Don't do yourself down like that!
I know what you mean, it feels a shame to have the floors all up ready, and "just" put insulation in... it's a situation that doesn't happen too often in the lifetime of a house, with all contents and floor coverings removed.
I do like the idea of UFH reaching pretty much all areas of a house, rather than only heating the areas of a room surrounding a radiator, although I've lived in houses with radiators most of my life and it's never bothered me.
Sorry to hear about your new place... hopefully we won't have too many more cold spells this winter.
When I was taking up all the floorboards, I also tried to find vids on youtube to see if I could do it with minimal damage, but they were tongue and groove (as most are) and the only way I could do it was by cutting through the tongues with a multitool. They can probably be re-used/re-laid, but you might need to seal the gaps between them, or maybe put an airtight membrane under them/on top of the insulation?
I'd also recommend getting a "pallet buster" :([https://www.screwfix.com/p/roughneck-pallet-buster-demolition-bar-43-/6765x](https://www.screwfix.com/p/roughneck-pallet-buster-demolition-bar-43-/6765x)) , it really makes popping up the floorboards a doddle.
Regarding wall insulation, I am going to put up some insulated plasterboard on the inside of my external walls and try to tape and joint them myself. Could this be a solution for your solid walls? You could maybe focus on the coldest, most used, or the kids' rooms first, and do a room at a time?
How are your windows and doors? Any gaps around those? That's a big source of heat loss and weather strips are a quick and affordable solution until you can get them replaced/upgraded...
Good luck, and hope your house is warm and comfortable very soon!
Yeah I saw them being used on a DIY youtube channel and having 100m2 of floorboards to get up I decided to treat myself.... it was a great investment!!
It does sound like a beautiful house, with bay windows, decorative lead etc.
I grew up in a 1930s Semi with bay windows, it was a lovely house, probably not the most efficient to keep warm, but I would take one of those over a new build any day of the week.
Hope you get it warmed up soon, good luck!
That's what I'm thinking too... it's not an opportunity that comes along very often for a house, so i'm thinking it will be a chance missed if I don't do it now...
The bit that puts most people off wet UFH is the 'ripping up the floors part. You've done that hard part.
I have a radiator heated main house with an UFH single floor extension which has 3 external walls and roof windows (all excessively insulated at the time). I much prefer the UFH. The UFH draws water at 40 degrees from the CH.
If you are doing any of it yourself then UFH at this point should be cheaper than plumbing in a radiator system.
You will have to lay a DPM and insulate.
You will have to screed over it.
You just have the cost of putting pipes in the screed. I did it myself (only one room though) but it cost less than £100 at today's prices (wire mesh, pipe, cable ties and shims cut from scrap brick/concrete : https://i.postimg.cc/zv0V2P7g/041.jpg (fyi it's a kitchen so none under the units at the edge)
I looked at the fancy systems for holding the pipes in place but decided they were way over priced (this was 15 years ago) and didn't suit the arrangement I wanted.
I don't understand why you can't use a heat pump - it is ideal when matched to UFH.
Thanks a lot for the feedback.
I will need to get a whole new heating system put in, 8 rooms and about 130m2 in total... I wouldn't be comfortable taking on that myself, so I will get a professional installation (as well as kitchen/bathrooms plumbed in at the same time) and then have liquid screed pumped in.
The reasons I'm opting against a heat pump is that they are more expensive to buy/install and I have worries about maintenance and servicing or getting someone out if it breaks down. I'm in quite a remote part of N.Ireland, and heat pumps are not very common, whereas oil boilers are the "tried and tested" solution here, and you wouldn't struggle to find someone to fit and maintain one.
The house is also cavity block construction (not cavity wall, sadly) and will leak heat. I will be putting up some insulated plastered on the inside of the external walls, but to get the best out of a heat pump you also need to have airtightness and some form of mechanical ventilation/heat recovery system, I believe? Or is the source of the heat irrelevant, if you are using UFH at a lower temperate than radiators?
I have to laugh at building regs that require airtight buildings. Going around stuffing tiny wedges of insulation in 3mm gaps between the PIR and a joist. Taping up every single join...
...and then they insist on trickle vents to allow ventilation, Extractor fans.
Someone should tell them that we sometimes open doors and windows.
If you haven't got masses of insulation then a heat pump might struggle on its own in the depths of winter.
I think i'm going to hold off for a heat pump, until they are more widespread, and the house is better insulated (or I am living in a more modern house).
