Underfloor Heating

Underfloor heating is warm water is circulated through a series of heating pipes, generally laid in the floor at the time of building. These pipes form a continuous loop between two central manifolds. Each room has its own circuit of pipes and can be controlled putting the heat exactly where you want it.

Underfloor heating has many benefits including aesthetics - there are no radiators taking up wall space. This allows greater freedom to decorate and furnish the rooms as you please. Underfloor heating can also be up to 25% cheaper to operate than a traditional radiator system when used with a high efficiency condensing boiler. This level of saving can easily be maintained and may even be exceeded.

Underfloor heating systems are generally no more expensive to install than a comparable radiator system. To give you a rough idea, underfloor heating will cost you about as much as a good quality carpet, or a fraction of the cost of a fitted kitchen.

You can use any kind of fuel to warm the water that circulates through the underfloor heating pipe. The most popular choices are oil, gas and solid fuel in the form of a conventional boiler. The best choice is a condensing boiler because these are at their most efficient while working at the lower temperatures required by the underfloor heating.

Alternative power sources can be used as the system operates on low temperatures (typically between 35C and 50C) it is ideal for connecting to alternative heat sources such as solar panels, a heat recovery system, a heat pump, or an Aga style cooker. These systems can be used in any combination to supplement the output from your boiler and save you even more of your fuel costs.

The systems are service free and have undergone extensive testing – a quality system should last in excess of 25 years.

Each room has a separate circuit and its own thermostat, linked to a motorised valve. Add-ons include a weather compensating system that monitors the outside temperature and maintains the system at your preferred temperature all the time.

Floor Covering

Hardwood flooring and wood laminates - underfloor heating is actually very good for wooden floors because it maintains a constant even temperature over the surface of the floor eliminating hot spots close to radiators. It is good practise to lay the wood flooring out loose to allow it to acclimatise to the room in which it is to be finally laid.

Carpet – the carpet and underlay should not have a combined tog rating greater than 1.5. Underfloor heating can be used in conjunction with any floor covering. Carpets will act as an insulator so the output from the floor will be slightly reduced. We can provide a quotation with guaranteed room temperatures based on your preferred floor coverings as long as you tell us about them when requesting a quotation.

Building Stages

Depending on your floor construction installation of underfloor heating should still be possible. Suspended timber floors where the floor levels are already set, preventing you from laying the pipes on top of your joists, you can install the pipes between the joists instead. This requires a little more preparation work from your joiner to install shelves between the joists where the pipes are attached. When it comes to laying the pipe our team will notch the joists to allow the pipe to pass between.

In a renovation i.e. built home fitting underfloor heating requires a high level of disruption and upheaval in and existing build and is often impractical, requiring the complete rebuilding of your floors.

A Simple Guide to Electric Storage Heating

Electric storage heaters are a less expensive way of using electricity to heat homes than fan heaters, oil filled radiators or radiant electric bar heaters, all of which use on-peak electricity. Storage Heaters use electricity supplied at a cheaper night-time rate (although some tariffs also have a mid-afternoon boost) to store heat in special heat-retaining bricks. These then give out heat slowly and are designed to keep warm for the whole of the following day. You can only get cheap night-time electricity if you are on an off-peak tariff such as Economy 7 or Warmwise, and this may involve adding a second electricity meter if you do not already have one (and paying an additional standing charge). You will need to check this with your electricity supplier.

Modern, slim-line storage heaters often have a charge control (or an automatic charge control) which adjusts the amount of heat stored overnight. An automatic charge control does this by measuring the temperature in the room (or more rarely, outside the house) and if it is milder, stores less heat (saving money in the process). If the storage heater has a manual charge control, you will have to make this adjustment yourself.

Storage heaters give out their heat in two ways:

by radiation from the front panel - this cannot be turned up or down, so will give out heat continuously, day and night (as long as there are still warm bricks behind it);

by convected heat in the form of warm air. This can be adjusted simply by flaps above the heat store, which can constrict the airflow through the store, so reducing the amount of heat taken from the store. More sophisticated storage heaters also have a fan which can blow air over the storage area to produce a heat boost; however it will also cool the heater down more quickly and if used too much may result in the storage heater getting cold before the evening when it is able to be heated up again.

Many people like to take advantage of storage heaters for background heat, but find that in the middle of winter they still need to supplement the heating by a direct electric heater, such as a fan heater.

Electric Underfloor Heating

Electric Underfloor Heating works in much the same way as storage heaters, except that there are fewer controls possible. In most cases the electric heating element is laid in the floor at the time the house (or, most often, flat) is built, and concrete is poured around the heating elements to provide the thermal mass instead of the heat retaining bricks. The floor is sometimes then tiled with special heat-spreading tiles. Underfloor heating of this type can be expensive to run. It does not work well with fitted carpets, and can cause wooden furniture to distort. The main advantage of this type of heating is that there are no radiators or storage heaters on any walls.

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