I stayed at a holiday cottage last autumn. First impression wearing socks in the kitchen..”This is nice”.. An hour later I realized that being warmed by the feet is fundamentally wrong and deeply unpleasant.

I’m about to lay screed in a new extension and have deliberately NOT fitted the stuff.- In contrast trendy 2010 thinking.

Who likes the expensive way of getting sweaty feet? – Am I odd?

What happens when it goes wrong – do you dig up the floor?

It’s probably better than the heating I had in my first house – ceiling heating. I kid you not. It’s true – heat does rise – the air space within a foot of the ceiling was always warm, shame about the rest of the house.

I think it is never meant to be on that hot, just enough to give a background warmth and take the chill off of stone floors. It also works well as a heat sink for large wood burners.

we have it in the hallway and kitchen (slate tiles)

it’s great, we have it on a few hours a day 7/365 at a warm to touch temperature to keep our tootsies warm whilst making our morning coffee. If we are feeling really indulgent then we bump it up a bit.

Bare in mind if you are tiling then you need to use far more expensive screed (silicon based i believe). It’s a synch to istall the electric stuff we have, just comes rolled up.

Had it in a cottage we stayed at during a winter break – ace idea, heat rises, takes the chill out of more practical hard floors, the floor dries v quickly if you tramp water over it, and you just brush dried mud straight back out of the door.

I’d def have had it fitted to my place if we could have afforded it at the same time as buying the house.

we’ve converted our entire ground floor to underfloor & love it, no hot/cold spots around the house, no cold wood or tiled floors. There’s nothing not to like.

There are no pipe joins beneath floor level, so chances of leaks are minimal. If you do have a problem, you have to lift the floor, but most traditional cerntral heating pipes run under the floor anyway, so little difference really.

If you’re getting sweaty feet, you’ve got it turned up way too high. Do this with an engineered wood floor and you’ll cook the boards which will delaminate them.

Had it in a holiday cottage in SW Ireland – TBH I wasn’t all that keen. I hate having hot feet and our little boy didn’t sleep at all well – his cot was pretty close to the floor.

Might have been a poorly fitted system though.

I have it in the kitchen electric system under screed with Oak floor on top. it’s perfect for us as we don’t have a wall for a rad due to kitchen layout, it’s cheap to run as it doesn’t switch on for prolonged periods but having the heat coming from low down all over and rising up is a much more pleasant heat than belting out from a rad.

Bare in mind if you are tiling then you need to use far more expensive screed (silicon based i believe)

No, you don’t. You need to use a flexible adhesive and grout but it can go on ANY screed.

I’ve stayed in a few hotels where the bathrooms have underfloor heating and I don’t like the feeling. The heated mirror however is a brilliant idea.

Underfloor heating is better for you health. Radiator systems transmit heat via convection, which by its very nature creates a circulation of dust within the room. With underfloor heating the heat is transmitted by radiation thereby reducing the amount of circulation so that the air that breathed is cleaner and less allergenic.

Also heat rises from radiators, so in a room you first have to heat the ceiling,which wastes energy, underfloor heating heats the zone you are in. Also radiators are FUGLY and limit room layouts

EDIT: Also because UFH systems operate at lower temperatures you make saving straight away in fuel costs. If you have a condensing boiler you will benefit in increased efficiency and savings

I hate having hot feet and our little boy didn’t sleep at all well – his cot was pretty close to the floor.

All heating should be off when you’re in bed anyway. I can’t sleep anywhere when the heating is on. Ours goes off at 10pm.

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We have underfloor (Electric) heating in the bathroom. It comes on in the morning and the evening, but only enough to gently warm the floor. It does seem to help keeping the room warm as well though.

Utter luxury, IMO! 🙂

I love it and think it works brilliantly under a tiled floor which can feel cold to the toes. I fitted a hot water system in our kitchen floor earlier this year and wish I had it in the bathrooms too.

There is no need for a special screed though the type of screed that flows can make large areas easier to deal with….at a price. I could write loads there are so many variables so all I will say is anyone considering underfloor heating do some research.

Had it for the whole ground floor in the last house. It was an ancient electric system set in concrete. It took a day to get warm but then stayed comfortable. It was great for new duvets, just leave them spread across the floor for a few hours and they fluff up amazingly.

