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underfloor heating- has anyone gone down this road??

 
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tl



Joined: 22 Feb 2006
Posts: 2

PostPosted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:46 pm    Post subject: underfloor heating- has anyone gone down this road?? Reply with quote

I don't like the look of radiators and am considering underfloor heating. I'm weighing up the positives and negatives, there seem to be more positives.....does anyone have an opinion?????
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BrianM



Joined: 10 Mar 2006
Posts: 12

PostPosted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 12:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

We did a lot of research into this, and nearly went with underfloor heating, but in the end we decided not to.

Like you, we didn't like the idea of having radiators visible in the house.

There seems to be two main issues with underfloor heating...

1) If it's not done right, and something goes wrong, it can be a serious nightmare to fix.

2) It's not as responsive. Because of the time it takes to heat up the house, you have to rely on setting your timers and having a more constant ambient temperature. You can't just come in at night, boost the heat and expect the house to heat up in 20 mins.

Anyway, that was the outcome of our investigation. We went with traditional radiators in the end and are more than happy with them.

If you do decide to go with an underfloor system, unipipe seemed to offer the most professional system when we looked.
http://www.homewise.ie/supplier/Wicklow/UnipipeIrelandLtd/28034/

Brian.
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MarkEm



Joined: 15 Mar 2006
Posts: 2

PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 10:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Underfloor heating (UFH) is very different from radiators. Apart from the aesthetic issue and the cost issue (instalment and running), it's a different way of heating your home and you need to consider what will work best for you.

Brian has already pointed out one aspect of it - that UFH is not instant heat. It works best for people who want to have their house constantly warm. So if you are out all day every day, if you go away every weekend and frequently for longer periods, then maybe UFH would not provide for your heating needs.

Another aspect is that UFH radiates heat from below, whereas readiators (funnily enough) hardly radiate any heat at all. Most of the heat from a radiator is by convection. That is, the warm air rises from above the radiator, hits the ceiling, travels along a bit and falls to the floor. The warm air cycles round the room in this way. With UFH, the heat radiates from the floor upwards. Now I haven't installed my UFH yet, but I'm told that this gives a very different feeling. With radiators (or more acurately convectors!) you can be warm at head level but colder at feet level, particularly if you have floor level draughts. With UFH, it's the opposite. You are warmer at feet level and colder at head level. As far as I can ascertain, most people prefer to have toasty feet and a cooler head. Radiators can, in comparison, make a room feel more stuffy. Also, the heat from UFH tapers off considerably past head height so you are not wasting energy heating the air above your head. Might be an important consideration if you have high ceilings.

You'll need to think about these aspects (and others) and decide what is best for you. For me, UFH is almost the perfect solution for the renovations we are doing to our house. I work at home sitting at a computer all day and often my feet and legs get cold. But if I whack up the heat from the radiator the room gets stuffy. My wife is particularly prone to both stuffiness and cold extremities so UFH should be a treat for her. We spend most of our time at home so the constant heating is ideal. And we are laying stone floors in our downstairs, so again UFH is ideal. Toasty stone floors!

Having said that, we're going for radiators upstairs because the work involved in installing UFH in floors we otherwise don't have to rip up would either be very expensive or involve raising the floor height and the ceilings are low enough as it is so we can't do that. This dual system obviously involves a more complicated control system but that's the way it is.

One other consideration - if you are considering geothermal energy, it won't work with radiators, only UFH.

Hope this helps,
Mark
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yop



Joined: 16 Mar 2006
Posts: 1

PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey,

We are coming towards the end of our selfbuild and we have UFH installed with GEO

Yes GEO and UFH are more suited but in using GEO you can still use Rads, there are these "fanned" rads which use only one pint of water but use the fans to circulate the heat, About 200 euro a piece from what I have heard.

I installed our UFH, both upstairs and downstairs on a 2100 sq ft house it cost me 4500 euro for all the materials, with time and patience you can do it.
UnderfloorDirect supplied our gear and there were CAD drawings to show you where to run the pipes.

Gluck with it.
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MarkEm



Joined: 15 Mar 2006
Posts: 2

PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 4:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

yop wrote:
in using GEO you can still use Rads, there are these "fanned" rads


Ah yes. I forgot about those. We looked into using fan rads but were told that they are very costly to run. They also make a significant noise. Not a lot of noise, but significant enough (we thought) to be annoying.

Mark
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kerry



Joined: 25 Apr 2006
Posts: 1

PostPosted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I to am thinking of having underfloor heating. I heard that you cant have under carpets and it may also warp wood. It works better under tiles
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aine



Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 8

PostPosted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:23 am    Post subject: Underfloor Heating Reply with quote

Have underfloor heating downstairs and radiators upstairs. Whilst I love the effect of the underfloor heating, it is not very responsive and is very expensive to run - we have an oil tank. We had to take up wooden floors (thin parquet so heat came through but they contracted and moved in winter when heating was on but were okay in summer months) and replaced with ceramic tiles which are the best conductors.

If I had to choose again, I would not have installed it for above reasons but what I would consider is perimetre heating - pipes run behind skirting boards so no rads, but should be more responsive.

Hope this is helpful.
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