Underfloor vs Rads - efficiency

tails_naf

Hi All,

I am about to repair my UFH - but I am under tremendous pressure from everyone with 'half an opinion' to scrap the UFH ideal altogether and go with rads. I agree at this stage it would be simpler, but I'm intending on sticking to my guns and going with the UFH.

However, in defense of the rads case, I've been told by more than one person that 'mr x down the road went with UFH and it's costing him a fortune in oil..'. etc.

So this leads me to the question - is UFH really less efficient than rads in practice (with the constraint that an oil boiler is the fuel source)?


From looking online people seem to say its the same - but I guess heat loss calculations still give a rather high loss if the floor slab is running at 30-35C and there is 0.15U of insulation.
Also the fact UFH is ~24 hours ticking over - while rads are generally off for large parts of the day may mean they are cheaper to run.


The house I'm building should be A3/B1 in terms of energy efficiency - and airtight with HRV, which will help if it is less efficient, but I'd like to know what people really think - will I be spending a good amount to repair a heating system which will cost me another good amount more to run?

HenBB

I am a bit confused are you repairing an existing underfloor heating system or looking at what heating system to put in a new or renovated house.

You do not need to keep UHF running 24 hours a day. I run mine from around 3am to 7pm (I leave the house at 8am) and then from 5pm to 9pm (not normally home till 7pm) but even at weekends when I am here the whole time I don't find I need to switch if on outside of these hours. This winter the heat in my house was fantastic, I sat in someone else's house one night wishing to go home because I was frozen there and I never remember their house as being a cold house.

The difficulty I am having now is that I switched off the heating completely because I was away for a few weeks and I don't know what to do with these cold days.

When do other UHF people switch off their heating?

Comic Book Guy

Am currently doing up my spec list for builders quotes and am still undecided about whether to install ufh or radiators off a condensing boiler.

Why are you having to fix the ufh in the first case?

To the second poster did you put in ufh on both storeys or is your house a bungalow.

All things being equal what would be the additional cost of installing ufh over radiators in a 2500 sq ft two storey?

I'd advise you all to search the forum for "underfloor heating", there are plenty of threads discussing the pro's and con's about it and running costs etc.

tails_naf

For the reason I am repairing my UFH ... read the sorry story here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055821386

In the process of repairing now. will post pics when done.