What is Underfloor Heating?
Underfloor heating involves the installation of pipework under your flooring of choices such as tiles, carpet, and laminate to turn the space into a radiator. It warms up your room from the ground up and can help to prevent draughts as well as increasing comfort levels. Underfloor heating has a lower operating temperature than traditional radiator systems. This means there will be less stress and demand on your boiler. The two main types of underfloor heating are wet and electric.
Advantages of Underfloor Heating
Underfloor Heating Systems can provide many advantages and comforts for your home. It has many benefits over other heating systems:
Evenly heating the whole room
Underfloor Heating systems evenly distribute heat from floor to ceiling. This means all of your rooms can be substantially heated to your preference with no cold spots. Units of a certain size can even heat a larger area than radiators.
More space around the home
Removing radiators from your interior design can provide you with a surprising amount of extra space. Choosing underfloor heating over radiators will give you the freedom to push sofas, drawers, or bookshelves right up against any wall you want. This will give you a lot more interior design freedom for your home.
A wet system could potentially reduce your heating bills
Wet underfloor heating systems operate at a lower temperature than more traditional heating systems. Radiators need to be at a high temperature to operate efficiently. Due to needing this amount of heat, dry systems can be more expensive to run. Installing a water system can help to dramatically reduce your heating bills.
Works with different types of flooring
Underfloor heating can be fitted under many different types of flooring, including:
Stone
Tile
Laminate
Vinyl
Carpet and rug flooring
Underfloor heating can be fitted under any flooring, however, there will be differences in how efficiently and quickly the heat transfers to the surface. Surfaces that have good conductivity such as tile or stone will provide the best results.
Prevents dust circulating
Dust can gather behind and inside radiators, making them hard to clean. This also means that they can circulate dust around your rooms whilst operating which can be harmful to anyone living in this space who suffers from Asthma or dust allergies. Installing underfloor heating systems will eliminate this risk and any dust build-up.
Increase the value of your home
Underfloor heating is seen as an advanced and very modern way of heating a home. This can give a sense of luxury to potential buyers when it comes to selling your home and can help to drive up the price.
Disadvantages of Underfloor Heating
Installation process
Underfloor heating systems can be a lot more complex and expensive to install than standard heating systems. The Systems themself come with a reasonable price tag, but installation can become tricky and expensive if you’re not already doing work to or replacing pre-existing floors. Due to systems being a lot larger and more complex, installation times are also a lot longer than that of traditional heating systems.
Longer time to heat a room
As underfloor heating operates at a low temperature, it will inevitably take longer to heat the room from the bottom to the top. This means that you can be waiting longer for rooms to become at a comfortable temperature than you would with standard systems.
Floor height Issue
A common concern with fitting underfloor heating is the impact the system may have on your floor heights. Underfloor heating systems can require a lot of space under floors to be fitted correctly. In renovations, it can become complicated to increase floor build-up when ceiling heights are already fixed. Underfloor insulation is usually also advised with these systems which can further drive the need for increased floor height. If you are renovating and unable to adapt your floor space and height then you will need to look for an underfloor system that requires a minimum amount of space.
Looking for underfloor heating engineers in South London
If you need a highly qualified Gas Safe Registered heating engineer in the
Wallington, Sutton, Epsom, or surrounding North London areas, contact Plumr. Our engineers are trained to the highest standards and pride themselves on excellent customer service. We can install a wide range of underfloor heating systems and can help you to choose the right model for your home. For a full list of our services and service areas, visit our website today.
