UFH upstairs - alternatives?

[Redoctober]

Hi I have come across a slight dilemma. Currently working through the TF with a manufacturer and they had priced up the quote based on solid timber joists - We have been asked to indicate which type of heating would be going upstairs. Mrs W wants UFH especially for the bathroom and en-suite which will be tiled.In order to accommodate this, the joists will need to be upgraded to engineered joists such as Posi or TJI. In addition there will be additional costs to cover such things as 15mm plywood or OSB to the first floor, 50x30mm battens, an extra 145x45mm first floor wall plate to perimeter and 95x45mm wall plate to internal panels etc.

I am awaiting an updated quote to cover all this but in between time my question is - Is there an alternative - Radiators I suppose.

What heating to you guys have or have planned for the upstairs of a suitably well insulated house?

Price wise, is it worth the upgrade over radiators and existing solid Timber Joists?

Finally to assist, hopefully, the house will be well insulated with predicted U values of for the TF to come in at around - 0.11W/m²K. There will also be 280mm Frametherm 40 insulation to horizontal ceilings, if this helps !

 

PW.

[RichS]

Why not use electric underfloor heating in the bathroom and en-suite along with electric towel rails.

That's the option I'm thinking of along with MVHR

[Ferdinand]

We have Electric for the bathroom on a timer and a towel rail, then oversized Rads.

 

Works OK.

F

 

[PeterW]

Why the frametherm at that depth ..?? Should be for sound only. 

[Guest Alphonsox]

Electric UFH in the ensuite and bathroom. We have wired for electric radiators in all bedrooms.

[ProDave]

I don't understand the need for the extra wall plates?

 

Our present house has UFH upstairs on conventional solid joists.  9mm OSB to support UFH pipes, 25 by 50mm battens then whatever floor you were going to have anyway. Nothing complicated or particularly expensive at all.

 

And yes why so much insulation between floors? Less insulation and the saving more than pas for the extra floor make up.
 

[Redoctober]

34 minutes ago, PeterW said:

Why the frametherm at that depth ..?? Should be for sound only. 

 

Sorry @PeterW  - this should not have been included in my Post - ignore!

 

@ProDave - thanks I shall raise this with them tomorrow when we discuss the increases.

[Nick]

I'm also trying to solve this same dilemma. Part of it depends on what is driving your underfloor heating on the ground floor. If you are running a heat pump then it seems a shame after the big up-front cost of installing it, to then use a less efficient system upstairs.

 

If you're not having UFH upstairs, the insulation between floors may be working against you by preventing heat transfer to the upper floors.

[dogman]

I have been looking at fan coil type rads

They run at low temperature so suit heat pumps and they can be reversed and used to cool.

only real downside is they have a fan so use some electric and will have some noise but i looked at some on a display at Swindon and they were not that loud

[Nickfromwales]

You don't need to have pozi joists to fit UFH

Just fit aluminium spreader plates and notch the top of each joist accordingly.  If you don't want to notch out the full 16mm, just notch 6mm of the joist and fix 12mm ply atop the joists. 

Bingo. 

 

[Nickfromwales]

Remember the manifold should be upstairs as the highest point so you can release trapped / accumulated air / gas at the bottle vents on the manifold rails. 

[JaneM]

Have you looked at skirting board heating?

[AliG]

With the insulation values you are working to you have to consider that the heating may hardly ever be on.

 

My wife is insistent on having UFH so that the tiles are warm. But the reality is the heating will hardly ever be on so they won't benefit from it. I may have to run the heating in the ensuite at a higher temperature than the rest of the house just to warm the tiles.

 

If you use electric UFH in just the bathrooms you have the option of warming the tiles even if the heating isn't on whilst also saving all the other expenses.

 

Then you could go for radiators in the other upstairs rooms, although I would guess that heat rising from downstairs means that you don't need any upstairs heating. This depends on the U-valeus of your floors and windows, whether you have MVHR etc, but 0.11 U-vlaue walls suggest you will need very little heating.