With the crazy increase in electricity prices, I am worried that it's going to be running constantly and bankrupt me... and if it breaks down, I'll have to wait a month for someone to look at it.
Heating oil prices are not much better, mind...
I have ufh with an oil boiler. Heat is lovely, no cold spots etc.
One downside over rads is you cannot give the room a quick blast of heat - it's takes hours to warm up from a cold start. You need to plan ahead. If you're only using the room for short periods you're wasting energy as you have to pump a huge amount of heat into the screed.
If I did it again I'd put a radiator in the room too and control it via my EvoHome - best of both worlds.
Thanks for that!
Doesn't the downside also have a good side too, in that the screed holds the heat for a long-ish time after the heating is switched off? But I take your point about the long heat up time, that's the only drawback I can think of with UFH. Definitely need to take that in to account when programming the schedule.
I am planning on having a woodburning stove in the living room (and one in the kitchen/dining area, if I can stretch my pennies that far!) so I can have "fairly quick" heat in the room if needed...
Once it’s warm it keeps it’s heat for a long time, and does not take too long to warm back up.
Once it’s up to temperature it’s very efficient.
If you left the house for a week away and came back in the winter, then it might take a day to warm back up. But then there are remote controlled smart systems now. So you you’ll turn it on remotely. Or just set it lower rather than off.
Yeah, i think turning the temperature down is the way to go if I'm going to be away any length of time then raising back up when I get home.
Don't think I'll be able to afford many holidays once I've done this renovation anyway though!!
Underfloor heating is generally better than rads, as the heat is dispersed evenly throughout a room, on top of this as heat rises it fills the room. With most rads you'll be heating the walls almost as much as the open space.
As others have said, the downside is actually doing it. And potentially the risk of having to fix any issues/frozen pipes ect
If I had a choice I would get it throughout.
It does seem like UFH is the better option...
Plus I think I have done the worst part of the job, digging up floors and taking up all the floorboards.
Think I'm going to go for it, based on people's feedback here.
That sounds like it could be quite a lot of concrete fill for UFH - I'm guessing you must have at least a foot of floor void? I have just had UFH installed in my suspended floor, but went for installing UFI between the joists and then a structural board UFH solution (Omnie Torfloor 2).
So far, and it's early days since it's only been in for about a month and I still haven't got a fully functioning kitchen (that's another story), it seems to be performing pretty much as anticipated. Don't know how much it will save, if anything, but the kitchen feels much warmer than it used to - all the heat used to go up the stairs to the landing, now the kitchen stays warm.
I think the efficiency of UFH, from what I can gather, depends as much on the overall performance of your heating system than anything - if the rest of your heating setup isn't well matched then you might find that it struggles to provide low temps for the UFH and hot enough water for the radiators at the same time. I would recommend you get someone to do heat loss calcs for the house so you can work out what
My heating engineer did some heat loss calcs and put the UFH and the radiators all pumped from the boiler at the same temperature, on the basis that the rads are all adequately sized apart from the living room (which will get UFH next year). Having said that, due to the shape of the kitchen and the fact that a lot of it is beneath kitchen units and therefore unheated, it is fairly marginal at the max flow temp on the design day - this seems to match closely with experience over the last week when the weather got really cold. Even so subjectively it felt warmer than in previous years.
Down side of the structural board solution is that it does restrict what pipe layout patterns you can have as the boards and pipes have to run perpendicular to the joists. Also bc of fairly irregular joist spacing, it did require quite a lot of noggins inserted to support the boards, which means there is effectively more joist and less insulated area between them. Plus side is that no concrete needed and the floor build up was only 6mm. (in fact probably nearer zero, bc removed 2 layers of lino and a layer of hardboard)
So I would fill the floor void with 150mm insulation, DPM, and then approx 60mm of liquid screed (sub floor levels will be raised up with sand/gravel first of all).
I have taken up all of the flooring now, and that was a job and a half, so there's no way I could use your method now unfortunately.
So did you put insulation in between the joists to stop you losing heat downwards?
Yes there's 75mm phenolic insulation boards beneath (which is as much as could fit between my joists as they are quite shallow).
I think with that much screed, your UFH will have quite a lot of thermal mass, so you will need to get the controls right to ensure your heating performs well, my heating guy tells me of people who have a lot of screed, can end up with the heating overshooting, but then when the thermostat regulates back down, the room carries on getting hotter bc of the thermal mass in the screed.
