On Thu, 21 Aug 2003 00:35:35 +0100, "SC" wrote:



Any personal experience out there? Is it costly to run? I like the idea as
this will be a family room and we have 3 kids under 4, they spend so much
time rollling round the floor I thought it may be a good idea to warm the
floor...

There are two common forms of underfloor heating, electric and hot
water. Electric systems tend to be found in older properties (apart
from single room floor warmers) and are generally not liked. They
were often fitted in council properties, badly designed and installed
and arranged to come on at night to use cheap rate electricity so
rooms were always too hot during the day.

Hot water systems are now the most common and are normally cheaper to
run than conventional systems by about 10% because the temperatures
they run at suit condensing boilers well and because room
temperatures can be set a degree or so cooler than with conventional
systems for the same level of comfort.

As far as room comfort is concerned having now had underfloor heating
for 10 years I would be most reluctant to return to any other form of
heating. Whenever surveys of user liking of heating systems are
carried out underfloor heating invariably scores the highest of all
systems.

One thing you will need to bear in mind is that the underfloor heated
area will need its own controls, both to mix water to maintain the
effectiveness of the older parts of the system as others have
explained and to compensate for its thermal mass. The underfloor
heating will need to start heating earlier than the rest of the house
but can be turned down earlier as well. To maintain a pleasant
temperature in our house in the winter between 18:00 and 22:00 the
heating effectively comes on at about 15:00 but goes off at about
19:00.

--
Peter Parry.
http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/