Big problem, other than taking a day to warm up, was it took 2 days to cool down. Great in countries where you get seasons but in the UK you get weather so hot one day and cold the next. You couldn’t just turn it on for a couple of hours to take the chill of the room.

Probably beeter systems now. We have an electric one in the bathroom which is lovely. I am always suprise when in other peoples houses to find cold tiles in the bathroom. Sooo last year

The heated mirror however is a brilliant idea.

I made a heated mirror about 25 years ago. I bonded one of those heated pads for fermenting home made wine to the back of a mirror and wired it into a shaving light. I’ve used it nearly every day and it is luxury to get out of a hot shower, with the bathroom all steamed up and be able to shave in a clear mirror, with the shaver light illuminating the stubble.

I really think I have made it if the hotel I am stopping in has a heated floor in the bathroom. Very nice.

I would definately like it in parts if not all of my house.

BigJohn I salute your brilliantness!

I once saw a picture of one where the guy ran a long length of thin copper pipe coiled behind the mirror plumbed into the hot tap. More complicated and less eco friendly, but still cool.

We had a hot-water system installed for the entire ground floor of our house 7 years ago when we renovated it. Probably the best decision we made as the thick slate tiles in the dining room/kitchen have the chill taken off them (they’re flippin’ freezing otherwise), and also act as a giant storage heater so once warm, stay warm for ages. Great in the winter in an old stone house.
In the lounge there are 5 windows and 2 doorways, so with rads we’d have had no choice but to locate them under the windows, wasting a load of heat.

Last year we fitted an electric system to the bathroom when we re-did the floor with stone. Still got a rad in there for the main heating but it’s nice to have warm feet on a cold morning.

We have it in our bathroom.

As others have said. It’s only on at certain times and not too hot. I love it.

heated mirrors are brilliant especially on external walls. cost all of £20 and simply wire into the lighting circuit

We’ve got electric underfloor in our conservatory, and I’ve found it warms up the floor quickly but the room itself can stay quite cold unless the temp control is turned up significantly higher than might be expected. Not had it in use long enough to comment on whether it will have a significant effect on electricity usage.

Probably going to fit it when the kitchen gets refurbed, as the new layout will mean we loose the wall mounted radiator.

Whole ground floor here including wet room.

As already said you need to use it in a different way to the way you would radiators.

Leave it to warm up gently over 24 hours.

Sounds like some of those who’ve experienced it in holiday lets might be wopping it up to try and heat a room from cold – doesn’t work like that.

My mum and dad’s kitchen has underfloor heating and is great, just warm to the feel and evenly heated all over. A place we stayed at on holiday had it and it seemed to be really patchy, really warm in one place and cold in another and it melted a box of chocolates I’d inadvertently left on one of the hot tiles. So I think quality plays a part, but even the rubbish underfloor heating didn’t give me sweaty feet.

I put underfloor heating into our conservatory which we use as a diningroom: It’s great; have a roomstat set at 17deg which is perfect for when your feet are warm. Downside is that it needs to be on for longer than the rest of the heating (because it takes an hour to warm the floor) and is ticking over during the day meaning the poor boiler is cycling on/off all the time, which is probably why bits keep wearing out. Plus setting the timer is a nightmare (well I guess I did all the work myself and was too stingy to get a specialist in to install a system that could cope with 2 different zones doing different things!).
If the heat is too hot around your feet it is because the underfloor heating should have water at 40deg ciculating round it not the usual 65deg for a convential set-up (should have a seperate pump and thermastatic mixer).

Had it in a Nursery I worked in 12 yrs ago.
Bloody awful.
Nowhere to warm my hands/bum when I came in from outside. Nowhere to dry kids soggy clothes. Took 3 days to change temperature from being too hot to too cold.

It’s a very efficient method of heating a space. So much so, the flow temps can be reduced on your boiler resulting in less energy usage. Thermal mass must be considered; warm up times can be lengthy.
Can be well utilised in conjunction with an air to air heat pump.

I fancy it in our downstairs. We have a 3 storey house with the living space on the middle floor, so the downstairs is fairly cold (despite all our insulation tactics), and it has a tiled floor which makes it worse.

We’d have to pull the whole floor up tho.

just weighing it up for installation in living room and bathrooms in an old house. I’ve liked it in other places.