barrier was below the flooring surface, so for anyone laying over floor surface could use paint. Personally, on the solid floor option I would get in the scree router to cut channels to lay pipes flush, then a thin scree to even heat and lay flooring over. On joists, insulation between (if ground floor), then the ufh panels that bridge joists with a flooring layer attached on top.
Roger please give me instruction on how to switch on my ufh for the first time, heard horrow stories of bringing the Temperature up too. quickly / too hot. I have a thermostat in the screed and what can be described as a thermostat valve near the the manifold.... Any advice would be appreciated....
We have suspended floors downstairs and we are going to add wet UFH. We are going to insulate between the joists. Is there a "best system" for this set up? Looked at various options and not sure which to go for.
Have you done this yet? What did you go for? The best method I see is to buy the insulation with foil either side. It's very firm so you cut with a saw to size and force in-between the joists to hold it in place. Personally I just used some garden netting, a Staple gun and a roll of fibreglass insulation but it was a bit of a hassle. I hope it's strong enough for over the years as well
@@PercyJackson93in the end I went for the overlay system downstairs from Ambiente (Ambisolo) and insulated between the joists underneath. I would have gone for something between the joists but we had a few sections (old house) of concrete floor that would have been too costly to dig out. Will do a between the joists the system upstairs. Happy Christmas!
Hello Roger, have you ever installed a system where you can't raise the floor height at all? I have a room upstairs (in my roof) that I use as an office ~3.5m2 . It has old woodern floor underneath and a pretty rubbish radiator. Since it gets really cold (in Sweden) during winter I was tempted to spir off a line and use a router to run a channel for the pipe into the floorboards. Thoughts? Bat shit crazy or doable?
Hi Roger. Im interested in doing exactly what you said for my bathroom. I didnt quite understand - is the pipe ( presumably plastic) in direct contact with the underside of your plywood floor or held away from it?
my understanding is, the closer the better, but direct contact is not always possible. Please if it is just the radiator water pipe against the floorboards then it still have air space around it, which creates ineffeciencies.
Hello Roger, as an alternative to underfloor heating for small rooms with limited wall space, what do you think of infra red ceiling heaters? I would love you to do a video on those.
Hey Roger, you still replying on this thread, I’m buying a 1960 house with all concrete floors on ground floor so no insulation, I’ve seen these insulated hardy backer boards 20mm , was thinking sticking them down first with tile adhesive then stick the solid board you mentioned , another option I’ve heard about are vip boards, I’d love to know your thoughts literally I’ve spent months looking for any idea talking about this and yours is the most informative, I know doing something like this brings the possibility of damp issues but that’s another video I guess .
Hello I am in process of installing water underfloor heating. As part of the project the engineer is also moving the boiler from kichen to garage. My question is when the project completed what kind of certificate and documentation should I get for the underfloor heating installation and for moving the boiler for my future record. Can you please list out what should I get from the company on completion please. Thanks,
Take photographs of the heating at every stage. You can also request an invoice with the name of pipe manufacutrer because they give a very long guarantee on the pipe. When the boiler is signed off you will have a log book with the details of the installer and the readings taken of the flue emmissions. It should also be registered through the installers registration. They can do this with their phone.
I'm looking at possibly installing UFH heating in my 1950's concrete floored bungalow. I've watched LOTS of TH-cam videos regarding the suitability of retro fitting it to my house and to be honest I am still none the wiser. There are so much conflicting information from separate sources, on this video it states that the heat loss will be substantial on a existing concrete floor whereas a company called Nu-Heat state that and non insulated concrete floor will only have 6% heat loss. I don't want to spend a fortune on UFH just to get nice warm floors only, I want it to be able to efficiently and effectively warm and maintain a comfortable room temperature.
@@EstebanMourelle Not really but wet UFH is still something I'd really like to install before I carry out a full renovation to the property. Unfortunately I'm in a position where I'm going to have to do everything all at the same time new bathroom, kitchen and updated staircase that leads to the upstairs loft room, new boiler and it to be relocated, as well as everything needing rewiring, new plumbing and then everything plastered. Here's the Nu-Heat video and I'm looking at their "Lo Pro Max" UFH system (13:40 into the video) th-cam.com/video/SM_dInhtIlc/w-d-xo.htmlsi=TQXDCsnLTvU0HvQH Definitely seems the best option for my property, I guess I need to contact them with my floor plan layouts to see if it's feasible to install it.
I’ve just watched it , good video, makes sense what she says, heat loss to savings value , might not be worth the cost of ripping up all the old concrete, like I said I reckon I can spare 50 mm from the existing concrete floor level, I’m either going to dpm first then insulated hardy tile backer 20mm then the 20mm pre routed plate with a decoupled mat and tile finish
Hi Roger, what are your thoughts on using a multifoil insulation laid on top of solid concrete and ran up the walls a few inches, battened (3×2, possibly 2x2) then underfloor heating finished with 18mm floorboards
My parents had underfloor heating installed in their new build 68 years ago and I've never wanted anything else. Far higher level of comfort than convection radiators and very efficient.
Lots of sensible advice here. I too think those skinny panels with 4mm of insulation between pipe and concrete are not very clever. You didn't mention that you don't have to have a slow-response screeded system over insulation. You can have a faster one. E.g lithotherm floor panels with the pipe in, or cellecta screedboard/hi-deck with the pipe underneath. Quicker and cleaner to lay and much lower-carbon. lithotherm: th-cam.com/video/Fb7VvOFV3JE/w-d-xo.html screedbpoard: th-cam.com/video/ZEVvwK9X6hA/w-d-xo.html I do wish there were easier ways to quantify the differences between these systems. It's hard to say exactly how much difference these things make.
