Under Floor Heating - good or bad?

[balladmaker]

The distance down depends on the square footage of the house you want to heat.  The show on TG4 the other night showed a house getting the hole drilled with a massive machine.  They then send a pipe down 150 metres with a u bend on the end, when the water comes back up it is boiling hot and is then pumped around the house.  No oil, no wood pellets....just a big hole and a pump. To run the pump all of the time costs approx. 500 euro per year in electricity.

If you have the space, you can lay the pipes down horizontally in trenches as was said earlier, the trenches are only 3 feet or so below the serface.

[blast05]

Shite, yee have me all worried now  Currently getting underfloor heating installed on most of ground floor of a new gaff as with the open plan nature i didn't have enough wall space for rads .... but going with a decent wood pellet burner - an okofen - so running costs should actually be lower than oil and all rads and there is a decent grant for the burner.
I guess underfloor is for some people and not for others - depends on how much comfort you like. Keep the thermostats at 19-20 degrees through the winter months and underfloor on 24/7 then with proper insulation in the house your heating bills will be no more than with oil and you'll have fantastics comfort with it. Also the efficiency of the underfloor is improving hugely in terms of how quickly the house can be heated. I know of a church in Meath that was recently renovated that has had underfloor heating installed and the temperature of the church can go from whatever it would be on a winters morning to 22 degrees within 2 hours of it being turned on.

A good selection of FAQ's here http://www.underfloorheatingdiy.co.uk/faqs.html

[balladmaker]

I was in a house the other day which has underfloor heating installed both downstairs and upstairs.  There was a thermostat in each room so the temp could be controlled on a per room basis. When we went into the house it seemed to be chilly enough as the heating was at its lowest setting.  After 30 minutes the temp was perfect. So this would be comparable to the heating time of rads.  Now this was in the so called summer we are having.....would like to see it in the middle of December.

[ludermor]

Blast,
i wouldnt say it is a bad system some people just prefer to'feel' the heat coming from rads/heaters. The time taken to heat a house depends on the thickness of the screeds, it could take up to day to heat the house from scratch, which would be feck all good if you are away for the weekends or on holidays.
As for the heat output from geo thermal, there have been many reports where the system could not give the required output so the system had to be supplemented by another, which would completely defeat the purpose of installing it.

[blast05]

which would be feck all good if you are away for the weekends or on holidays

Yes, but in addition to 365 day clocks on which which you can schedule the heat to come on and off many times, you can also get a little 'box' tied to the heating system that you can ring and it will trigger the heating to come on (not sure exactly of whats involved but the plumber is installing it. All that is really needed is a sim card) ......  so in my case, when i am going home for the weekend i can ring it on a Friday morning.

[North Longford]

Have UF on the ground floor and think its a bit expensive.
We F%^$ed up a bit and put the boiler a bit too far from the house so we don't leave it on all the time .
Once the thermostats all reach the set temp the room will stay at the set temp (actually goes abit above it) for a certain lenght of time so I have kinda worked out how long I need it to stay on and when it needs to come on to keep the house warm. Other wise the boiler is continually coming on to the heat the water under the ground outside the house coming from the boiler even when there is no heat requirements in the house. Am going to move the boiler right up against the house this summer so maybe will be able to leave on all the time then.

[naka]

have underfloor heating throughout house, had majoe teething problems, first year is expensive if new house, drying out etc, make sure you commission it after about 6 months to get a balance throughout the rooms, but otherwise am happy with it

[Brick Tamlin]

for what its worth id go with building a timber frame home, invest in decent insulation(spray on cellulose etc) and concentrate on the actual building materials etc and how the house is put together. If ye do this properly then you should have a warmer house throughout anyway without actually worrying about heating systems. Personally id stray away from the oil option purely down to market trends and projected costs down the line.

Believe it or not we are light years behind the rest of europe in terms of heating homes and building methods etc. ie Self heating homes and sustainable homes in Sweden & Germany etc.
Sure half of our houses are thrown up rather than built anyway. Absoulte joke some of the cowboys out there masquerading as builders.

[Gnevin]

for what its worth id go with building a timber frame home, invest in decent insulation(spray on cellulose etc) and concentrate on the actual building materials etc and how the house is put together. If ye do this properly then you should have a warmer house throughout anyway without actually worrying about heating systems. Personally id stray away from the oil option purely down to market trends and projected costs down the line.

Believe it or not we are light years behind the rest of europe in terms of heating homes and building methods etc. ie Self heating homes and sustainable homes in Sweden & Germany etc.
Sure half of our houses are thrown up rather than built anyway. Absoulte joke some of the cowboys out there masquerading as builders.

Yeah Loaislad where are on too you!

