Hiding radiator pipes and concrete floors

I’m in the process of buying a house and have just found out from the surveyor that the first floor is solid concrete so my plan to have the upstairs rad pipes moved under the floorboards is out the window. My other half is adamant that they have to be out of sight but she definitely still wants a central heating system.

Boxing seems to be the only solution but I can only find nasty looking plastic or I’ll have to test my carpentry skills and whatever I do is going to stick out a bit more than skirting from the walls. And then there’s the 4-pipe high monstrosity in the picture below to deal with.

Has anyone solved something similar?

1. Up into the loft and down a corner or behind a curtain.
2. Build out the whole wall and hide it in the cavity/behind the skirting.
3. Start digging out channels in your concrete floor and bury the pipes in there.
4. Tell her to get over it, you’ve bought the house and box them in.

I’d go for option 4 especially as once the room is furnished it won’t look anywhere near as bad.

My house has concrete floors on the ground floor and the rad and central heating pipes run between the wall and plasterboard via 10mm microbore piping.

One of my colleagues just spent £5k getting all the corroded pipes in his Mum’s house dug out of the concrete floors and redone.

I can’t imagine it would be much less than that to get them laid into an existing floor….

What about those skirting board radiators?

Tell the mrs you are going to box it in or move it then just put furniture in front of the worst bits and forget about it

Out of interest, any idea how much it would have cost to do if the floor wasn’t concrete? We’re in the process of buying a 3 bed house where most/all of the heating pipes are visible. I’d like to sink them either into the floor or walls but have no clue how much it might cost. Will get someone round but it would be handy to have a very rough idea.

Tell the mrs that the pipes will add to the heating efficiency and make the rooms warmer in winter

How about replacing the skirting, but spacing it out from the wall with a 20mm strip of carcassing timber top and bottom so it creates a pipework conduit behind the skirt? Or chopping out a channel at skirt height.

Buy silver pipes and make them a feature. Tell her you saw it on a design show and its the latest craze. All the celebs are doing it.

My mate had the same problem with a concrete floor in hist kitchen / dining room. He cut channels into the floor and fitted plastic ducts. He then used the plastic piping fed into these ducts. It was meesy and time consuming but their house was being pretty much gutted at the time.

Make sure you leave room at the end of the ducts to feed in the plastic pushfit pipiing just incase you need to replace it. Yes it does bend but not a lot.

He was a plumber so he knew what he was doing, I don’t know how easy it is to do for normal people but even he swore a lot.

its an everyday question.. either micro bore on the surface and box in or chase out the plaster and microbore under that.

for you pipes under a wooden floor i tell folks to factor on a ball park figure of 140 a room inc. materials and new valves.

I’ve tried saying that they won’t look that bad once the furniture is! She’s pregnant too so I need to pick my battles.

Reading some of these responses has made me realise how poor my DIY understanding is! I quite like the idea of running it up the corners and across in the loft or maybe chasing out behind the skirting. Whatever, it’s going to be a job for a professional.

Procrastinate until the baby arrives.

You’ll get at least 3 years where it won’t be mentioned once the baby’s there.

Moving the pipes so they come down the corners will involve taking floors and carpets up upstairs so a fair bit of mess and you would still need to box the pipes in somewhere.

Simplest option would be to build out the skirting by 2 or 3 centimeters, painting it to match and putting furniture in the way.

A mate and I cut channels into his concrete floor (albeit downstairs) in about 2 hours.

Procrastinate until the baby arrives.

You’ll get at least 3 years where it won’t be mentioned once the baby’s there. That’s my plan for the loft conversion.

I’m somewhat out of my depth on this but chasing out the plaster and boxing over that with skirting seems the way to go. Not sure how to handle the one in the picture though.

You won’t have enough depth of plaster to bury the pipes so you might as well just leave the pipes as they are and just box around them. It’ll be a lot easier as you won’t need to start cutting into the central heating pipes.

First step would be go round and check its solid concrete. Surveyor told me mines was….. I knew otherwise. 4 foot crawl space – just the hatch was hidden in a cupboard under stairs

Procrastinate until the baby arrives.

You’ll get at least 3 years where it won’t be mentioned once the baby’s there.

…by which time you’ll have had/expecting number 2/3 and will be looking to move to a house with more bedrooms!

One of my colleagues just spent £5k getting all the corroded pipes in his Mum’s house dug out of the concrete floors and redone.

I suspect they were just buried unprotected and the acidity of the concrete ate through the copper. You need to fully seal them in protective tape first / use trunking / use plastic pipes etc.

Or, just have the radiators moved.

Rads were originally out under windows because that was the cold spot. I’d bet that the replacement double glazing sorted that and you could realistically relocate the rads, which look old.

Replacing the radiators would bring a big efficiency (and not cost that puch for the gains you’d get with modern panels) as would shortening the pipe runs. So, less pipe showing, warmer rooms and less energy to achieve that has to be a win. I did it in a house a few years ago and managed to knock some 30 ft off the pipework and used 40% less energy to heat the house after the refit (same boiler).

How about replacing the skirting, but spacing it out from the wall with a 20mm strip of carcassing timber top and bottom so it creates a pipework conduit behind the skirt? Or chopping out a channel at skirt height

I did this when we completely rebuilt downstairs and had plastic microbore pipe put in – now you just see the tails coming out of top of the skirting board to the rads. The effect is (as expected) to clean up the walls nicely….. but the dust collects on the ‘ledge’ pretty quickly.

First world problem anyone? 😀

All your gains were in the rads and less pipework.

Rada are under windows to aid convection.

Infact did you own my house before me – were you the guy that in order to use the least pipe possible stuck all the rads on the ground floor within 8 feet of each other.

It’s simple.
Just raise the floor to cover them.
Or, cover the whole wall in horizontal pipes as an unconventional wall covering.

All your gains were in the rads and less pipework.

Rada are under windows to aid convection.

Yes they were. I didn’t claim anything else.

To quote CIBSE guidance

In application, they [radiators] should be set below windows to offset the major source of heat loss and minimise cold downdraughts.

If you wanted convection as the result, you’d put the rad opposite the window so rising warm air there would not be CANX out by the cold air falling from the window.

If you have efficient double glazing and decent curtains, the advantages of having a radiator under the window are far less than old single glazed units, so there can be a bit more flexibility in siting. They were often put under windows to keep wall space clear for furniture.

Fit underfloor heating?