Very informative video. In my case, I'm planning to build a 6 meter extension up/against the original concrete base of my house. It's my intention to have the extension concrete base lower than the existing base, to accommodate: installation, pipes & screed. Can you you advise on the: optimal insulation thickness, desirable diameter of pipe, and thickness of creed. I'm hoping to ascertain the overall depth requirement to accommodate all three components for a heating system that wouldn't require radiators. Regards R
Hi Robert The required insulation thickness is usually 100mm PIR but it is dependent on the perimeter so it can vary to get the U value. Depth plant for 120 mm if you can. The pipe is usually 16mm and the screed on top of insulation is usually 65mm but you can get pumped screed which will go down the 35mm so you get a faster warm up time. With the pipe at 200mm you should be able to heat the room easily enough but placing the pipe at 150mm gives you a more rapid warm up. If you are tiling make sure you leave an expansion gap around the perimeter and use flexible adhesive.
@@SkillBuilder renovation, old stone house. wacked in gravel in layers 70-100mm total depth, have allowed for 150mm insulation and 75 screed maybe incl mesh. Someone said sub floor so have put the job on hold. Would have to take out stone to get sub floor in.
Absoloutely nothing, I really don't understand the video clips. If you watch the British Gas adverts it is the same, some guy pretending to fix something.
And why does he have a hard hat in a luxury bathroom? These stock footage producers really need to up their game. I can see why they liven up a video though.
Clearly he's confirming to a customer that this is in fact a towel rail and pointing to it it's position so as to avert any future confusion on the issue.
Underfloor heating shouldn't be used as a stand alone system but, ideally, part of an overall integrated system with good insulation and double/triple glazed windows. Also look for alternatives to a gas boiler as underfloor heating works at a lower temperature and is more efficient if installed correctly.
My underfloor heating (Nu-Heat) runs off a thermal store of 750ltr, if heating is needed the u/f water is pumped through a heat exchanger in the thermal store and the boiler only kicks in once the TS has dropped a significant amount. This then economically utilises the oil fired condensing boiler as it’s not cycling on and off constantly
The idea of having a hot radiator and a warm floor seems to defeat the energy savings of not having to put a lot of heat into water. As the temperature of the water rises it costs more energy per unit of heat to add. If you can keep your boiler at a MAX of say 48C and the return water maybe 10 degrees less...and adjust for outdoor temp...you should save some significant energy. It is SO expensive to drive 90C into water to make a radiator capable of heating a room.
Unless you add about 30cm of interlocking, sealed high density insulation then don't bother... Then the pipes are covered by poured, liquid concrete... Needless to say it all must be professionally installed by a highly reputable firm.. But when down correctly the comfort is epic..
Here's the problem with mass market ufh. A 'normal' system runs at a fixed temp designed to heat your house when it's -2 outside. It will overheat the floor 90% of the year. They add wall thermostats to mitigate this. The smart engineers are running weather compensated mixers and no thermostats. And then we have engineers that don't understand the difference between dt20 and dt5 and tee the UFH off a rad circuit and wonder why the rads stop working when the UFH is on. Basically ufh is mosty misunderstood by both customers and plumbers.
I think you might be right about all that. Interesting ideas and Heat Geeks doing away with manifolds altogether which makes sense if you are running a boiler or heat pump at 50 deg C
Yep we have low build UFH across our ground floor (the EPS boards Roger was laying at 5:12), originally with a static mixer on the manifold and "dumb" smart controls on the (Vaillant) boiler constantly pumping out 70c flow temperatures relying on the manifold mixer to try and keep it down around 35-40c. We've now ditched the mixing valve on the manifold and swapped out the controls for Vaillant weather comp controls along with 2 Esbe electronic mixing valves managed by the Vaillant controls (installed by Andrew Millward, there's a video on his page of our install). That means we can run 2 separate weather compensated curves for the two heating circuits, one between about 20c and 40c for the UFH, the other that has a wider operating temperature range up to about 55c for the upstairs rads. As an aside Roger, I'm not sure low build UFH necessarily needs rads for quick response in most instances, because the pipes are right under the floor surface its warm within 20 minutes from the boiler coming on unlike conventional UFH, which raises room temps almost as quickly as rads in our case, even with ~30c flow temps.
@@LocostR1 nice 🤘 we're militant Viessmann disciples just like Andrew and I wouldn't entertain fitting ufh without an electronic mixer. Fixed temp seems absolutely absurd to me.
@@randomcamerajunk6977 If I knew 2 years ago what I knew now I probably would have had Andrew in to install a Veissmann with this kind of setup from the off, much better modulation from what I understand and the controls look far more logical and easy to use than Vaillant.
Thats just stupid argument. Need to have mixer with thermostats. How do you control different room temperatures seperatly if not using thermostat. Not very smart to constantly adjust flow speed manually from manifold.
You definately need some thermal break under the pipes. I put UFH in a new build 20 years ago with 40mm PIR under it and never had a problem heating the whole rooms. 100mm is overkill IMHO, heat rises after all.
It is not really suited to heating a room to 21 deg. It is fine for tile warm up. My neighbour three doors down had it even though I advised him to have hydronic. He ran it for one winter and it was £1,000 for the kitchen and dining area only. After that he switched it off and put some radiators in.
Doing same work, but instead of installing wire, better to install pipes. Wire only works with direct electricity, pipes can have more options. You can heat pipes with stight electricity but later upgrade it to gas or heatpump also.
No it doesnt you can get whats called a retro fit kit that goes on top of your current screed. It uses panels and the pipes click into it and then you fill the left over gaps with the filler that comes with the kit then put self leveling compound raises floor level by 22mm
@@leejames7964 But as Roger says, you will lose some heat through the ground. Much better to break up the existing concrete, dig down sufficiently to put 100mm of insulation, then lay your UFH pipes in a 50mm of concrete. It is disruptive,but it's worth it long-term.
The only item you missed when talking about the sensible thing to do is to also consider a heat pump alongside underfloor heating. Come on Rodger even you can't argue toss on that! Surely you can't do a video on underfloor heating and not talk at some point about the advantages of a low temperature heat source connected to it.