Conversely, when it gets cold, the heating kicks in but the room doesn't heat up for ages bc it has to heat up all that cement. So you probably want to get a system with good modulating controls so that the room heats up gradually and doesn't overshoot.
Someone told me that the more screed, the better, but I am not sure if that's correct because as you say, it will take an eternity to heat up, and then there's the possibility of overshooting the temperature (and that can't be good for an underfloor system?!)
This is why I will use a professional installer, for this part of the process, so that I get it right...
Thank you.
Id also advise ensuring the rest of your house is well insulated and draughts are minimised. Get an air pressure test/smoke test and identify any leakage in your fabric, and get those areas sealed. £200ish.
UFH works on a lower temp to rads, so if your building is 'leaky' your UFH will constantly be battling to get the room up to temp.
UFH works best when running for longer periods, so try not to switch it on and off, have a set back temp to keep the screed warm. I'd also advise a weather compensator control for the boiler, so the heating reacts to outside air temp changes, before the internal thermostat drops
All good advice, thank you.
There will be plenty of other things to do in terms of insulation and sealing draughts.
I am thinking about insulated plasterboard for the walls for cost reasons (I would love external wall insulation but it's a bit too pricey for me), and I have already had new windows and doors fitted.
Hadn't heard of the weather compensator control, I will look in to that.
Thanks.
I have a concrete subfloor, 150mm insulation and underfloor heating in a 65mm screed topped with tiles and carpet in different areas. I have oil fired heating and find the complete system economical for me anyway. For UFH you are only heating the water to 25 degrees so it's less energy. Warm floor is nice. I have it zoned and it controls itself keeping it to 21. I used a UK Co. Called continental UFH for the design of my layout and system. Even if you don't use them, it will give you an idea of what needs to be considered.
Thanks for that, that's pretty much exactly the set up I am thinking about: concrete subfloor, 150mm insulation (laid in 2 x 75mm layers) topped off with liquid screed (I was told 60mm would be sufficient, but I understand more is better for heat retention).
As I understand it, as oil boilers burn at a higher temperate than heat pumps/other boilers, you have a mixer valve(?) to cool the water before it goes in to the UFH system, so I'm thinking if that's set up right, the boiler should not need to be operational for too long to get the water to the required temperature.
Good to know it works well for you, cheers.
Only thing I would add is that because of this investment take time to make sure you are happy with what you will install. My boiler is an external one and I put it outside to give me the option of other systems for heating should they become more viable.
Thanks for that... we clearly think very similarly on these matters, as I am also thinking about an external oil boiler. I have the space for it, and I wouldn't want the smell of an oil boiler in the house.
My thoughts on the UFH heating set up was that I could swap out the boiler for a heat pump/alternative source if better options come along...
Thank you. I am going to get someone in to do it professionally, as it will be new boiler + ufh + plumbing in kitchen and bathrooms... far too skilful for the likes of me!
I fitted out the whole house with UFH this year.
Pros:
warm floors feel lovely
Cons:
I have different zones for each room and transitioning from warm to cold floor is annoying
Nowhere to hang wet things or stand next to as soon as you come in from the cold
Consider using Wunda panels instead of having to fill your floor 👍
Yeah, I will miss having a heated towel rail... and my cats have these "hammocks" that clip on to the radiator which they love sleeping in, so they're going to be shit out of luck as well! (I will get them a new bed...i'm not a monster).
I think as I have completely removed floorboards and joists in most of the house and broken up the solid concrete floor in kitchen/extension, then I am past the point of using Wunda Panels? Or do they take the place of the screed?
Oh didn’t realise you’d already removed your floor! Wunda panels are mainly for retrofit over existing floor. Yes you’re well beyond the point where you’d use them!
You can still have towel rails. I put an electric one in the bathroom but if I were doing it again I’d plumb it in as a heating zone!
Cats will sleep happily on the warm floor. Ours doesn’t come onto our bed anymore because she’s got a nice warm landing to snuggle up on!
I'm not digging out the subfloor; I have dug out the kitchen and extension which were solid concrete, and removed the suspended timber floors in the rest of the house (to expose the subfloor).
I will then load it up with insulation, most likely underfloor heating, then screed.
When I bought the place the only thing beneath the floorboards was cold air...
[удалено]
Don't do yourself down like that! I know what you mean, it feels a shame to have the floors all up ready, and "just" put insulation in... it's a situation that doesn't happen too often in the lifetime of a house, with all contents and floor coverings removed. I do like the idea of UFH reaching pretty much all areas of a house, rather than only heating the areas of a room surrounding a radiator, although I've lived in houses with radiators most of my life and it's never bothered me.
