Hi All,
Has annyone fitted their own underfloor heating and if so would there be
any tips / pitfalls to pass on.

Regards

Jim Ascroft

"vivienne wykes" wrote in message
. uk...
Hi All,
Has annyone fitted their own underfloor heating and if so would there be
any tips / pitfalls to pass on.

First of all get the "design" right. If this is screwed up it is difficult
to reverse. Is this to be in anew house? If in an existing house, what
type of floors do you have?

Hi thanks for that,

I am converting a barn in the Scottish Borders. It has poured concrete on th
ground floor and joists on the first floor.
When I do the heating it will be justr the joists no existing floorboards
due to woodworm....


"IMM" wrote in message
...

"vivienne wykes" wrote in message
. uk...
Hi All,
Has annyone fitted their own underfloor heating and if so would there
be
any tips / pitfalls to pass on.

First of all get the "design" right. If this is screwed up it is
difficult
to reverse. Is this to be in anew house? If in an existing house, what
type of floors do you have?

vivienne wykes wrote:

Hi All,
Has annyone fitted their own underfloor heating

Yes.

and if so would there be
any tips / pitfalls to pass on.


www.polyplumb.co.uk

Read up and come back with questions.

There are other sites too.

Regards

Jim Ascroft

vivienne wykes wrote:

Hi thanks for that,

I am converting a barn in the Scottish Borders. It has poured concrete on th
ground floor and joists on the first floor.
When I do the heating it will be justr the joists no existing floorboards
due to woodworm....


Do you mean that you are NOT doing the ground floor? That is the logical
place to do it.


Under-wood-floor is harder, more expesnive and has a few issues.

Still the best tho, but not cheap...

Thanks all will do some reading.
jim
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
vivienne wykes wrote:

Hi All,
Has annyone fitted their own underfloor heating

Yes.

and if so would there be
any tips / pitfalls to pass on.


www.polyplumb.co.uk

Read up and come back with questions.

There are other sites too.

Regards

Jim Ascroft

"vivienne wykes" wrote in message
.uk...
Hi thanks for that,

I am converting a barn in the Scottish Borders. It has poured concrete on
th
ground floor and joists on the first floor.
When I do the heating it will be justr the joists no existing floorboards
due to woodworm....

Make sure the ground floor is very well insulated. The insulation should be
like a tray wit the side running up the wall to poured concrete level.

Put as much insulation in the bar as possible, and then size up the UFH from
there. You may only require UFH on the ground floor, if insulated well
enough.

IMM wrote:

"vivienne wykes" wrote in message
.uk...

Hi thanks for that,

I am converting a barn in the Scottish Borders. It has poured concrete on

th

ground floor and joists on the first floor.
When I do the heating it will be justr the joists no existing floorboards
due to woodworm....


Make sure the ground floor is very well insulated. The insulation should be
like a tray wit the side running up the wall to poured concrete level.

So fra so go, but teh 'wit' bit as usual leaves one confused..IMM trying
being witless.

Put as much insulation in the bar as possible,

Thats to keep the ice from melting in your gin and tonic of course.


and then size up the UFH from
there.

Whatever that means. I am sure its really profound.

You may only require UFH on the ground floor, if insulated well
enough.


Oddly, I find that wrapping UFH in insulation reduces its effectiveness,
but grammar, punctuation and the ability to understand or communicate
the fabulous ideas IMM has read about in glossy brochures has never been
'our Johns' strong point.


However, yes, attempting to remove the babble and concentrate on the
facts (although I assumed you would glean those from reading up) its
best under concrete ground floors over as much insulation as you can
stuff UNDER the FLOOR (not round the heating pipes!) in order to
maximise the losses to the room (wanted) to the losses into the ground
(wasted, unless breeding earthworms for profit or protein)

Unless you are largely open plan however, upstairs will need heating:
The amount of 'superinsulation' Our John would have you install along
with completely sealing each upper room hermetically is simply infeasible.

I chickened out on a similar project and installed hot air blowers
upstairs fed from hot water. But on reflection it would have been not
too hard to do UFH on the upper story. The big problem is stopping heat
going down to the floor below, (extra insulation between floors) and
making sure that the floor structure can stand the variation between
high summer humidity, and very low winter humidity (when heated) without
deformation. Chip flooring is fine if carpetetd, though teh insulatin
ofte carpet underla is undesirable, laminate is excellent from a
technical point of view, but you may hate it, tiles are good, but you
need to be wary ogf real wood planks: These can easily warp and cup
massively. Its not insoluble, but it needs consideration.


You do need to think about thermostats and control systems tho. If the
house is massive in thermal inertia and well insulated the ground floor
is probably OK on a simple 'on all night' or 'on all the time' basis
with a single overall thermostat to control it - I have this, and it
works very well.

However upstairs where the all timber construction is much faster to
heat up and quicker to cool, I find that individual room controls plus
an overall different timing is required. Therefore I have a three zone
controller (UFH, Upstairs hot air, and Hot water) and stats on each
upstairs room. Its also nice to be able to disable unoccupied spare rooms.

For wet UFH heating upstairs I think standard TRV's on the feed to each
room are probably no worse that electrical stats and wires coming back
to the manifold. However you do need to consider the case where all
upstairs rooms are essentially 'shut down' but there is no overall
thermostat to cut the pump.