This can be done equally as good using a high modulating gas boiler like a viessmann 200 and weather compensation sensor. They are 3x cheaper to buy and almost identical to run. Heat pump has the edge but takes 20 years to make the saving back.
@@handle1196 Yet to hear anyone come up with a gas boiler that produces less carbon output per kw of heat than a heat pump, that's where the real conversation is. The current energy & environmental crisis is not down to the cost of renewable energy or its carbon footprint it's a fossil fuel crisis. The solution is not more of the same problem. My point wasn't that heat pumps should be the answer to everything but surely a video talking about a low temperature heating system basically designed for a heat pump needs to at least acknowledge them.
@@barryferguson6219 i don't think anyone wouldnt want to go for the greener option, it just has to be more appealing than the fossil fuel option. Cost of living is through the roof and not just with energy if they drop them prices over night, so people will always choose the cheapest option. A heat pump needs to cost half as much to purchase i think.
Barry I actually did talk about heat pumps in this video and the fact that they don't work well if you switch them on and off but we cut it out because it was straying off the topic and a lot of people would see me as a stuck record. If you make videos for TH-cam it is always a job to keep them tight. Low temperature heating can be done with any heating appliance but a gas boiler is way more responsive to the great variations we get in temperature. The carbon issue is important but really we need better technology before we kick out gas. They are already warning of possible power cuts in January so the last thing we need is more people drawing off the National Grid.
I thought heat loss via uninsulated floors is 10%? If I'm right, the savings on not insulating in the first place will cover the first ~20 years of increased running costs..
I'm not sure where this figure of 10% comes from? Urban myth more like and one that a few underfloor suppliers like to tell customers to get sales. I would say it is more like 20% heat loss through the floor when heating up an uninsulated slab. If anyone can come along with some science to say otherwise I'm all ears!
Apparently 80% of the heat lost through the slab is lost at the side wall footing. It's the reason that the footings are insulated all the way down when doing EWI properly.
Cost a bloody fortune in gas bills for underfloor heating you need an outside large wood gasification boiler, forget gas and electricity ask me how I know the ground floor area is 38 feet x27 plus 4 rads upstairs winter bills are £600 summer 180 ish 20 years ago it was £60 a month in winter, the Froling s30 is the one to get
What a load of tosh. You wouldn't have a vested interest in wood gasification boilers would you Keith Rimmer formerly of Ecopod biomass boilers I assume? :)
@@LocostR1 No mate I just changed the gas boiler to wood-fired and saved a fortune in gas bills in an old stone coach house with flag floors and draughty old leaded windows
i only have wooden suspended floors (joists and floor boards) whats the best way for me to install under floor heating? if i use 120mm kingspan suspended between the joists then run my pipe should i cut out a hole for the pipe or should i go under them so as not to weaken the joists? on top of that im planing to use 18mm kaberdeck finished off with LVT glued down. any help is appreciated. thanks
If you go to our home page and type in underfloor heating in the smaller search bar it will show you a few different systems. You can now get 22mm chipboard that is routed out to take the pipe, You still need the insulation but putting all the pipe above the joists has advantages. If you go for the pipe in tray method between the joists then I would notch the joists on the cross overs. Strictly it should not be too close to the ends but it is much easier than trying to drag the pipes through the holes. Going under is fraught with problems.
I get in a right old kerfuffle thinking about all this stuff. One day the building inspector say’s do this, the next inspection another ones says don’t do that. Live off grid and do what I bloody want I reckon 😂. Cheers Rog.
I am fully impressed! It's just a complete th-cam.com/users/postUgkxGqOCINHE0Z0E5gxzSdNi9NWGugRY5Hm2 plan with the best resources and step by step instructions . These shed plans are so satisfying as if the sheds build themselves on their own. Worthy work Ryan!
I installed underfloor heating in our kitchen extension three years ago , and I can honestly say , it’s the best thing we ever did .
Our heating comes on at 6 in the morning for an hour or so , we set the thermostat at 19 . But due to the tiled floor being like an enormous storage heater , by 9am the temperature is over 20 degrees , and stays like this all day . Fantastic
Sounds great, was that a full wet system? We’d like to get rid of our carpet, like our neighbour, but her floors are freezing.
Tiles make no difference to energy used.
My mate has underfloor dowstairs. Its great. 19c in his house feels warmer than 19c with our radiator system because the heat is rising from the floor, as it should do, not accumulate near the ceiling
I replaced all the heating in a 120 year old house with under floor, every single room up and downstairs, over 3km of pipe work. The high ceilings meant rads were next to useless and the floor was like ice anywhere round winter time, so now no rads in sight and I can say under floor is excellent, it is night and day levels of difference even when compared with particularly good rad systems. Highly recommend if you can. Manifolds also will allow you to easily add zones so the heat distribution can be controlled per room!
Did you insulate the floors?
Looks like the next big thing
Did the same in my victorian house. Did 100mm celotex between the joists. Love the UFH
@@SkillBuilder I did not personally do the work (just lived through it), looking back I feel probably more insulation could have been added. However the house floors were all just floorboards on raised joists, so not concrete that will conduct all the heat to earth. The pipe work was set into that concrete style board with the pre cut grooves. My guess is some heat does escape down, but it seems ultra effective, so I guess not that noticeable. Upstairs I am less bothered by potential leakage downward since it will only end up inside the house either way... the ceilings do not get hot and I have checked with a thermal imaging camera. What I like is the old house was never designed to have radiators, so they would have only looked out of place and get in the way... I will say it is not for the faint hearted ripping all the floors up adding all the infrastructure, which means raising the height of the floor by 3-4cm shaving all the door bottoms down then putting all the skirting board back etc.
This was done in conjunction with a new oak hard floor. I avoided carpets as felt this may be too insulating.
One other thing people always forget to mention is that once you have this done you cannot go filling your house up with furniture that is flush to the floor as this just traps the heat... it became obvious that furniture needed to have legs of a certain height that will allow the heat to flow round objects.