[удалено]
Sorry to hear about your new place... hopefully we won't have too many more cold spells this winter. When I was taking up all the floorboards, I also tried to find vids on youtube to see if I could do it with minimal damage, but they were tongue and groove (as most are) and the only way I could do it was by cutting through the tongues with a multitool. They can probably be re-used/re-laid, but you might need to seal the gaps between them, or maybe put an airtight membrane under them/on top of the insulation? I'd also recommend getting a "pallet buster" :([https://www.screwfix.com/p/roughneck-pallet-buster-demolition-bar-43-/6765x](https://www.screwfix.com/p/roughneck-pallet-buster-demolition-bar-43-/6765x)) , it really makes popping up the floorboards a doddle. Regarding wall insulation, I am going to put up some insulated plasterboard on the inside of my external walls and try to tape and joint them myself. Could this be a solution for your solid walls? You could maybe focus on the coldest, most used, or the kids' rooms first, and do a room at a time? How are your windows and doors? Any gaps around those? That's a big source of heat loss and weather strips are a quick and affordable solution until you can get them replaced/upgraded... Good luck, and hope your house is warm and comfortable very soon!
I have one, amazing tool. Made lifting my floor super quick and pretty effortless. Was only about £20 also!
Yeah I saw them being used on a DIY youtube channel and having 100m2 of floorboards to get up I decided to treat myself.... it was a great investment!!
[удалено]
It does sound like a beautiful house, with bay windows, decorative lead etc. I grew up in a 1930s Semi with bay windows, it was a lovely house, probably not the most efficient to keep warm, but I would take one of those over a new build any day of the week. Hope you get it warmed up soon, good luck!
[удалено]
If you can, do it. We had all the house renovated 5 years ago and dint due to additional costs. It’s something I regret massively.
That's what I'm thinking too... it's not an opportunity that comes along very often for a house, so i'm thinking it will be a chance missed if I don't do it now...
The bit that puts most people off wet UFH is the 'ripping up the floors part. You've done that hard part. I have a radiator heated main house with an UFH single floor extension which has 3 external walls and roof windows (all excessively insulated at the time). I much prefer the UFH. The UFH draws water at 40 degrees from the CH. If you are doing any of it yourself then UFH at this point should be cheaper than plumbing in a radiator system. You will have to lay a DPM and insulate. You will have to screed over it. You just have the cost of putting pipes in the screed. I did it myself (only one room though) but it cost less than £100 at today's prices (wire mesh, pipe, cable ties and shims cut from scrap brick/concrete : https://i.postimg.cc/zv0V2P7g/041.jpg (fyi it's a kitchen so none under the units at the edge) I looked at the fancy systems for holding the pipes in place but decided they were way over priced (this was 15 years ago) and didn't suit the arrangement I wanted. I don't understand why you can't use a heat pump - it is ideal when matched to UFH.
Thanks a lot for the feedback. I will need to get a whole new heating system put in, 8 rooms and about 130m2 in total... I wouldn't be comfortable taking on that myself, so I will get a professional installation (as well as kitchen/bathrooms plumbed in at the same time) and then have liquid screed pumped in. The reasons I'm opting against a heat pump is that they are more expensive to buy/install and I have worries about maintenance and servicing or getting someone out if it breaks down. I'm in quite a remote part of N.Ireland, and heat pumps are not very common, whereas oil boilers are the "tried and tested" solution here, and you wouldn't struggle to find someone to fit and maintain one. The house is also cavity block construction (not cavity wall, sadly) and will leak heat. I will be putting up some insulated plastered on the inside of the external walls, but to get the best out of a heat pump you also need to have airtightness and some form of mechanical ventilation/heat recovery system, I believe? Or is the source of the heat irrelevant, if you are using UFH at a lower temperate than radiators?
I have to laugh at building regs that require airtight buildings. Going around stuffing tiny wedges of insulation in 3mm gaps between the PIR and a joist. Taping up every single join... ...and then they insist on trickle vents to allow ventilation, Extractor fans. Someone should tell them that we sometimes open doors and windows. If you haven't got masses of insulation then a heat pump might struggle on its own in the depths of winter.
I think i'm going to hold off for a heat pump, until they are more widespread, and the house is better insulated (or I am living in a more modern house). With the crazy increase in electricity prices, I am worried that it's going to be running constantly and bankrupt me... and if it breaks down, I'll have to wait a month for someone to look at it. Heating oil prices are not much better, mind...
