Underfloor Heating???

smartaform

Hi All,

Just finalising a few things for our new house and i'd like to know people's opinions on Underfloor Heating Panels.
- If you used them before, would you again.
- Flaws associated.
- Worthwhile??

I thought this would be the best place to get some feedback - like everyone we are looking for the most effective method's available

Thanks in advance.

glanman

From what I have read and hear it works most effectively when coupled with a heat pump, the above ground one. What way are you going to run it? I had an appartment with it but it was ran on electricity and it had astronomical bills in winter. Very comfortable but very expensive. That said, the building was built ten years ago so that affected it I would say. Heat pump means that you don't have many bills, elecricity to run it but they are efficient enough

Joey the lips

It works great if done right. Do not allow builders to use qualpex. There is specialist pipe. Start with systemlink. They are good. The trick with underfloor is use as less joints as possible,

JuniorB

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055621243
:rolleyes:

Frowzy

Our house is built 6 years and we installed underfloor heating when building (No radiators whatsoever), the house is 3800 sq feet and is always warm. The underfloor heating gives a much more even spread of heat throughout the rooms. There are 2 things to remember and people get confused about all the time:

(1) Underfloor Heating.
Does exactly what it says on the tin. It's heating under the floor instead of radiators.

(2) Geothermal Heating
It's a way of putting heat into the underfloor heating. It's a system whereby you dig up your garden and lay pipes in the soil, these pipes then take the heat from the soil and use it to heat your house. You don't have to have it to run underfloor heating, you can run underfloor heating from oil or from a wood pellet boiler either. The geothermal and wood pellet boilder systems are sustainable and therefore you will get a grant towards the cost of installing them.

If you intend to go ahead I'd advise the following from experience:

(a) Be sure of who you get to install it, any plumber will tell you that he can do it. Don't be afraid to go and look at work he/she's done previously and ask around. Go with someone recommended, not from the phone book, it's an expensive system to go wrong and would involve digging out every floor if it's wrong. Please don't just go with the cheapest quote.
(b) Make sure that the system is tested before the concrete screed is poured. Again if you pour concrete and the system doesn't work you have to dig up all the concrete!
(c) Whomever you get to do it make sure that they use 1 length of pipe from the manifold around the room and back to the manifold again. Joints only cause problems, avoid them at all costs.
(d) Make sure that you have a thermostat in every room. Having just one for upstairs and one for downstairs does not work and will end up costing you more to run the system.
(e) Tell everybody that is doing work on your house now and in the future that you have underfloor heating. Last thing you want is a fella hammering a stairs to the floor and putting a nail through one of the pipes. Always worth letting them know.
(f) Don't put too much concrete on top of the pipes, the heat needs to be able to get through. 2 inches max.
(g) Make sure that enough pipe is used under the floors. I've seen it done where the pipe is laid 2-3 feet apart. This isn't enough to get adequate heat into the house. Ours is laid about 5/6 inches apart.
(h) Can't say this enough, insulation, insulation, insulation.... Under the downstairs floor of our house we have 6 inches of aeroboard topped with a layer of 2L2. 2L2 is a kind of tin foil bubble wrap insulation. It's equivalent to about 4 inches of aeroboard adn because it's foil it reflects the heat back into the room instead of letting it downwards. We have another layer of this under the concrete screed upstairs.

If you plan to go for the geothermal heating now then that's fine. However if like us the cost implications are too much you can set the system up so that geothermal can be added in the future. We set our up for this but have decided not to spend the €10k quoted to install the system because we find it cheap enough to run. We only turn our heating on from mid-November to March and the house is always warm. Everyone says so and our house has been used as an example for potential customers in the past. This I'd say is down to good insulation in floors and walls! However if you want to set the system up so you have to option to use geothermal in the future remember the following:

(1) Make sure enough pipework is installed the foundations of the utility room or garage or wherever you would plan to put your heat exchanger when it would be installed.
(2) install a dual coil water tank so that the water can be heated by immersion or geothermal.
(3) Install a night-saver ESB meter when building. Think it cost us around an extra 5 or 600 euro at the time but it's definately worth it for the electricity you will use to run te heat exchanger in the future. Also I find it great for running the washing machine / dryer / dishwasher at night.

I hope that some or all of this information is helpful to you if you decide to go with underfloor heating. The most important decision being who to get to install it!
Best of Luck with the build.
F

mr_edge_to_you

Good post frowzy, just a point though that grants are no longer available for new builds.

YourAverageJoe

Frowzy,

Am thinking of doing the exact same set-up as you and then, like you, maybe putting geo in later. But for the time being, how much would running it on oil cost? How much oil do you use in a year?

Thanks

4gun

smartaform wrote: »

Hi All,

Just finalising a few things for our new house and i'd like to know people's opinions on Underfloor Heating Panels.
- If you used them before, would you again.
- Flaws associated.
- Worthwhile??

I thought this would be the best place to get some feedback - like everyone we are looking for the most effective method's available

Thanks in advance.

what type of insulation are you using or going to use as this would be more important than the heating system
the more you put into insulation the less you have to put into heating