@@elslopez really helpful! Thanks for taking time to share! I would have never thought about the furniture issue!
I have underfloor heating to 3 floors for 15 years and the designers got it spot on because I have measured all the rooms in all weathers I totally agree with your accounts. In my system it is set on a very thick concrete raft and then 50mm of insulation set in a self levelling anhydrite screed. I think they did great job in the design since all the wall, floors, ceilings and windows were calculated for thermal distribution. The first floor ceilings were a Bison hollow core slabs across the whole width of 8 m span insulated and covered with the pipes embedded in the anhydrite screed. incidentally the pipe are just 10mm fast flow diameter that I held some reservations about but proved they got it right since there is more mass in the screed to act as a heat store rather than water and plastic. still not sure about that but hey oh it works. With the tiny condensation gas boiler it has been a dream to live in. Love your video as usual.
Did you go for the optional flux capacitor or leave it?
@@TheDankelsall Hi Dan, I did ask NHBC if there was anything else I could do back in 2002 but they said I still need ventilation and any heat recovery system simply would not be practical - so back to the future here we go:
Are bless , your never alone because we are right behind you . Yes a complex subject , yet with sound advice from you there can be light at the end of the tunnel . Best wishes and kind regards my dear friend , and may you continue to give sound advice to your many followers . 😀👍👍👍
Some great stuff in this! I agree that a hybrid system has a lot going for it- background heat with rapid response to peaks. My son fitted 270mm insulation below the screed, but with a wood block floor finds having high output rads great for quick adjustment of ambient. He has a data link to the combi boiler (had to go to a foreign source for the data structure- UK not keen on divulging this) and wireless links to all rads etc with full flow and temperature monitoring, and links to weather forecasting. Had to design/build it all himself- because a commercial version is not available! Like most of building practice, we are still in the last century...
When I built my house I installed a full underfloor wet system from Nu-Heat, can’t fault it - just fantastic - I’ll never go back to a radiator system!
0:28 Looking at the pipes leaving the manifold... There must be a better way to distribute the fluids to minimise heat transfer between hot and cold? I'd suggest spray-foam but suspect that the concrete overhead would be too thin. Maybe there could be a moulded polystyrene panel that drops in that replaces the board below? Just to reduce the inadvertent heat exchanger that we're looking at, especially after the concrete's poured.
it is not an issue, it works well and you don't have to spend the rest of your life worrying about it. The mixer valve means the water does another tour or two.
@@SkillBuilder Thanks. Seriously though... I appreciate your work - you take us places we never go and I just chime in here and there; A bit of a PITA but really just food for thought. I'll throw some $ in your coffee mug after posting this. Just wanted to say thanks. Have a great break and lets see if next year is kinder... ;)
I have a large open plan kitchen diner/ extension. the kitchen diner half has two radiators and the extension has underfloor heating so in a hybrid system like mine do i just set the thermostat in the kitchen diner area to say 20 degrees and the dedicated stat fr the underfloor heating half to 20 as well? I've read something about having a setback temperature for UFH so im not sure what the best and most efficient way to control and use my stem would be. any ideas or help would be welcomed.
I’ve done the same in my last house and my current one. It works brilliantly.
Really useful! Thank you.
I like your pinching the return off the radiator idea.
My elderly set up sort of has this by accident because they didn't insulate it.
Consequently there's a few hot spots on the floor in the bedroom and bathroom where the radiator pipes warm up the carpet/lino that I've got into the habit of aiming for on cold mornings as it's sort of accidental underfloor heating.
I have the same- deliberately. When I installed the system, I realized the feeds (multi-system) and return ran under the bathroom floor. I did not insulate these (which modern regs require) and the result is a floor that is comfortable to bare feet. A feature that cost less than nothing!
@@Tensquaremetreworkshop My next house I'm doing that!
I removed all my radiators and stuck in UFH, which is heated by my 30 year old Netaheat Profile boiler. The boiler does cycle but we used to run the rads for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening to get us warm for those periods. Now, we run it for 2 or 3 hours in the morning and again in the evening and the house stays warm all day and night. Turned the boiler down to 55 degrees, UFH runs at that temp too, 120 year old timber floor using spreader plates and air tight suspended timber floor.
It has been a surprising revelation.
I've just moved in to a property with a combi boiler and underfloor heating. Am I right in thinking that in winter I leave the heating on all the time at say 21 in the couple of rooms I'm in most of the time and around 19 in the rooms I'm not in as much?
It didn't compute when I was first told this as it sounded very expensive.
I’m looking to do this in a 120 year old tenement. It is elevated ground floor with a meter of clearance under the floor. Longer term I’m applying to dig this out for a basement. The floor is currently wooden joists and floor boards. Can i go under the floor and kingspan between all joists then lay the underfloor heating on top? Essentially wondering if the wooden floorboard separation between the piping and kingspan will cause any issue?
Our Friends had a burst bath tap in their bathroom a few years back . When the ceiling eventually caved in you could see a radiator in the middle of the room notched into the floor joists 🙄😳🤣🧱👍🏽
What a great idea. That will be my next video
@@SkillBuilder 🤣🤣🧱👍🏽
What, they'd just stuck a radiator under the floor?
Genius! :))
@@42RHD Yep 🤪🤣
@@SteveAndAlexBuild Hilarious!
I set Ground floor to 45 and Suspended floor at 55 (all screeded) but plumber refused to service the Auto Air Vents. Now every Flow Meter is 1/2 filled with AIR. Is this ok as I do not want to bother with Services as it has a good BAXI Boiler plus new added Adey Micro2 Filter for my own annual cleaning?
I have underfloor heating downstairs. I put down 3" Kingspan, ran the pipes & 4" concrete over that + tiles.
I didn't insulate the lower area of the walls (mistake). I lose heat by it radiating outwards through the walls.
Silly me. My floor level runs straight out onto a patio & heats roughly 18" of it, outwards from the building.
Put an insulation break between the inside & outside. Like a bathtub effect.