I have solved that one in the past by allowing one room - usually a
bathroom of small dimension, to run unregulated with a massive heat
input. I like hot bathrooms. This at least gives the pump something less
than a complete blocked circuit to pump.

Or if you have e.g. an unheated upper corridorr, you can put a master
zone stat in that. Esssentiall teh zone stat should be where the heating
outptout is lowest so is the last bit to warm up.

The really class job is to split the house into two zones for two
separate timers, and one circuit per room, use electrical 'stats in each
room feeding motorised valves on the manifold, with an overall wired OR
circuit so that any stats that demands heat will set the pump going.

Since you need a separate pump also to run DHW, you tend to need a relay
in the control wiring as well.

None of this is rocket science, but if you are condsidering a class
system, make sure you run wires from a stat in each room back to your
'control center' and don't understimate the size of that - all my stuff
is in a large cupbiardd in the boiler room where it can be got at, and
there us a lot of pipework and wire in there too

If you want to enter into detailed discussion its probably best to take
this offline to e-mail, as it gets tedious

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
IMM wrote:

snip

Make sure the ground floor is very well insulated. The insulation
should be
like a tray wit the side running up the wall to poured concrete level.

So fra so go, but teh 'wit' bit as usual leaves one confused..IMM trying
being witless.

Teh, Teh Mr Philosopher ! If you're going to criticise typographical error
on Usenet then please make sure that you don't do any yourself !

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

You need professional attention. Reading what you installed I would advise
all not to take any notice whatsoever. It is clear you only have half a
clue. That is sad.

IMM wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

You need professional attention. Reading what you installed I would advise
all not to take any notice whatsoever. It is clear you only have half a
clue. That is sad.


John, take half an aspirin in some warm ovaltine and have a little lie down.

This is all way above your head.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
IMM wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

You need professional attention. Reading what you installed I would
advise
all not to take any notice whatsoever. It is clear you only have half a
clue. That is sad.


John, take half an aspirin in some warm ovaltine and have a little lie
down.

This is all way above your head.

Our resident snot is at it again. A total amateur who thinks he knows more
than the pros. That is sad. Keep taking the tablets.

"IMM" wrote in message
...

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
snip

This is all way above your head.

Our resident snot is at it again. A total amateur who thinks he knows
more
than the pros.

IMM, who are you talking about here, yourself, Mr Philosopher or both
(perish the thought that you both might be the alter-ego of the other ! [1])
?

[1] they do both have a similar style of insults...

vivienne wykes wrote:
Hi thanks for that,

I am converting a barn in the Scottish Borders. It has poured
concrete on th ground floor and joists on the first floor.
When I do the heating it will be justr the joists no existing
floorboards due to woodworm....

Wow, the woodworm have eaten all the floorboards! They *were* hungry!

vivienne wykes wrote:
Thanks all will do some reading.

Another company I feel worthy of mention is Nu-Heat.
Only because I used them.
:¬)
You give them all room dimensions and measurements, joist widths etc etc
etc and they work out exactly what you need, how many loops and rows and
coils etc and, if time is more of an issue than money, it makes sense
(did for me anyway) to have someone sorting out that side of things to
make sure it's right first time. (leaving me to do he stuff I'm good at
which pays the bills)

I must say, Nu-heat have been incredibly good with regards to every
single aspect of our project. I should have a photo diary of the project
when complete...... whenever that may be.

--
http://gymratz.co.uk
The Worlds best Gym & Fitness Equipment Supplier!
http://fitness-equipment-uk.net
Up to 1/3rd cheaper than Argos & John Lewis !!

On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:20:46 GMT, "vivienne wykes"
wrote:

Hi All,
Has annyone fitted their own underfloor heating and if so would there be
any tips / pitfalls to pass on.

Regards

Jim Ascroft




I fitted mine, I fitted it from the undeside of a ground floor, went
down into the voild and attached it to the bottom of the floorboards.

1) get a good device for nailing the clips up
2) clean out the voild first
3) don't use rockwool to insulate it.
4) don't use rockwool to insulate it.
5) don't use rockwool to insulate it.

Rick

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 22:19:03 GMT, Pet wrote:

vivienne wykes wrote:
Thanks all will do some reading.

Another company I feel worthy of mention is Nu-Heat.
Only because I used them.
:¬)
You give them all room dimensions and measurements, joist widths etc etc
etc and they work out exactly what you need, how many loops and rows and
coils etc and, if time is more of an issue than money, it makes sense
(did for me anyway) to have someone sorting out that side of things to
make sure it's right first time. (leaving me to do he stuff I'm good at
which pays the bills)

I must say, Nu-heat have been incredibly good with regards to every
single aspect of our project. I should have a photo diary of the project
when complete...... whenever that may be.

I used nu-heat when the supplied kee-tripple-tube. The tubs has burst,
my guarentee is useless.

Rick

"Rick Dipper" wrote in message
...
Has annyone fitted their own underfloor heating and if so would there be
any tips / pitfalls to pass on.


I fitted mine, I fitted it from the undeside of a ground floor, went
down into the voild and attached it to the bottom of the floorboards.

1) get a good device for nailing the clips up
Yep
2) clean out the voild first
Yep

3,4,5) don't use rockwool to insulate it.

Why not ? Worked for us just fine. Pinned a plastic sheet at one end
across the joists then moved along, stuffing the Rockwool in and pinning it
up straight away.