Blog / electric underfloor heating

Homes are becoming more advanced, more efficient and smarter. The days of controlling a new heating system by a basic dial thermostat really are behind us. The majority of heating systems now have a digital programmable thermostat (or thermostats for multi-zone systems) that can control heating at different temperatures and times for each zone. They are more accurate than a dial thermostat and have much more than on/off.

When fitting underfloor heating the floor surface temperature will vary. In this article to go over some statistics for your benefit.

1. If you have a fault once the system is up and running, the first thing to check is the flow rate in the flow meters. Make sure they are set between 1.5L/min and 2L/min for boiler use and 1L/min for heat pump use. If there is no reading (the red indicator is at the top) nothing is flowing around the loop.2. Then take off your actuator heads, if you then get a flow or your system then works you know it is an electrical problem. If after taking all the actuators off you still have problems then it will be a flow fault

We answer your questions about laying underfloor heating onto existing floors.

There are two types of underfloor heating: gas-powered (wet) underfloor heating and electric underfloor heating.  In wet underfloor heating systems, heat is distributed around the house via thin pipes laid under the floor. These pipes carry hot water around the home so that it can release its heat through the floor and therefore warm the rooms where the underfloor heating system is installed. The water is heated in the main boiler of the home. In cases where the boiler supplying hot water for the household is gas powered (as is the case in most UK households) this type of heating system is known as wet underfloor heating. An electric underfloor heating system, on the other hand, uses electric wires fitted beneath the floor to provide heat. When an electric current is passed through the wires, they become hot and that heat is transferred through the floor to the room above.

A test is performed at a pressure of 5 bar before flooring, screed or biscuit mix is laid to check for leaks and ensure the pipes are at their most expanded. This pressure is to be maintained until screed application is completed in order to ensure that any leaks are identified immediately and prevent the screed cracking later. 6 bar is a lot higher than a system would normally run.This action can be pressurised for testing purposes with mains water in most cases. REMEMBER: You must be extremely careful to avoid frost unless anti freeze has been added to the water. The flow from the mains tap to the filling point on the flow rail (red) of the manifold and the return/waste hose connected from the drain point of the return manifold (blue) to somewhere the return water can drain to.

Underfloor heating is fast becoming the preferred option to heat any home or workspace. More and more people are choosing to heat their homes with Underfloor heating as it is very low to run but remains high in comfort with huge environmental benefits.Underfloor heating radiates upwards from the floor space, heating other surfaces in the room which in turn then radiate secondary heat.  Floor draughts are eliminated and the heat in the room remains even. More traditional methods such as wall mounted radiators are known as convected heating which uses the air in a room as the mechanism to disperse heat into the whole room.  Using this type of conventional heating means that naturally the warmest part of a room is the ceiling and the coolest is the floor.  This is the opposite of Underfloor heating which is warmer underfoot and loss of heat is minimised.

Underfloor Heating is a beneficial eco-friendly heating solution that is more efficient and cheaper to run than other forms of heating such as radiators. It can be difficult to understand what is best for you and what the right price to pay should be. This is where we can help. At Underfloor Heating 1 we aim to find the product to best suit your needs that is particular to your property and at a price you won’t find anywhere else. Underfloor Heating 1 promise to beat any like for like quote. We always quote with a full itemised and quantified list of materials after obtaining the information specific to your property – not a generic quote-not all companies do this and beware any supplier that doesn’t! We only source products from the most reputable companies, such as Danfoss, Honeywell and Heatmiser. All of our products are from companies based in the UK or mainland Europe.

When using a heat pump to run underfloor heating we recommend that the underfloor heating pipe is laid at 100mm pipe spacing throughout the property. The main objective of having a heat pump is efficiency and installing the pipes at 100mm spacing maximises the efficiency. Air source heat pump manufacturers’ efficiency data is 7c air temperature and 35C flow temperature. Ground source heat pumps are the same although it is ground temperature and not air temp in the data and this flow temperature is generally only achieved with the pipes at 100mm pipe spacing. The COP (coefficient of performance – how efficient a heat pump is of converting electric into heat) of a heatpump is from these figures and installing the pipes at 200mm spacing would seriously reduce the COP.

If you have received a quote that appears to be cheaper than an UFH1 quote it could have significantly less equipment or equipment of lower quality than ours – for example another company specifying pipe 300mm spacing where we might put 200mm spacing, digital or dial thermostats etc., etc and we would either re-quote to match or point out where the differences are. We always specify our equipment with a full itemised list to do the job properly without cutting corners or quoting with vague equipment lists and usually find that ‘cheaper’ quotations fall short on equipment and/or quality and invariably the customer ends up having to fork out later for items “......that weren’t included”