advice on electric underfloor heating for holiday house?

banjobongo

hi, Im a newbie on this site, Ive often browsed it, its a great swite, but this is my first post...Im looking for advice and woudl be very grateful for any and all responses! - right, here goes:
I have a very small holiday house (kerry), its an old house, with no heating. Putting in a central heating system is not an option, woudl cost too much, and anyway the house is too small for either e burner or for radiators. So at the moment heating is provided by the fire!
We need to put down a new floor downstairs, and we want to put down wooden laminate flooring (lots of kids running around with dirty sandy feet etc).
A friend of mine happened to mention that they use electric underfloor heating.
So Im wandering woudl this be a good option for my wee house in Kerry, seeing as we need to put a new floor down anyway.
I mentioned this to another friend of mine who is an architect, and he thinks that this is not a good idea, he says its a very inefficient.
To be honest, I am really keen on this idea, it sounds like the ideal option for me as it takes up no room, and will heat up the main living area.
Does anybody out there have any feedback on electric floor heating?
Thanks!

ircoha

The long answer is dont:)

IMO: laminate floor on the underlay (on top of DPM) on top of elec heating will not work well as both are good insulators

banjobongo

thanks for that - if I went for a real wood floor would that make any difference do you think?

Hoagy

Underfloor heating, be it electric or otherwise, works best when the house is kept at a comfortable temperature constantly.
I would imagine that your requirement is for the heat to come on when you arrive at the house and bring the temp up quickly.
Underfloor really isn't suitable for that at all.
I would have thought that panel heaters would suit your requirement better.

doylemc

I also have a small house in Co Kerry for the past 30 years. It is an old house, where radiators and boilers would not be suitable. After a lot of soul searching and opposition from family, I replaced the open fire with a traditional stove 4 years ago, and it is brilliant. The stove is stand alone.... no boiler or radiators. It is in the main room, and the heat from it goes through the whole house. You can burn coal, turf or wood in it. It is ideal for a holiday home. About 1 hour after lighting, the house is comfortable, and about 1 hour later you need to open the windows to let heat out !!! Since fitting the stove, 3 locals have copied the idea..... including an architect !!! and they are all very happy. "I should have done it years a. and no problems

PS.... I am building a small sunroom extension shortly. I am considering underfloor heating under a tiled floor as a pure luxury ......... a simple system to heat this area on a Summers evening if needed... as I say a luxury.......... a no pipes or radiators etc.

fishdog

IMO: laminate floor on the underlay (on top of DPM) on top of elec heating will not work well as both are good insulators

I would agree 100%

if I went for a real wood floor would that make any difference do you think?

No, I may also have a bad effect on you wood!

Underfloor heating, be it electric or otherwise, works best when the house is kept at a comfortable temperature constantly.
I would imagine that your requirement is for the heat to come on when you arrive at the house and bring the temp up quickly.
Underfloor really isn't suitable for that at all.

This is trure, however I installed a system in a holiday home that you could phone to switch the underfloor heating on as you drove down to your holiday home so it would be warm when you arrived. I was sold by "hot foot" in Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow. A GSM module can be added to it if you have no phone line.

I am building a small sunroom extension shortly. I am considering underfloor heating under a tiled floor

This will work well.

c class 226

I find electric underfloor heating horribly expensive. It is also inflexible as it can only be run on night rate electricity. An oil boiler could be fired up at any time of the day. Tiled floors are your only man with any type of underfloor heating.
c class 226

fishdog

it can only be run on night rate electricity

This is not true! If you have it connected that way it can only be run on night rate electricity. I had electric underfloor heating and I did not even have night rate electricity!

c class 226

Electric underfloor heat can be run on day rate electricity. However, even with night rate at around 45% of the cost of day rate it is so expensive to run that I shudder to think of what it would cost at the day rate.
We have a 5 or 5.5 KW heater in 40 sq. m and our current day rate is 16 c per unit.
C class 226

fishdog

c class 226

Expensive? Perhaps, but I was just correcting this:

It is also inflexible as it can only be run on night rate electricity

...which is not accurate.