Underfloor heating vs rads

Bitten & Hisses

Having recently obtained our planning permission, we are about to start on construction drawings and thus begins the fun! I am agonising over the whole underfloor heating vs conventional radiators and will explore the running cost side of it in due course.
Can anyone give a stab at the % difference in cost between underfloor and rads, purely from an installation point of view? For the purposes of this exercise, I would be excluding the heat source (definitely not going with a ground source heat pump) and thermal store. Thanks in advance for any help.

mr_edge_to_you

Well, we are building a 2100sq ft house with under floor heating upstairs and downstairs. It is costing us 6000e. Our heatpump is costing us 13ish. Our house would require about 14 large traditional radiators. No idea what they'd cost.

Naux

Bitten,

I'm facing the same choice as your good self at the moment. My wife is insisting on rads at the moment as she says she'll need them to dry kids clothes etc.

I have nothing definite on the costs front yet but depending on the house/window design you may have to go for non conventional rad shapes in certain areas of the house which would increase costs.

I'll post my price findings when I get info back from plumbers.

Naux

Bitten & Hisses

Cheers guys. I suppose I'm just trying to get a feel for which way we'll go. I would prefer to go UFH if the budget allows, but I suppose time will tell.

kt217

i have 1 room in my house an extension with ufh and i have to say if i could i would rip up all the floors in the rest of the house and put it in

mark2003

Bitten & Hisses wrote: »

Having recently obtained our planning permission, we are about to start on construction drawings and thus begins the fun! I am agonising over the whole underfloor heating vs conventional radiators and will explore the running cost side of it in due course.
Can anyone give a stab at the % difference in cost between underfloor and rads, purely from an installation point of view? For the purposes of this exercise, I would be excluding the heat source (definitely not going with a ground source heat pump) and thermal store. Thanks in advance for any help.

if you are not going for a heat pump,you would be better off going with rads.it would be about 40% cheaper to go for rads.If you do go for underfloor heating,it is a better way of drying clothes.put them on a clothes rack and the heat rising from the ground will dry them and also will still heat the room....,if you have clothes on the rads it will prevent the heat circulating the room.Go for the underfloor heating so you have an option of a heat pump.heat pumps will definitely save money

muffler

mark2003 wrote: »

.If you do go for underfloor heating,it is a better way of drying clothes.put them on a clothes rack and the heat rising from the ground will dry them and also will still heat the room....

And fill your room with condensation...:eek:

JuniorB

heat pumps will definitely save money

I'd love to hear your reasoning behind this statement!

mr_edge_to_you

All my research has told me that ufh is very very expensive to run with oil. That is from reading other threads but most of the feedback is from people I know. If you are going for UFH then I think the advice is to go with the heatpump. If you're going with oil stick with rads and just be prepared for high bills!

muffler

moved to the main C & P forum

Have a look at this thread, http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055621243 exactly the same discussion.

One of these UFH -v- rads should be stickied, the subject seems to repeat every few months.

mark2003

muffler wrote: »

And fill your room with condensation...:eek:

Not if you have hrvsystem in the house

ninjaBob

If you are considering wooden floors, you need to be careful as you may be limited to the type of floors or find it more expensive to get exactly what you want.

ninjaBob

ninjaBob wrote: »

If you are considering wooden floors, you need to be careful as you may be limited to the type of floors or find it more expensive to get exactly what you want.

We went for tiles throughout the house, wood effect ones in most of the rooms and plain ones in the hall kitchen etc.

Bitten & Hisses

mark2003 wrote: »

if you are not going for a heat pump,you would be better off going with rads.it would be about 40% cheaper to go for rads.If you do go for underfloor heating,it is a better way of drying clothes.put them on a clothes rack and the heat rising from the ground will dry them and also will still heat the room....,if you have clothes on the rads it will prevent the heat circulating the room.Go for the underfloor heating so you have an option of a heat pump.heat pumps will definitely save money

I am far from convinced that a heat pump will save money, due to the high capital and running costs associated with them. It is attractive from a technological point of view, but unless I had bottomless pockets and was installing a wind generator, I wouldn't touch it.
Mark2003, you mention a figure of 40% cheaper for installation of rads vs underfloor heating. This is the kind of info I was originally looking for. Can you elaborate a bit on how you reached this figure?

mr_edge_to_you

Bitten,

I get two very detailed quotes for our build - "all under one roof companies". The cheapest of them showed the following:

UFH €7300 over Rads
Heatpump €10500 instead of oil boiler.

That is for UFH upstairs and downstairs - not including the 11k extra for the concrete slabs to the first floor which you really need for UFH upstairs.

My parents just spent 8k upgrading their OFCH to Condenser boiler with zone heating and thermostats on radiators.

It is an expensive outlay and I don't think the savings are as great as people think but speaking to friends they cannot imagine life with the heatpump. One mate is 2 years in his house, 3000sq ft, storey and half and his TOTAL ESB was 1800e in first year and 2000e in year two. Good enough for me!

ThePiedPiper

mr_edge_to_you wrote: »

Bitten,


UFH €7300 over Rads
Heatpump €10500 instead of oil boiler.

That is for UFH upstairs and downstairs - not including the 11k extra for the concrete slabs to the first floor which you really need for UFH upstairs.

Mr Edge,
I'm not sure where you're getting these figures.. I've concrete slabs to my first floor. The total cost of supply and fit was €4,300; the house is 2,700 sq feet. And I'm pretty sure the cost differential between me having UFH instead of Rads was nowhere remotely close to €7,300.

Maybe in 2007 or 2008, the figures were closer to the ones you quote but certainly in 2009, it's possible to up-spec a lot without paying over the odds..

mr_edge_to_you

I'm open to correction on the slab cost as the builder we are actually employing is supplying that but I can honestly say that 7k is the average of all 4 quotes I got for UFH for our 2100sq ft 1.5 storey house. Those figures came from a very detailed quote we received from a big reputable builder in the midlands. I will also add that it was not the quote we went with. We are sourcing our full heating system ourselves. The detailed quote was the best way I could ascertain the additional cost of UFH over rads. We were always going with UFH so I never really checked out rad prices.

Bitten & Hisses

mr_edge_to_you wrote: »

not including the 11k extra for the concrete slabs to the first floor which you really need for UFH upstairs.

I'll be going with concrete floors upstairs for fire and soundproofing reasons, regardless of heating system.

ThePiedPiper

mr_edge_to_you wrote: »

I can honestly say that 7k is the average of all 4 quotes I got for UFH for our 2100sq ft 1.5 storey house. .

Yeah, that makes more sense to me alright... I'm in the same boat as yourself, I don't know the exact saving but the cost is around what you were talking about too...

The concrete slab floors though are great value IMO. We've only two bathrooms upstairs with UFH, and would've done the slab irrespective of UFH. Cost difference is minimal as far as I was able to find out..

bbam

We opted for rads, oil and solid fuel stove... The cost of UFH and heatpump were too excessive given that so many people round me were unhappy with heatpump performance.

Heat pump performance is so dependant on soil types and if its not right then it's just a money pit, our friend has a 3200sq ft house and two monthly ESB bills of €800 to €1000, and then have to sit with extra jumper on :eek:
They are putting in an oil burner for this winter to drive the UFH

I can't put my hand on the plumbing quote now but it was €14K-->€16K more expensive for UFH and heatpump for ourselves.

I think another mistake folks make with UFH is the fact that it is such a low level consistant heat the house will need to be draught free or the heat is lost..