Underfloor Heating in Stoke-on-Trent

The floor finish

Tile and stone pass heat through fastest, which is why they are the classic pairing. LVT works well too, within a maximum surface temperature the manufacturer sets, and engineered wood is fine. The one to avoid is thick carpet on a heavy underlay: it insulates the room from the heat underneath it.

Insulation underneath

On a solid floor, heat travels down as readily as up. An insulation board under the mats sends more of it into the room and lets the floor warm up faster. On a cold slab in an older house it is worth the few extra millimetres.

Timing

The cheapest moment to add underfloor heating is when the floor is coming up anyway: a new bathroom, a kitchen refit, a floor being replaced. Adding it to a floor that is already finished means lifting that floor, and that is where most of the cost goes.

Controls

Every electric system gets its own thermostat, so the floor can be timed rather than left running. Set to come on before you get up and go off once the room is empty, a bathroom floor costs far less to run than one left on all day.

In the older terraces across Burslem, Tunstall, Longton and Fenton, the bathroom is often the coldest room in the house: solid walls with no cavity, a floor over a ventilated void, and so little wall space that the radiator goes wherever it fits. Electric matting under the floor tiles makes a bigger difference to how that room feels on a winter morning than almost anything else in the job, and it frees the wall for a heated towel rail.

Those timber floors need care. The boards are screwed down and overlaid with ply before the mats go on, and the void underneath stays ventilated. Sealing it to keep the heat in is how joists start to rot.

Concrete floors in houses from the 1930s to the 1970s get a damp test first. Some were laid without a damp-proof membrane, and a slab with moisture coming up through it is no base for heating or for the floor that goes over it.

Newer houses round Trentham, Barlaston and Blurton bring fewer surprises underfoot. Their floors mostly need levelling rather than rescuing, though a screed laid only a year or two ago is moisture-tested before anything goes over it. They are also where a water-fed system across an open-plan kitchen-diner is most often worth weighing up, because the heating pipework is modern plastic and simple to extend.

What does underfloor heating cost?

Electric underfloor heating is priced per square metre of heated floor, supplied, laid and wired in. The heated area is the open floor rather than the whole room, since there is no point warming the floor under a bath, a run of kitchen units or a WC.

Water-fed systems depend on the area, the floor build-up and how they connect to your heating, so they are quoted after the survey. Most jobs also need some floor preparation, which is priced separately so you can see it.