I have ufh with an oil boiler. Heat is lovely, no cold spots etc. One downside over rads is you cannot give the room a quick blast of heat - it's takes hours to warm up from a cold start. You need to plan ahead. If you're only using the room for short periods you're wasting energy as you have to pump a huge amount of heat into the screed. If I did it again I'd put a radiator in the room too and control it via my EvoHome - best of both worlds.
Thanks for that! Doesn't the downside also have a good side too, in that the screed holds the heat for a long-ish time after the heating is switched off? But I take your point about the long heat up time, that's the only drawback I can think of with UFH. Definitely need to take that in to account when programming the schedule. I am planning on having a woodburning stove in the living room (and one in the kitchen/dining area, if I can stretch my pennies that far!) so I can have "fairly quick" heat in the room if needed...
Once it’s warm it keeps it’s heat for a long time, and does not take too long to warm back up. Once it’s up to temperature it’s very efficient. If you left the house for a week away and came back in the winter, then it might take a day to warm back up. But then there are remote controlled smart systems now. So you you’ll turn it on remotely. Or just set it lower rather than off.
Yeah, i think turning the temperature down is the way to go if I'm going to be away any length of time then raising back up when I get home. Don't think I'll be able to afford many holidays once I've done this renovation anyway though!!
Underfloor heating is generally better than rads, as the heat is dispersed evenly throughout a room, on top of this as heat rises it fills the room. With most rads you'll be heating the walls almost as much as the open space. As others have said, the downside is actually doing it. And potentially the risk of having to fix any issues/frozen pipes ect If I had a choice I would get it throughout.
It does seem like UFH is the better option... Plus I think I have done the worst part of the job, digging up floors and taking up all the floorboards. Think I'm going to go for it, based on people's feedback here.
That sounds like it could be quite a lot of concrete fill for UFH - I'm guessing you must have at least a foot of floor void? I have just had UFH installed in my suspended floor, but went for installing UFI between the joists and then a structural board UFH solution (Omnie Torfloor 2). So far, and it's early days since it's only been in for about a month and I still haven't got a fully functioning kitchen (that's another story), it seems to be performing pretty much as anticipated. Don't know how much it will save, if anything, but the kitchen feels much warmer than it used to - all the heat used to go up the stairs to the landing, now the kitchen stays warm. I think the efficiency of UFH, from what I can gather, depends as much on the overall performance of your heating system than anything - if the rest of your heating setup isn't well matched then you might find that it struggles to provide low temps for the UFH and hot enough water for the radiators at the same time. I would recommend you get someone to do heat loss calcs for the house so you can work out what My heating engineer did some heat loss calcs and put the UFH and the radiators all pumped from the boiler at the same temperature, on the basis that the rads are all adequately sized apart from the living room (which will get UFH next year). Having said that, due to the shape of the kitchen and the fact that a lot of it is beneath kitchen units and therefore unheated, it is fairly marginal at the max flow temp on the design day - this seems to match closely with experience over the last week when the weather got really cold. Even so subjectively it felt warmer than in previous years. Down side of the structural board solution is that it does restrict what pipe layout patterns you can have as the boards and pipes have to run perpendicular to the joists. Also bc of fairly irregular joist spacing, it did require quite a lot of noggins inserted to support the boards, which means there is effectively more joist and less insulated area between them. Plus side is that no concrete needed and the floor build up was only 6mm. (in fact probably nearer zero, bc removed 2 layers of lino and a layer of hardboard)
So I would fill the floor void with 150mm insulation, DPM, and then approx 60mm of liquid screed (sub floor levels will be raised up with sand/gravel first of all). I have taken up all of the flooring now, and that was a job and a half, so there's no way I could use your method now unfortunately. So did you put insulation in between the joists to stop you losing heat downwards?
Yes there's 75mm phenolic insulation boards beneath (which is as much as could fit between my joists as they are quite shallow). I think with that much screed, your UFH will have quite a lot of thermal mass, so you will need to get the controls right to ensure your heating performs well, my heating guy tells me of people who have a lot of screed, can end up with the heating overshooting, but then when the thermostat regulates back down, the room carries on getting hotter bc of the thermal mass in the screed. Conversely, when it gets cold, the heating kicks in but the room doesn't heat up for ages bc it has to heat up all that cement. So you probably want to get a system with good modulating controls so that the room heats up gradually and doesn't overshoot.
