There are lots of loopcad layouts here on BH with room-by-room loops. Figure heat loss per room etc...

Now supposing I have PH-level insulation and a thickish slab - can I just slather my slab below the screed with a regular loop design, ignoring the individual rooms? My thinking is that concrete/screed is a good thermal conductor and, for that reason, I won't really be able to control the temperature in individual rooms anyhoo. The screed will pretty much all be at the same temperature, and the heat output to the individual rooms will be governed by that temperature, whatever I try to do?

p.s. my place has 3 rectangular slabs roughly the same size.

Edited Friday at 15:161 day by Alan Ambrose

I believe for 16mm pipe, loops should not exceed 100m length.

About 16 sqm ? - have I got that right for 150mm spacing ?

I think you'd struggle to pump through a much longer small diameter pipe and even if you could, most of the heat would be dumped into your screed in the earlier part of the run so heating would be very uneven.

I agree you can ignore zoning exactly to individual rooms and not much point trying to control their temperature separately, but you'll still need a manifold and ideally similar length loops to even out the heat distribution and keep flow through the pipes easier.

Many of us with passive-type slabs treat the whole thing as one zone.

That said, there could be a benefit to at least trying to keep each loop to one or a couple of rooms with similar heating needs. That way, you can tweak per-room heating by adjusting flow rates at the manifold. You'd do that entirely passively - tweak the flow rates when you first move in to get the room temps you want, then probably never look at the manifold again.

As it happens, running all loops completely open worked fine for us. The one carpeted room downstairs is a little cool in winter, but it isn't used that much, and when it is, it's generally the kids gaming or watching TV, so it heats up fast enough. I haven't touched our manifold in over a decade.

As @torre says, there's probably an advantage in keeping all loops about the same length. I think each loop in our system is nominally 100 m long (one might be a little shorter).

We're not PH level, but very well insulated with UFH in a 70mm slab over Hanson Jetfloor. We have a total of 12 circuits grouped in 7 thermostatically controlled zones. This enables us to set and maintain comfort levels to suit the use of each zone, and for relevant times of day.

Surely, a single loop/zone risks losing such control, even if you could deliver even heat distribution across the entire circuit/slab?

Sorry, I wasn’t being quite exact - I meant one logical loop, ignoring the room layout - sure it would need to be split for flow reasons.

@nss - that’s what I’m asking - is it even possible to adjust the temperature in each room given that comcrete is such a good thermal conductor? It’s a bit like trying to have different temperatures across a frying pan.

Edited yesterday at 09:221 day by Alan Ambrose

Concrete is a good thermal conductor but is also stores loads of heat. Have loops in each room does allow some fine tuning of room temperature, just by flow rate variation, so localise output can be manipulated. Having a bunch or random loops that cover the space is fine also, but you are more likely to an even output across all rooms, depending on floor covering, which has a direct impact on floor output, carpet is pants, ceramic tiles are great. So if you have multiple floor coverings a room by room approach may be better or add flexibility for the future.

The other thing is you say thickish slab, that doesn't really mean much. We have 100mm and was concerned about internal wall fixings or drilling for them, puncturing through my pipe, so I kept a wide berth from the internal walls, so that could not occur, also ran all pipe through doorways for that reason also

Yeah, I think, on reflection that you’re right - so the conventional room layout thing - which means I need to make up my mind on the room boundaries…

I might also avoid the drilling problem by sticking the wall plates down.

I would go with what Spinny and torre said and keep the loops fairly even and under that 100m sort of length. A thick slab will even the heat out a lot, so one logical zone can work, but it does make fault finding much harder later. If one loop ever drops pressure you want to be able to isolate it at the manifold, so pressure test each loop on its own before the screed goes down and keep a simple sketch of where each loop runs.

On 23/10/2026 at 18:31, NSS said:

We're not PH level, but very well insulated with UFH in a 70mm slab over Hanson Jetfloor. We have a total of 12 circuits grouped in 7 thermostatically controlled zones. This enables us to set and maintain comfort levels to suit the use of each zone, and for relevant times of day.

Surely, a single loop/zone risks losing such control, even if you could deliver even heat distribution across the entire circuit/slab?

I've been looking into these eps beam floors. Did you have to increase your slab depth over the normal 70mm with the 16mm ufh pipes interrupting it? Bringing the slab thickness down to 55mm in places? I think you can get thinner top sheets to get a 90mm slab but sounds like you didn't need to?

Can you get carpet that works ok for ufh? I don't want a lounge room with hard flooring.

2 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

I've been looking into these eps beam floors. Did you have to increase your slab depth over the normal 70mm with the 16mm ufh pipes interrupting it? Bringing the slab thickness down to 55mm in places? I think you can get thinner top sheets to get a 90mm slab but sounds like you didn't need to?

No, we stuck with 70mm but had the fibre reinforced mix.

1 minute ago, Oz07 said:

Can you get carpet that works ok for ufh? I don't want a lounge room with hard flooring.

You can, it needs to be thermally poor, so not sure how it ends up feeling under foot, may feel and look like cheap carpet, but won't be? We have carpet in the bedrooms and the wife insisted on wool carpet, that does a really good job of killing the UFH output.

We have oak floors in living room and a large rug - it all works fine

6 minutes ago, NSS said:

No, we stuck with 70mm but had the fibre reinforced mix.

Brilliant. Presume designer knew about ufh? Which fibres did you use think you can choose steel or others.

4 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

You can, it needs to be thermally poor, so not sure how it ends up feeling under foot, may feel and look like cheap carpet, but won't be? We have carpet in the bedrooms and the wife insisted on wool carpet, that does a really good job of killing the UFH output.

We have oak floors in living room and a large rug - it all works fine

With young kids carpet is so much more practical for playing on

8 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

Which fibres did you use think you can choose steel or others.

Not steel. That is way ott. Your floor isn't structural or a waterproof tank.

Why fibres at all? They are nasty to work with and are only for crack control which in your case is entirely cosmetic.

I agree with all (?) the above. Walls in first. Insulation, pipes and screed follow.

The downside is a day of cutting in the insulation to walls, and the cost of controls.

Upside is a lifetime of temperature control to suit the room purpose, personal preferences, room aspect.... and running costs dropping accordingly.

And no worries about screwing sole plates onto pipes, plus the walls will be easier to build and stronger.

39 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

Brilliant. Presume designer knew about ufh? Which fibres did you use think you can choose steel or others.

Yes, and it was as recommended by Hanson. Can't recall the exact mix, but pretty sure it was glass fibre strand.

On 24/10/2026 at 10:19, Alan Ambrose said:

Sorry, I wasn’t being quite exact - I meant one logical loop, ignoring the room layout - sure it would need to be split for flow reasons.

@nss - that’s what I’m asking - is it even possible to adjust the temperature in each room given that comcrete is such a good thermal conductor? It’s a bit like trying to have different temperatures across a frying pan.

All I can really say is it has worked for us for the 9 years since we built it and moved in.

1 hour ago, saveasteading said:

Not steel. That is way ott. Your floor isn't structural or a waterproof tank.

Why fibres at all? They are nasty to work with and are only for crack control which in your case is entirely cosmetic.

I agree with all (?) the above. Walls in first. Insulation, pipes and screed follow.

The downside is a day of cutting in the insulation to walls, and the cost of controls.

Upside is a lifetime of temperature control to suit the room purpose, personal preferences, room aspect.... and running costs dropping accordingly.

And no worries about screwing sole plates onto pipes, plus the walls will be easier to build and stronger.

Because with the eps suspended floor systems the slab kind of has to act as a raft on top of the eps. It can't just crack anywhere