Under Floor Heating

By Garry John

Under floor heating systems may be an excellent source of heating a home but if you already have a fuel efficient source of heating your home, you may still find a way to use an under floor heating system. Converting your entire house to an under floor heating system can be a time consuming and costly project. However, many homeowners may opt to utilize under floor heating in only one room in the house such as the master bathroom. In this case the under floor heating system is used more as a matter of convenience than a source of heat. If stepping out of the shower and onto cold tile on cold winter mornings is that unappealing you might want to invest approximately $500 to have an under floor heating system installed in your bathroom to eliminate this problem. Under floor heating systems can provide the convenience of warm floors on a cold morning but they also have a number of other advantages. These advantages include the lack of hot circulating air that can carry germs and bacteria, no maintenance requirements and extreme cost efficiency.

While it may be purely a matter of convenience that is driving you to install an under floor heating system, the consolation is that once installed under floor heating systems are incredibly cost effective and can operate on literally pennies per day of electricity. Under floor heating systems can be concealed under any type of flooring. The basic concept of under floor heating systems requires a length of heat resistant wire to snake under the floor. This wiring is used to radiate the heat upwards through the floor.

Installation of under floor heating systems is relatively simple. The heat resistant wires are 1/8” thick and can be entrenched in thinset concrete that will not require significant elevation of the floor to accommodate the under floor heating system. Although installing an under floor heating system is a relatively simple process there is one aspect of the installation that cannot be ignored. This part of the process that cannot be understated is checking the ohm resistance. This should be done at least three times during the installation process. The ohm resistance should be checked prior to starting the project, after the thinset concrete has been laid and after the flooring has been installed over the heating element. Carefully checking the ohm readings at each of these stages will ensure that the heating elements are functioning properly.

Garry John has written many articles on under floor heating and more general home improvement topics.

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