Bathroom and Wet Room Underfloor Heating

Underfloor Heating Comfort

The trend for bathroom tiled floors has taken bath times to new heights of luxury. Hard wearing, hygenic and easy to clean tiles are becoming the preferred choice for most bathroom floors. Tiled floors look great, but as the days turn colder you will soon notice how unpleasnat it is to walk on a cold tiled floor first thing in the morning.

Underfloor heating for bathrooms is the ideal solution to offer more than just warmth and comfort – they are designed to be extremely energy efficient. Most people think that underfloor heating is expensive to install and run – but you will be surprised just how cheap they are to run. Partner your under floor heating with a Designer Bathroom Radiator or heated towel rail and you have the perfect set up.

The latest bathroom underfloor heating solutions use a “knitted electrical element mat design” that works similar to an electric blanket. Easy to install, the mat is simply rolled out on a fixed sub-board and then tiled over. A typical installation in a standard sized bathroom can be done in a day.

As well as giving you a lovely warm floor, the heat generated will drift upwards and contribute to the room temperature. Add a temperature controller (thermostat) and timer to your system and you can even have the heating coming on when you get up in the morning.

The Devimat Underfloor Heating systems are perfect as underfloor heating for Wet Rooms as they help to dry out the tiled floor and stop moisture build up.

How Underfloor Heating Works

Todat’s underfloor heating solutions use a radiant heating method – low temperature electric heating elements that can be installed under laminate flooring or tiles to give you a more natural, comfortable indoor warmth at low costs and without the need for radiators. Underfloor heating mats are suitable in most situations even wet rooms. They can be used on any sub floor and with any floor covering, including tiles, carpet, wood, laminate, linoleum, and Amtico. Mats are usually designed to heat a fixed sized room, so once you have your bathroom dimensions simply choose the appropriate sized mat that will suit your dimensions and configuration.

The underfloor heating mats have the heating elements woven into a mat making them easy and quick to install. Simply roll the mat out on to the floor and cover it with a latex self-levelling compound before the tiling goes down. The mats are supplied in a range of sizes and power outputs -and are designed so that it generates a certain amount of heat output, measured in “Watts”, per unit area, when installed according to manufacturer’s guidelines. Heat output per unit area varies from cable to cable, typically from around 75w/m2, which may be suitable for wood or laminated floors, to 200w/m2 which generates the extra heat required in wet rooms (but should only be used beneath stone or tiled floors).

Most systems are compatible with digital thermostat and timer controls so you can control the temperature and when you want your heating to come on and go off – even set different times for the weekend and when you go away on holiday.

Wet Room Underfloor Heating

Although you might not think it, wet rooms are a logical choice for electric underfloor heating. It can be used to provide the primary heat source or just in one area where you want a cosy drying area.. And because it is invisible it does not detract from the space available or the interior design of your bathroom..

Electric underfloor heating can be installed in most wet rooms with the added benefit of significantly reducing the drying time of the floor. You do need to make careful consideration to the insulation, if installing on a timber, or a concrete subfloor. Concrete in particular, will dissipate heat very quickly if not properly insulated, so insulation board is usually installed onto the subfloor, before the underfloor heating mat is put in place.

The wet room underfloor heating set up with sub-board, insulation board, heating element then tiles usually means the floor of a wet room will be raised slighlty. So it is worth taking this into consideration when you are designing your wet room space.

Controlling your Underfloor Heating

Modern electric underfloor heating cables feature twin conductors, so there is usually only one connection required to a programmable electronic controller. The systems are usually installed in conjunction with a room thermostat and temperature sensor that is installed in the floor before tiling, which allows the temperature to be regulated.

In wet rooms, the floor sensor will normally be installed in the wet area but wired to a programmable room thermostat in an adjacent dry area such as a landing or hallway.

Add that extra warmth element to your bathroom this Winter with underfloor heating. Call us on 01308 420011 for more information and discussing your requirements.