Why Underfloor Heating?

With the increasing demand for smart living, controlling your home from your smart phone or tablet has never been easier with more and more household appliances becoming app friendly. There are a number of smart thermostats out there that now allow you to monitor your home heating usage.

Underfloor heating provides users with more and more on-the-go control of their home heating with its ability to heat different zones of the house independently. If you like a cooler kitchen while cooking dinner but still want the dining area to be warm for during your meal, smart controls will allow you to do that. 

Traditional home heating options, such as radiators, need to be heated to a much higher temperature than underfloor heating in order to effectively heat up a room. On average, radiators need to be heated to around 70ºC in order to generate the same level of heat as underfloor heating does.

One of the main problems with this is that radiators heat up different areas of the room at varying rates. Typically, the area around the radiator will be a lot warmer than the other side of the room, meaning it’s difficult to strike the right balance. Underfloor heating systems however provides a radiant heat to warm the room from the floor up; creating a consistent temperature throughout and leaving you with cosy, heated floors. 

A major benefit of underfloor heating is that it heats the room up a lot more efficiently and eliminates draughts. This is because it covers the whole surface area of the room as opposed to the heat being focused on the wall the radiator is attached to. This means your radiator has to run at a higher temperature for the whole room to be heated. Whereas your underfloor heating can operate efficiently on a much lower temperature, meaning you won’t use the same levels of energy.

If you decide to switch to underfloor heating, it’s recommended that you install a water based solution. There are electric alternatives that can be installed without having to pay for a registered plumber and at a lower cost per square metre, but with electric being one of the most expensive heating options in the UK, it’s not likely to save you money on your heating bills long term.