I hope it wasn't concrete you used to cover the pipes.
@@SkillBuilder is screed OK, (I assume thats what he means)
@@SkillBuilder A cement based screed. Not exactly sure what it was (a company did that part of the job). They put a lot in. The floor takes roughly 4 hours to warm up fully. It's been down for 6 years with no issues.
@@SkillBuilder Dry screed. 4 - 1 sand, cement mix with some aggregate.
I’m doing an attic conversion and I’m going to use the mat I only need 2 m so not massive but I’m trying to keep the height down can I use king span under floor boards instead of a thermal matt or take the boards up and lay some kind ply/insulation board then electric matt , adhesive and tile ?
Hi Roger, i am installing underfloor heating - would 25mm Kingspan and the pipes laid on top of that be ok, it sounds like it will be much better than 4.0mm!. I spoke to a builder guy who said beware of bridging the damp course because the floor height will be 40mm higher than the damp course (We took up the old 20/25mm screed to help with the height - the Kingspan when fitted will be in the position that the old screed was if you know what i mean.
Did you fit the kingsman in the end ?
Coffee! (And thanks!)
Thank you
Thanks again for your clarity and your answers...it's hard to get answers out there
I had my solid floor milled from a company calked infloheat works wonders. No build up floors warm house warm bills lowered.
How much heat are you losing through the slab?
@@SkillBuilder None its insulated underneath cant be losing that much as ive had to set the blender valve to 45 and even my boiler stats at about 60 degrees. The slab heats up amazingly befor we tiled.
If you wanted to partition a room which has UFH how would you install the sole plate without risking damage to the UFH pipe?
stick it down with a polymer adhesive, it is amazing how well it sticks.
This is flipping brilliant! Thanks Richard
Roger
@@eddjordan2399 ?
Jason always calls me Richard, it is his little joke, it amuses him and we would never want to come between a man and his entertainment.
@@SkillBuilder I really appreciate that Richard! Thanks mate.
Hi. I am considering underfloor heating for my flat - from what I have read so far is that the electric UFH is not very efficient in heating up the rooms so would like to go for wet / gas UFH. The lowest UFH systems on the market seem to be around 2cm thick - but was wondering about the insulation required. Based on this video it seems to me that insulation of around 4mm is pretty much useless and something much thicker is required (around 100mm) - is that right? Did someone install UFH (in a flat with concrete floorings) with insulation of only 4mm or so - and was it a good choice? In terms of room temperature and heating costs? Keen to hear your opinions.
Hi Haken
I have done a few jobs straight onto uninsulated concrete and there is no doubt you lose heat. The key thing is that the pipe is near the surface so you get a fast warm up time. This means you can turn it on and off at will but there is no thermal mass to even out the heat.
I would love to do some tests to find out how much is being lost through the floor but it is hard to do. I will think about some test rigs but the bottom line is that people are willing to lose a fair bit of heat in order to get the warm floor.
You are right about electric, it is crap.
@@SkillBuilder Thank you for fast response - need to do some thinking in the upcoming weeks, would be great if you could do some tests too - though appreciate it's not straightforward to quantify how much heat is being lost when uninsulated.
@@SkillBuilder I just spoke to a representative of an underfloor heating company - he told me that concrete is actually quite a good insulator in some cases (in my case particularly it's a flat on 1st floor - with flats above and below me) - and apparently the heat loss through concrete is only about 6-8% so not that bad. Am wondering what your thoughts are on that - as I cannot afford 10cm insulation, probably not even 3cm, best I could do is something like 1cm so am wondering if UFH in such case is something worth doing.
@@SkillBuilder I have a holiday chalet with no gas. We installed electric UFH throughout, insulation between the joists (although that is nowhere near perfect, think badly fitting jigsaw puzzle), Amtico on top (7mm dual overlay board in between which acts like the screed in spreading the heat) with tile in bathrooms and carpet in bedroom.
A really good stable comfortable temperature and very comparable on cost to run compared to other standard electric heating.
We get lots of positive comments about it when people stay in the depths of winter.
Yes,😅 it's expensive compared to gas but that wasn't an option. It's also cheap to install and no floor build up either. We did have to upgrade some electrics as we have 2x10kw showers so the power draw with 2 showers and the UFH is too much so it temporarily flicks off the UFH but that is constantly on and off anyway to avoid going past 27 degrees floor temp.
It takes time to warm up from cold like traditional UFH so we just leave it on a target temperature of 21 between 7am and 10pm and the thermostats in each room do the rest.
People over the road also installed it after seeing ours but cut corners. One thing we think makes a massive difference are these dual overlay boards - they just added cheap LVT on top of the electric mats. I think they looked at them and thought they were ridiculously expensive MDF but they do a great job at spreading the heat evenly
I am planning a kitchen extension with underfloor heating, would you recommend i install a insulated block and beam floor instead of using standard concrete blocks?
If you can get it but I have never found a supplier, it seems that it only goes out to big sites.
Great explanation thanks bro God blessu
If your laying one of the low build options over existing floor, maybe think about giving the floor a couple of coats of thermal paint before laying.
The paint allows the floor to "breath" but helps reflect the heat back up by not allowing the "air moistire" to transfer heat down into it.
I don't think you want a breathing floor. I think you need an effective vapour barrier.
@@SkillBuilder some of the kit companies just suggest a floor sealant. I meant thermal paint over the sealant. And thought with joists the vapour barrier was below the flooring surface, so for anyone laying over floor surface could use paint.
Personally, on the solid floor option I would get in the scree router to cut channels to lay pipes flush, then a thin scree to even heat and lay flooring over. On joists, insulation between (if ground floor), then the ufh panels that bridge joists with a flooring layer attached on top.
Roger please give me instruction on how to switch on my ufh for the first time, heard horrow stories of bringing the Temperature up too. quickly / too hot. I have a thermostat in the screed and what can be described as a thermostat valve near the the manifold.... Any advice would be appreciated....