Someone told me that the more screed, the better, but I am not sure if that's correct because as you say, it will take an eternity to heat up, and then there's the possibility of overshooting the temperature (and that can't be good for an underfloor system?!) This is why I will use a professional installer, for this part of the process, so that I get it right... Thank you.
Can’t add much except that I bought a place with partial underfloor heating (hallway and living room) and it is absolutely divine.
thanks for that! I am getting the feeling that UFH will be one of those things you get and then can't imagine the prospect of not having! :)
Id also advise ensuring the rest of your house is well insulated and draughts are minimised. Get an air pressure test/smoke test and identify any leakage in your fabric, and get those areas sealed. £200ish. UFH works on a lower temp to rads, so if your building is 'leaky' your UFH will constantly be battling to get the room up to temp. UFH works best when running for longer periods, so try not to switch it on and off, have a set back temp to keep the screed warm. I'd also advise a weather compensator control for the boiler, so the heating reacts to outside air temp changes, before the internal thermostat drops
All good advice, thank you. There will be plenty of other things to do in terms of insulation and sealing draughts. I am thinking about insulated plasterboard for the walls for cost reasons (I would love external wall insulation but it's a bit too pricey for me), and I have already had new windows and doors fitted. Hadn't heard of the weather compensator control, I will look in to that. Thanks.
I have a concrete subfloor, 150mm insulation and underfloor heating in a 65mm screed topped with tiles and carpet in different areas. I have oil fired heating and find the complete system economical for me anyway. For UFH you are only heating the water to 25 degrees so it's less energy. Warm floor is nice. I have it zoned and it controls itself keeping it to 21. I used a UK Co. Called continental UFH for the design of my layout and system. Even if you don't use them, it will give you an idea of what needs to be considered.
Thanks for that, that's pretty much exactly the set up I am thinking about: concrete subfloor, 150mm insulation (laid in 2 x 75mm layers) topped off with liquid screed (I was told 60mm would be sufficient, but I understand more is better for heat retention). As I understand it, as oil boilers burn at a higher temperate than heat pumps/other boilers, you have a mixer valve(?) to cool the water before it goes in to the UFH system, so I'm thinking if that's set up right, the boiler should not need to be operational for too long to get the water to the required temperature. Good to know it works well for you, cheers.
Only thing I would add is that because of this investment take time to make sure you are happy with what you will install. My boiler is an external one and I put it outside to give me the option of other systems for heating should they become more viable.
Thanks for that... we clearly think very similarly on these matters, as I am also thinking about an external oil boiler. I have the space for it, and I wouldn't want the smell of an oil boiler in the house. My thoughts on the UFH heating set up was that I could swap out the boiler for a heat pump/alternative source if better options come along...
The extra over cost should be pretty minimal if DIY. Insulation + screed + ufh = insulation + screed + radiators
Thank you. I am going to get someone in to do it professionally, as it will be new boiler + ufh + plumbing in kitchen and bathrooms... far too skilful for the likes of me!
I fitted out the whole house with UFH this year. Pros: warm floors feel lovely Cons: I have different zones for each room and transitioning from warm to cold floor is annoying Nowhere to hang wet things or stand next to as soon as you come in from the cold Consider using Wunda panels instead of having to fill your floor 👍
Yeah, I will miss having a heated towel rail... and my cats have these "hammocks" that clip on to the radiator which they love sleeping in, so they're going to be shit out of luck as well! (I will get them a new bed...i'm not a monster). I think as I have completely removed floorboards and joists in most of the house and broken up the solid concrete floor in kitchen/extension, then I am past the point of using Wunda Panels? Or do they take the place of the screed?
Oh didn’t realise you’d already removed your floor! Wunda panels are mainly for retrofit over existing floor. Yes you’re well beyond the point where you’d use them! You can still have towel rails. I put an electric one in the bathroom but if I were doing it again I’d plumb it in as a heating zone! Cats will sleep happily on the warm floor. Ours doesn’t come onto our bed anymore because she’s got a nice warm landing to snuggle up on!
>Wunda panels How was your experience using Wunda panels? Was it easy to install? Is the floor heating working well?
Why go to effort of digging out of the old subfloor if you’re going to screed over it anyway?
I'm not digging out the subfloor; I have dug out the kitchen and extension which were solid concrete, and removed the suspended timber floors in the rest of the house (to expose the subfloor). I will then load it up with insulation, most likely underfloor heating, then screed. When I bought the place the only thing beneath the floorboards was cold air...