Hi all,
I have installed underfloor heating in 3 rooms in my flat so far. I opted to use 5mm Sonic Gold Underlay, but am experiencing an issue and am curious to know whether anyone else has experienced this. In effect the underlay is so soft, that it is warping some of my laminate. The floor itself is effectively concrete, with noggins and a tongue and groove chipboard on-top (plenty of foam so lots of insulation in there which is a plus). However the lazy builders of the 90's did not bother to level the floor at all, and pinned it to noggins, resulting in a pretty uneven chipboard floor, we suspect the concrete beams are also not level and seem to sort of rise at either end of the building. Yes, in the ideal world you might rip it all out and start again - sure. However, I needed a heating solution and hoped that decent underlay would deal with this to some degree..... I opted for the 5mm sonic gold, in part because I had some to hand, but it also came pretty highly rated for UF heating/laminate etc.
However, I have found that heavy furniture (wardrobe / bed) is causing the laminate to warp, i.e. sink. The positives of Sonic Gold that I can report, is that it is definitely soft underfoot, definitely very effective at insulating (it literally takes minutes to notice that the electric floor is on) and the room heats up very effectively and quickly.
The downside is - that I think the softness of the underlay is unfortunately not brilliant unless your floor is 99.9% level and presumably your laminate is of german engineering quality and can withstand a degree unequal loading without any sink or split... I just wanted to know if anyone else has used this underlay, experienced similar issues - and before I do floor number 4 (the living room) - I would just like to check in and see whether I should be using a different underlay? Or if anyone has any recommendations I guess? In time I may look to re-do the floors, but its a pretty big job to rip it all out again as you can imagine.
As I said, the Sonic Gold is definitely very soft, quiet and insulating - but equally its soft and doesn't seem to be brilliant when exposed to unequal loading - and yes, I hear you - this is because of my floor - but at the time screeing the whole floor was not on the cards!!!
Thanks!
p.s. sorry floor looks so dirty!! ha