Generally you bring it on a little at a time by turning the blending valve down to 1 and then working upwards until you reach 4.
We have suspended floors downstairs and we are going to add wet UFH. We are going to insulate between the joists. Is there a "best system" for this set up? Looked at various options and not sure which to go for.
Have you done this yet? What did you go for? The best method I see is to buy the insulation with foil either side. It's very firm so you cut with a saw to size and force in-between the joists to hold it in place. Personally I just used some garden netting, a Staple gun and a roll of fibreglass insulation but it was a bit of a hassle. I hope it's strong enough for over the years as well
@@PercyJackson93in the end I went for the overlay system downstairs from Ambiente (Ambisolo) and insulated between the joists underneath. I would have gone for something between the joists but we had a few sections (old house) of concrete floor that would have been too costly to dig out. Will do a between the joists the system upstairs. Happy Christmas!
decent slippers are cheaper to run
I am still trying to find some.
Damn straight!
@@SkillBuilder recommend Alpaca 🙂
Hello Roger, have you ever installed a system where you can't raise the floor height at all? I have a room upstairs (in my roof) that I use as an office ~3.5m2 . It has old woodern floor underneath and a pretty rubbish radiator. Since it gets really cold (in Sweden) during winter I was tempted to spir off a line and use a router to run a channel for the pipe into the floorboards. Thoughts? Bat shit crazy or doable?
Look at the systems which sit flush between your floor joists.
Hi Roger. Im interested in doing exactly what you said for my bathroom. I didnt quite understand - is the pipe ( presumably plastic) in direct contact with the underside of your plywood floor or held away from it?
my understanding is, the closer the better, but direct contact is not always possible. Please if it is just the radiator water pipe against the floorboards then it still have air space around it, which creates ineffeciencies.
Your channel is fantastic
Thank you so much 😀
Hi. Is it posible to heat shower floor? And all bathroom?
yes it is very common to do that so it dries the shower out and prevents mould
@@SkillBuilder thanks. I need to think at any technical issue? Dilatation? Water tube distance away from main shower tubes?
I meant shower main drain pipe
Hello Roger, as an alternative to underfloor heating for small rooms with limited wall space, what do you think of infra red ceiling heaters? I would love you to do a video on those.
They give you a hot head and cold feet. I would rather put them on the wall
Hey Roger, you still replying on this thread, I’m buying a 1960 house with all concrete floors on ground floor so no insulation, I’ve seen these insulated hardy backer boards 20mm , was thinking sticking them down first with tile adhesive then stick the solid board you mentioned , another option I’ve heard about are vip boards, I’d love to know your thoughts literally I’ve spent months looking for any idea talking about this and yours is the most informative, I know doing something like this brings the possibility of damp issues but that’s another video I guess .
Hello
I am in process of installing water underfloor heating. As part of the project the engineer is also moving the boiler from kichen to garage.
My question is when the project completed what kind of certificate and documentation should I get for the underfloor heating installation and for moving the boiler for my future record.
Can you please list out what should I get from the company on completion please.
Thanks,
Take photographs of the heating at every stage. You can also request an invoice with the name of pipe manufacutrer because they give a very long guarantee on the pipe.
When the boiler is signed off you will have a log book with the details of the installer and the readings taken of the flue emmissions. It should also be registered through the installers registration. They can do this with their phone.
Thanks for your response
Def in the market for a WHR manifold !
I'm looking at possibly installing UFH heating in my 1950's concrete floored bungalow. I've watched LOTS of TH-cam videos regarding the suitability of retro fitting it to my house and to be honest I am still none the wiser. There are so much conflicting information from separate sources, on this video it states that the heat loss will be substantial on a existing concrete floor whereas a company called Nu-Heat state that and non insulated concrete floor will only have 6% heat loss.
I don't want to spend a fortune on UFH just to get nice warm floors only, I want it to be able to efficiently and effectively warm and maintain a comfortable room temperature.
I’m in the same position , are you any wiser now
@@EstebanMourelle Not really but wet UFH is still something I'd really like to install before I carry out a full renovation to the property. Unfortunately I'm in a position where I'm going to have to do everything all at the same time new bathroom, kitchen and updated staircase that leads to the upstairs loft room, new boiler and it to be relocated, as well as everything needing rewiring, new plumbing and then everything plastered.
Here's the Nu-Heat video and I'm looking at their "Lo Pro Max" UFH system (13:40 into the video)
th-cam.com/video/SM_dInhtIlc/w-d-xo.htmlsi=TQXDCsnLTvU0HvQH
Definitely seems the best option for my property, I guess I need to contact them with my floor plan layouts to see if it's feasible to install it.
I’ve looked at insulated tile backer , also I’ve seen someone talking about vip boards very thin
I’ve just watched it , good video, makes sense what she says, heat loss to savings value , might not be worth the cost of ripping up all the old concrete, like I said I reckon I can spare 50 mm from the existing concrete floor level, I’m either going to dpm first then insulated hardy tile backer 20mm then the 20mm pre routed plate with a decoupled mat and tile finish
I’ve logged on another account it’s the same chap
Hi Roger, what are your thoughts on using a multifoil insulation laid on top of solid concrete and ran up the walls a few inches, battened (3×2, possibly 2x2) then underfloor heating finished with 18mm floorboards
I would rather see pir board inbetween the battens. If you squash the mulitfoil you lose a lot
@@SkillBuilder what's the minium size pir board I could use as I only have 50mm to play with ..
I suspect the people who don't like underfloor heating are those who've never experienced a properly installed underfloor system in a home.
Dümmste Antwort ever
@@thomasschafer7268 Ah, so you have cold feet on this matter.
@@Gordon.. I look forward to your TH-cam video explaining those issues. 😉 Do send me a link when you're ready.
I'd say the same about heat pumps, but I don't want to trigger Roger ;)
My parents had underfloor heating installed in their new build 68 years ago and I've never wanted anything else. Far higher level of comfort than convection radiators and very efficient.
