Warm feet have not been widely promoted as one of the advantages of buying a new home, but in the future they could be. An ever-growing number of housebuilders are adding underfloor heating in tiled bathrooms and conservatories to the specifications of their more upmarket schemes in a bid to appeal to the sybarite in their more well-healed homebuyers.
Most underfloor heating systems rely on a laid network of pipe or cables which can be labour-intensive to install. A quicker, de-skilled solution can be to fit a board or matting system that already incorporates the pipes or cables, laid out to exactly the right formation.
“Mats are especially useful for refurbishments because they are so thin,” says Steven Rooney, market development manager with underfloor heating specialist Devi Electroheat, which produces the Devimat.
Devi’s standard underfloor heating system would sit within a minimum 50 mm floor screed, but Devimat is only 2.5 mm thick, including the 2 mm cable preformed in it, which gives it a big advantage in building conversions where floor-to-ceiling heights are less than generous.
“It is so thin and compact that it makes little or no difference to the floor,” says John Davison, owner of Teeside-based bathroom specialist Cleveland Modern Homes. “It is easy to lay. The only thing that you have to be careful of is to get exactly the right amount of matting.”
Devimat comes in a standard 0.5 m width but a variety of lengths. Devi recommends installers measure and mark the location of the matting and position of power supply connections prior to laying.
As the mat is laid, it can be cut as it is turned to fit the floor area, but the cable must obviously remain intact. The mat is laid within the thickness of the floor tile adhesive or self-levelling floor compound, and has holes in it to allow the adhesive or compound to permeate.
The other concern with underfloor heating systems is cost. It costs around £200 to fit a typical bathroom with 100 Watt/m2 Devimat, plus its accompanying thermostat and timer, but that could be less than is currently spent on putting stylish taps into a bathroom.
Source
Building Homes