 

 

[jack]

With U-values of 0.10 downstairs floor, 0.11 roof, and 0.12 walls, and lots of double height spaces, I've been surprised at the way heat doesn't actually seem to move upstairs in our house.  Downstairs is always slightly warmer than upstairs (and especially the bedrooms) in the colder months.  I assume this is to do with the slight heat loss through the MVHR, which is made up for downstairs by the UFH, but isn't upstairs.

 

If I were doing this all again, I'd definitely include UFH in the bathrooms, just to take the chill off the tiles.  

 

I'm currently contemplating retrofitting an IR panel to each bathroom ceiling.  Programming a quick burst of that before our usual shower time in the morning should be enough to take off the chill without chewing through too much energy.

[Jeremy Harris]

27 minutes ago, jack said:

With U-values of 0.10 downstairs floor, 0.11 roof, and 0.12 walls, and lots of double height spaces, I've been surprised at the way heat doesn't actually seem to move upstairs in our house.  Downstairs is always slightly warmer than upstairs (and especially the bedrooms) in the colder months.  I assume this is to do with the slight heat loss through the MVHR, which is made up for downstairs by the UFH, but isn't upstairs.

 

If I were doing this all again, I'd definitely include UFH in the bathrooms, just to take the chill off the tiles.  

 

I'm currently contemplating retrofitting an IR panel to each bathroom ceiling.  Programming a quick burst of that before our usual shower time in the morning should be enough to take off the chill without chewing through too much energy.

 

 

Ours is the same, upstairs is consistently about 1/2 to 1 deg C cooler than downstairs.  I too think it's the MVHR.

[Bitpipe]

We have the same TF style as Jack, 400m2 over 4 floors.

 

Basement has no heating but is very comfortable as all the plant is down there plus TV, xbox etc, all kicking out heat and the 300mm concrete walls are externally wrapped in 200mm EPS (300mm under the floor).

 

UFH on ground floor only (has to penetrate nearly 50mm of OSB/ply and then 2-3mm resin) and it's fine, even in the recent cold weather - currently set to 21^o air temp on the stat.

 

No UFH on first floor aside from 100W/m2 electric mats under tiles in the three bathrooms ( about 3-4m², set to 24^o, timed) plus wet towel rads also on timers - rooms are on the cooler side but comfortable, usually around 19 degrees. Our plan B would have been to tap into the towel rad circuits to add room rads if needs be but we all seem to be fine.

 

Loft rooms can be a bit cooler in the evening or on dull days but we're never in them and have a Dyson fan for guests if they need warmed up a touch - loft rooms are liable to overheat if the Velux blinds are not down on sunny days though.

 

Another vote for MVHR having a slight cooling effect but overall I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

 

Note, It's not easy running UFH over a pozi joist floor and we had quite a bit of head scratching getting it down on the ground floor originally as you can't notch the joists for the loops and it's impossible to thread 100m of pex-al-pert through the webs. We cut long slots in the 22mm OSB deck to allow the pipes to cross over the joist ends, knowing that we'd be dropping another 21 mm of ply on top for the resin.

 

I know HerbJ found an acoustic floor product for his upper floors that allowed him to run UFH up there too but it wasn't cheap and I believe he put it in mainly for resell purposes.

[jack]

I actually had MBC drop the floors in our bathrooms by 50mm to give us room for UFH. In the end we heard so many stories about heating not being required that we didn't bother!

 

I just checked: upstairs is 20 deg C and downstairs is 21. Works well having the bedrooms a bit cooler, it's just the bathroom tiles being a bit chilly when you have a shower that isn't ideal.

[Nick]

As we're not yet sure what type of joists we'll have, our current plan is for insulated ufh overlay boards to take the pipework on the first floor and then 20mm screedboard above it to diffuse the heat and give something to tile / board onto. Seems like a neat finish with not that much extra build up.

 

Cost according to my spreadsheet for the overlay board, pipework and screedboard is around £32.50 m2, with a small fixed cost for the extra manifold and connectors. As much as I'm tempted to save money by leaving it out of the budget, I cant help feel it's a relative bargain to put it in at this stage.