Lots of sensible advice here. I too think those skinny panels with 4mm of insulation between pipe and concrete are not very clever. You didn't mention that you don't have to have a slow-response screeded system over insulation. You can have a faster one. E.g lithotherm floor panels with the pipe in, or cellecta screedboard/hi-deck with the pipe underneath. Quicker and cleaner to lay and much lower-carbon. lithotherm: th-cam.com/video/Fb7VvOFV3JE/w-d-xo.html screedbpoard: th-cam.com/video/ZEVvwK9X6hA/w-d-xo.html
I do wish there were easier ways to quantify the differences between these systems. It's hard to say exactly how much difference these things make.
Very informative video.
In my case, I'm planning to build a 6 meter extension up/against the original concrete base of my house. It's my intention to have the extension concrete base lower than the existing base, to accommodate: installation, pipes & screed.
Can you you advise on the: optimal insulation thickness, desirable diameter of pipe, and thickness of creed. I'm hoping to ascertain the overall depth requirement to accommodate all three components for a heating system that wouldn't require radiators.
Regards
R
Hi Robert
The required insulation thickness is usually 100mm PIR but it is dependent on the perimeter so it can vary to get the U value. Depth plant for 120 mm if you can. The pipe is usually 16mm and the screed on top of insulation is usually 65mm but you can get pumped screed which will go down the 35mm so you get a faster warm up time.
With the pipe at 200mm you should be able to heat the room easily enough but placing the pipe at 150mm gives you a more rapid warm up.
If you are tiling make sure you leave an expansion gap around the perimeter and use flexible adhesive.
@@SkillBuilder Thanks for the detailed advice, much appreciated.
Robert
Hi Rodger. Love your videos.
Do you need a concrete subfloor under your insulation?
No but the insulation has to sit on something. What are you planning to do?
@@SkillBuilder renovation, old stone house. wacked in gravel in layers 70-100mm total depth, have allowed for 150mm insulation and 75 screed maybe incl mesh. Someone said sub floor so have put the job on hold. Would have to take out stone to get sub floor in.
Thanks for the video👍🏻
1:24 what is this guy actually doing?
🤔
Absoloutely nothing, I really don't understand the video clips. If you watch the British Gas adverts it is the same, some guy pretending to fix something.
And why does he have a hard hat in a luxury bathroom? These stock footage producers really need to up their game. I can see why they liven up a video though.
Clearly he's confirming to a customer that this is in fact a towel rail and pointing to it it's position so as to avert any future confusion on the issue.
Underfloor heating shouldn't be used as a stand alone system but, ideally, part of an overall integrated system with good insulation and double/triple glazed windows. Also look for alternatives to a gas boiler as underfloor heating works at a lower temperature and is more efficient if installed correctly.
My underfloor heating (Nu-Heat) runs off a thermal store of 750ltr, if heating is needed the u/f water is pumped through a heat exchanger in the thermal store and the boiler only kicks in once the TS has dropped a significant amount. This then economically utilises the oil fired condensing boiler as it’s not cycling on and off constantly
@@davidianwalsh Thanks for the heads up.
@@davidianwalsh I'm looking at a similar setup with an oil boiler also, thanks for the info!
The idea of having a hot radiator and a warm floor seems to defeat the energy savings of not having to put a lot of heat into water. As the temperature of the water rises it costs more energy per unit of heat to add. If you can keep your boiler at a MAX of say 48C and the return water maybe 10 degrees less...and adjust for outdoor temp...you should save some significant energy. It is SO expensive to drive 90C into water to make a radiator capable of heating a room.
Unless you add about 30cm of interlocking, sealed high density insulation then don't bother... Then the pipes are covered by poured, liquid concrete...
Needless to say it all must be professionally installed by a highly reputable firm..
But when down correctly the comfort is epic..
There are many way of doing this job and it is certainly a DIY job if you follow the instructions.
Here's the problem with mass market ufh. A 'normal' system runs at a fixed temp designed to heat your house when it's -2 outside. It will overheat the floor 90% of the year. They add wall thermostats to mitigate this. The smart engineers are running weather compensated mixers and no thermostats. And then we have engineers that don't understand the difference between dt20 and dt5 and tee the UFH off a rad circuit and wonder why the rads stop working when the UFH is on. Basically ufh is mosty misunderstood by both customers and plumbers.
I think you might be right about all that. Interesting ideas and Heat Geeks doing away with manifolds altogether which makes sense if you are running a boiler or heat pump at 50 deg C
Yep we have low build UFH across our ground floor (the EPS boards Roger was laying at 5:12), originally with a static mixer on the manifold and "dumb" smart controls on the (Vaillant) boiler constantly pumping out 70c flow temperatures relying on the manifold mixer to try and keep it down around 35-40c. We've now ditched the mixing valve on the manifold and swapped out the controls for Vaillant weather comp controls along with 2 Esbe electronic mixing valves managed by the Vaillant controls (installed by Andrew Millward, there's a video on his page of our install). That means we can run 2 separate weather compensated curves for the two heating circuits, one between about 20c and 40c for the UFH, the other that has a wider operating temperature range up to about 55c for the upstairs rads.
As an aside Roger, I'm not sure low build UFH necessarily needs rads for quick response in most instances, because the pipes are right under the floor surface its warm within 20 minutes from the boiler coming on unlike conventional UFH, which raises room temps almost as quickly as rads in our case, even with ~30c flow temps.
@@LocostR1 nice 🤘 we're militant Viessmann disciples just like Andrew and I wouldn't entertain fitting ufh without an electronic mixer. Fixed temp seems absolutely absurd to me.
@@randomcamerajunk6977 If I knew 2 years ago what I knew now I probably would have had Andrew in to install a Veissmann with this kind of setup from the off, much better modulation from what I understand and the controls look far more logical and easy to use than Vaillant.
Thats just stupid argument. Need to have mixer with thermostats. How do you control different room temperatures seperatly if not using thermostat. Not very smart to constantly adjust flow speed manually from manifold.
