under floor heating

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Browndog
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Re: under floor heating

Post by Browndog »

Hello

Had an extension built last year, finished in November, approx 50 square meters with water piped under floor heating running from a new condensing boiler.
So good boiler and well insulated room, and the heating is amazing!!!

As written is some earlier posts, the floor actually doesn't feel warm to the touch but boy does it keep the room warm.
I had a gas pipe put in for a fire as I didn't think the under floor heating would be enough, I was wrong.
Set it at 18c all day allowing it to drop to 16c at night.
It really is brilliant if done well.
If its mild, the boiler hardly comes on, more obviously if its freezing out.

Just my experiences of it.
Hope its helpful.

Cheers
Tony
Redmurty
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Re: under floor heating

Post by Redmurty »

Adrian wrote:Spud,
The best place for under floor heating is definitely under the floor :whistle:

Does that get me a beer? :woohoo:

Ade
NO!!!!!!! that get's you TWO :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

cheers Spud ;)
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Freeloadeur
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Re: under floor heating

Post by Freeloadeur »

Just echoing what others have said. I had UFH on my house in France downstairs with no heating upstairs and it was enough to keep the whole place warm. The heat was never enough for a human to feel the tilted floor was warm, but it didn't feel cold like tiles with radiators can feel. Because I had exposed beams and floorboards only the heat would transfer upstairs enough to keep the bedrooms.

The house did have a hefty slab, loads of insulation and four foot thick granite walls, all of which helped build up a heat sink which helped hugely. Like others have said, it's not an instant response, you need to turn the heating on a bit earlier in the season to get things warming up, and we would start ours off while ether was silk some residual summer heat in the walls, it might only have run for a few minutes a day but it mutant we never had a cold period.

Initially it ran with an oil fired boiler, while not condensing, it was specifically designed to run at the cooler temperatures UFH needs, I think it was 45°C output 35°C return, but when the boiler died, being a but of an eco-freak I installed a home-modified ground source heat pump, but instead of taking the heat from the soil, and because a new one was bring installed at the time, I wrapped a plastic septic tank with the tubing and installed it in a bed of concrete mixed with polystyrene beads, the pump running of photo-voltaic cells with a back up battery system.

I know it sounds a bit stomach-churning to some to have your house heated by your own waste, but I figured I was wasting heat generated by the natural breaking-down process, so why not harness it. It writhed well with output temperatures higher than the boiler, and of course aside from the cost of materials, half of them dragged out of skips, it was totally free.

Sadly when it came time to sell, the buyers decided to get connected to mains drainage instead and fitted an air-source pump instead.

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PeterT
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Re: under floor heating

Post by PeterT »

We have oil fired piped under floor heating in half our house which is tiled. Boy you can't half tell the difference. Nonetheless, it does keep the whole house warm. We also run a wood burning stove too and the heat produced between them means that the upstairs thermostats are turned right down. Can't reccomend it highly enough.

We went to Edinbrough for a couple of days and left our daughter to the house. She tried to adjust the heating one night and got it wrong. When we came back the tiles were like a hot mediterranian beach, I think she'd blown about a month's oil in one night. :unsure: You do need to keep control of it. ;)
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Re: under floor heating

Post by Hoggyf »

All the people saying how good UFH is in a WELL insulated building are correct and I'm a huge fan of UFH but.... if your conservatory is going to be mostly glass with either a glass or polycarb roof, think hard about it and get someone qualified to do the heatloss calcs for you.
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