If you are building a new home in High Wycombe, you will no doubt be installing underfloor heating. This has so many advantages over and above a traditional radiator system, one of them being that it will cost considerably less to run. Provided the floor preparation in High Wycombe is done correctly, and in conjunction with a liquid screed such as we use at UK Screeds, then the cost of installation will be about the same as a radiator system.
However, we do get asked a lot of questions about the types of flooring that you can install and use in conjunction with underfloor heating, and the good news is that you can use pretty much any type of final flooring that you wish.
One of the best types of flooring that you can use with underfloor heating is tile or stone. True, tile and stone are mostly associated with bathrooms and kitchens, but when you install underfloor heating, you can use them anywhere else that you wish. Tile and stone have high thermal mass, and so will heat up quickly and retain that heat. This means that you need less energy to heat the room to the desired temperature and therefore will have an ongoing saving on heating bills.
Wood Flooring
You can also use underfloor heating with wood floors. The trick here is the thermal conductivity of the wood. The thinner and the more dense the wood used for the flooring, the faster it will heat up, and therefore the more efficient the whole system. Wood floors should not be heated higher than 27°C which is warm enough to heat the room but not so hot that it will damage the wood.
You can also use vinyl flooring if you wish. There are different types of vinyl flooring so you should always check with the manufacturer for its’ compatibility with underfloor heating. As with wood, the temperature should not exceed 27°C.
You might wish to use laminate flooring, and that is perfectly OK as well. As with wood, the thinner and denser the material, the better it will transfer the heat. Also, the faster it will heat up and, of course, use less energy to bring the room up to temperature.
Naturally, many people want to use carpet in a lot of their rooms, and this is all right as well, as long as the carpet or underlay does not act as an insulator and block the heat. The total tog of underlay and carpet must not exceed 1.5 tog.