You definately need some thermal break under the pipes. I put UFH in a new build 20 years ago with 40mm PIR under it and never had a problem heating the whole rooms. 100mm is overkill IMHO, heat rises after all.
Heat rises in air through convection but in a solid floor we are talking about conduction which is happy in any direction.
Hello sir,great channel
I need an automatiozation for underfloor heating? Or it isnt neccesarly automatiozation.thank you
Why do I get the feeling Roger has subscribed to a stock video website:p
lol'd
The edit is not my job, it is way above my capabilities. I am merely the mouth on a stick.
@@SkillBuilder 'mouth on a stick' : That's the important bit.. keep going.
Yeah, I don't think those trees look very Surrey either.
Wouldn't these pipes collect moisture from the cold air touching their outer surface, and later could ruin the floor ??
No
Okay,
Could you brief a little ?
What is bad about electric underfloor heating?
The cost of running it!
It is not really suited to heating a room to 21 deg. It is fine for tile warm up. My neighbour three doors down had it even though I advised him to have hydronic. He ran it for one winter and it was £1,000 for the kitchen and dining area only. After that he switched it off and put some radiators in.
Doing same work, but instead of installing wire, better to install pipes. Wire only works with direct electricity, pipes can have more options. You can heat pipes with stight electricity but later upgrade it to gas or heatpump also.
Looking at fitting underfloor heating down stairs, im slowly coming to terms that the concrete floor screed will need coming up to do it properly!
No it doesnt you can get whats called a retro fit kit that goes on top of your current screed. It uses panels and the pipes click into it and then you fill the left over gaps with the filler that comes with the kit then put self leveling compound raises floor level by 22mm
@@leejames7964 But as Roger says, you will lose some heat through the ground. Much better to break up the existing concrete, dig down sufficiently to put 100mm of insulation, then lay your UFH pipes in a 50mm of concrete. It is disruptive,but it's worth it long-term.
The only item you missed when talking about the sensible thing to do is to also consider a heat pump alongside underfloor heating. Come on Rodger even you can't argue toss on that! Surely you can't do a video on underfloor heating and not talk at some point about the advantages of a low temperature heat source connected to it.
This can be done equally as good using a high modulating gas boiler like a viessmann 200 and weather compensation sensor. They are 3x cheaper to buy and almost identical to run. Heat pump has the edge but takes 20 years to make the saving back.
@@handle1196 Yet to hear anyone come up with a gas boiler that produces less carbon output per kw of heat than a heat pump, that's where the real conversation is. The current energy & environmental crisis is not down to the cost of renewable energy or its carbon footprint it's a fossil fuel crisis. The solution is not more of the same problem. My point wasn't that heat pumps should be the answer to everything but surely a video talking about a low temperature heating system basically designed for a heat pump needs to at least acknowledge them.
@@barryferguson6219 i don't think anyone wouldnt want to go for the greener option, it just has to be more appealing than the fossil fuel option. Cost of living is through the roof and not just with energy if they drop them prices over night, so people will always choose the cheapest option. A heat pump needs to cost half as much to purchase i think.
Barry
I actually did talk about heat pumps in this video and the fact that they don't work well if you switch them on and off but we cut it out because it was straying off the topic and a lot of people would see me as a stuck record. If you make videos for TH-cam it is always a job to keep them tight.
Low temperature heating can be done with any heating appliance but a gas boiler is way more responsive to the great variations we get in temperature. The carbon issue is important but really we need better technology before we kick out gas. They are already warning of possible power cuts in January so the last thing we need is more people drawing off the National Grid.
There is nothing sensible about Heat pumps.
I thought heat loss via uninsulated floors is 10%? If I'm right, the savings on not insulating in the first place will cover the first ~20 years of increased running costs..
I am not sure that the 10% holds true for placing heating pipes on a cold concrete floor but I could be wrong
I'm not sure where this figure of 10% comes from? Urban myth more like and one that a few underfloor suppliers like to tell customers to get sales. I would say it is more like 20% heat loss through the floor when heating up an uninsulated slab. If anyone can come along with some science to say otherwise I'm all ears!
Apparently 80% of the heat lost through the slab is lost at the side wall footing. It's the reason that the footings are insulated all the way down when doing EWI properly.
Cost a bloody fortune in gas bills for underfloor heating you need an outside large wood gasification boiler, forget gas and electricity ask me how I know the ground floor area is 38 feet x27 plus 4 rads upstairs winter bills are £600 summer 180 ish 20 years ago it was £60 a month in winter, the Froling s30 is the one to get
What a load of tosh. You wouldn't have a vested interest in wood gasification boilers would you Keith Rimmer formerly of Ecopod biomass boilers I assume? :)
@@LocostR1 No mate I just changed the gas boiler to wood-fired and saved a fortune in gas bills in an old stone coach house with flag floors and draughty old leaded windows
You'd hope to save a bit on the gas bill with a wood fired boiler 👍
nicht wirklich ein fachmann
legend
Träge. Und kalte Böden gibts nur in alten Häusern.
Ich stimme nicht zu, selbst mit Isolierung ist die Betonplatte kalt.
i only have wooden suspended floors (joists and floor boards) whats the best way for me to install under floor heating? if i use 120mm kingspan suspended between the joists then run my pipe should i cut out a hole for the pipe or should i go under them so as not to weaken the joists? on top of that im planing to use 18mm kaberdeck finished off with LVT glued down. any help is appreciated. thanks
If you go to our home page and type in underfloor heating in the smaller search bar it will show you a few different systems. You can now get 22mm chipboard that is routed out to take the pipe, You still need the insulation but putting all the pipe above the joists has advantages.
If you go for the pipe in tray method between the joists then I would notch the joists on the cross overs. Strictly it should not be too close to the ends but it is much easier than trying to drag the pipes through the holes. Going under is fraught with problems.
@@SkillBuilder thanks