 

Can't justify UFH in the loft room - as Bitpipe says, they dont tend to get much use.

 

 

 

[Barney12]

I wish I could decide on a definitive answer on this issue. The need to put UFH upstairs in a well insulated home realy does seem to split the audience! 

 

We have quite a lot of glass and I have a cold wife so have reluctantly decided to add UFH upstairs. For me the only benefit is no cold tiles in the bathrooms (which I hate).

 

When I look at the cost and hassle however it doesn't take me long to start thinking about simple electric UFH in the bathrooms and wire for electric radiators for the colder months when you need to take the chill off the rooms in the morning. 

 

Its quite a conundrum! 

 

 

Edited February 8, 2017 by Barney12
Typo

[Nickfromwales]

20 minutes ago, Barney12 said:

When I look at the cost and hassle however it doesn't take me long to start thinking about simple electric UFH in the bathrooms and wire for electric radiators for the colder months when you need to take the chill of the rooms in the morning. 

 

Its quite a conundrum! 

@Bitpipe, for one, went down this route with good results. 

Fitting a full wet system for a tiny bit of focussed heat is a bit OTT, so I'd seriously consider whether you actually need to go the whole hog or not. As said elsewhere, electric is far more 'on and off-able' so can just be used literally with the rooms occupancy as they're pretty much instant heat / comfort. Turn on 30 mins before occupancy and turn off 15mins before you vacate as it'll take a while to cool off again so pointless 'over heating' it . 

[joe90]

I am not having full UFH upstairs just electric UFH in the two bathrooms with electric towel radiators probably timed for E7 end of period ( 5 to 6 am?) with manual overrun if needed. I am banking on a couple of cheap panel radiators for the odd week of very low temps. We are in mild Devon.

[PeterW]

2 minutes ago, joe90 said:

I am not having full UFH upstairs just electric UFH in the two bathrooms with electric towel radiators probably timed for E7 end of period ( 5 to 6 am?) with manual overrun if needed. I am banking on a couple of cheap panel radiators for the odd week of very low temps. We are in mild Devon.

 

Snap ..!

 

same here, all on timers from the main control box to make it easy 

[joe90]

1 minute ago, PeterW said:

 

Snap ..!

 

same here, all on timers from the main control box to make it easy 

 

Great minds think alike ?, what do you mean by on timers from the main control box?. I was thinking of using timers/programmers within the bathrooms so a push of the override button got it done. Switch the panel heater on at the socket when it's needed. I was thinking it would be difficult to presume/plan for a cold snap.?

[PeterW]

So I've got an 18 way consumer unit that will have in it all of the time switches and thermostats for :

 

- eUFH / TRail bathroom

- eUFH / TRail ensuite

- Immersion timer

- wUFH pump timer

- wUFH temp controller 

 

Means that on the wall outside the bathroom there is just an isolator for the towel rail and a simple thermostat for the floor. 

 

Towel rail elements are 300w PTC so self regulating, floors are either 200w or 500w so total load is 1.3kw in total. 

 

 

 

[Bitpipe]

Our bathroom UFH was a very last minute decision, sparky and me were hastily removing the plasterboard on a Sunday ahead of it being plastered the following Monday to get the conduit in for the stat and mat

 

I got cheap 100W/m2 mats off eBay (from a reputable seller) and also picked up the 6mm backer board, sealer and latex from there too. Tiler put it all down in less than a day (all 3 bathrooms). I binned the stats that came with the mats and got nicer ones from the underfloor heating store, plus a cheap digital multimeter and damage sensor - this is a handy box that clips onto the mat cable during laying and will beep if there's an earth fault or breakage.

 

Take pics of the mat location and note that the heat does not spread far so you need to get the coverage spot on - also be aware if you need to cut into the floor at a later date for traps for free standing baths etc.

 

Each mat is self contained, the stat has a timer, so no central control needed.