[The Real Laoislad]

for what its worth id go with building a timber frame home, invest in decent insulation(spray on cellulose etc) and concentrate on the actual building materials etc and how the house is put together. If ye do this properly then you should have a warmer house throughout anyway without actually worrying about heating systems. Personally id stray away from the oil option purely down to market trends and projected costs down the line.

Believe it or not we are light years behind the rest of europe in terms of heating homes and building methods etc. ie Self heating homes and sustainable homes in Sweden & Germany etc.
Sure half of our houses are thrown up rather than built anyway. Absoulte joke some of the cowboys out there masquerading as builders.

Yeah Loaislad where are on too you!

Im not a builder im a sparks!!

[Brick Tamlin]

 ..even worse haha

[Gnevin]

for what its worth id go with building a timber frame home, invest in decent insulation(spray on cellulose etc) and concentrate on the actual building materials etc and how the house is put together. If ye do this properly then you should have a warmer house throughout anyway without actually worrying about heating systems. Personally id stray away from the oil option purely down to market trends and projected costs down the line.

Believe it or not we are light years behind the rest of europe in terms of heating homes and building methods etc. ie Self heating homes and sustainable homes in Sweden & Germany etc.
Sure half of our houses are thrown up rather than built anyway. Absoulte joke some of the cowboys out there masquerading as builders.

Yeah Loaislad where are on too you!

Im not a builder im a sparks!!

Tomato  , Tamatoe

[lfdown2]

folks can any of ye give me a rough cost per m sq for underfloor heating in the northwest the work is in donegal but a price in the north would be useful too,

cheers

[illdecide]

I know off a guy in Portadown who has it. The method behind it is the water is gravitated down into the ground as basically as deep as necessay for the natural heat of the planet to heat the water, it's then pumped back up to the house as hot water to heat and shower/bath the household. From what i gather it is expensive to install (about £15,000) whether you save big money after that i don't really know but it's def greener.

[RMDrive]

I have a ground source heatpump with a horizontal collector, and underfloor heating in all of the rooms in our bungalow. Generally I'm delighted with our purchase and we have had only one minor problem since we moved into our house 2 years ago.

The time taken to heat a house depends on the thickness of the screeds, it could take up to day to heat the house from scratch, which would be feck all good if you are away for the weekends or on holidays.

Why would you want to heat the house from scratch? You are basing your thinking on a traditional oil heating system where the heat is delivered to the house in intense short bursts. With a properly functioning heatpump system, heat is constantly being delivered to the house as required. I arrived back into my house on Sunday evening after being away from the weekend and the house was exactly as comfortable as it was when I left. If I decided to increase the temperature in a room from 16 to 22 degrees, I'd say it would be done in about an hour.

As for the heat output from geo thermal, there have been many reports where the system could not give the required output so the system had to be supplemented by another, which would completely defeat the purpose of installing it.

I've heard these reports all right and I agree with you 100% that it defeats the purpose completely if you have to install a supplementary system. We have nothing only the heat pump and thankfully we have never needed anything else. We have a Thermia heatpump installed that we got from heatlink. They also did the UFH.

The positives from my perspective are:
- Convenience - There is always hot water and the house is ALWAYS comfortable. Set your stat to the temp you want and the system does the rest. I can't emphasise that enough. We haven't though about heat in our house in about a year. There's no maintenance, topping up, running out ...
- Savings?? Dunno if I can honestly include this one. My electricity bill is about EUR1600 for the year. We have an electric hob and cooker so that includes all of our heating, cooking etc. Our house if around 2000ft2. I've heard various figures for oil costs for a famil house - anywhere from 700-1500 for the year. At the upper end of that then we are definitely saving money. At the lower end then definitely not. I can only hope that over time Ireland's electricity prices decouple from gas and oil prices. Maybe then the saving would be more apparent.
- Comfort - UFH in a house is brilliant. The heat is always evenly distributed and everyone who visits us always comments on how comfortable it feels.

Negatives:
- It costs a lot to install. Let no one pretend it doesn't. And the payback is nowhere near as quick as the sellers would have you believe. We were lucky enough to get the 4k grant from the government before they reduced it and that helped a lot. The total cost was around 20k. That was for the system, interior and exterior piping, and fitting.
- You are restricted in your choice of flooring. This wasn't a big deal for us as we always intended to use wooden floors and tiles however if you are a carpet lover then UFH is probably not for you.
- You need a lot of garden space to use a horizontal collector. We ended up using 300m of piping and covered almost half an acre with it.
- Cowboys! At one stage it seemed that every Tom Dick and Harry was selling heatpumps etc. Too many people don't know what they are at. We got an installer that had fitted a few systems in the area and we went to visit some of his work. Plus he had the backing of Heatlink behind him.