Browse Forums Heating, Cooling & Insulation 1 Apr 05, 2014 10:40 pm Hi, We will be building soon and doing some research on heating and cooling options. The builder mentioned underfloor heating and also that it can cost around $20,000. From my reading underfloor heating seems to be pretty well received but expensive to install. What is the expensive component? The piping in the slab or the heat tank etc. If its not too expensive I am tempted to just put in the piping now and then connect to a system when the prices become abit more affordable? Or would this not make a difference to the price? Re: Under Floor heating Costs and Options 2Apr 06, 2014 3:02 pm Hi Gipps, Underfloor heating can be either hydronic (hot water) or electric. Electric is cheaper to install, but MUCH more expensive to run, so really only viable for small areas like bathrooms. Hydronic underfloor heating relies on heating the thermal mass of the floor. Thermal mass is the ability of a material to absorb heat, & release it slowly (thermal lag). For this reason floors with high thermal mass are usually preferred. That is, concrete & tiled floors usually work better than wood flooring. The thermal lag results in slow response times (8 hours). So hydronic underfloor heating is usually turned on at the start of winter, & remains on throughout the winter. This is great for cold European or American climates, though I don't think it's appropriate for most Australian climates, other than alpine regions. On a warm winter day you'd be forced to open the windows & vent the house, as turning off the heating would have little effect for many, many hours. A more appropriate type of hydronic heating for Australian conditions would be radiators. Either panels, or trench heaters. These do not suffer from extremely long response times. Note, the water temperature required for underfloor heating is quite a bit lower than for radiators. Hydronic heating can use a variety of heat sources. The most common would be a gas boiler. Another option is a heat pump, which I like the sound of, as they're very energy efficient. I haven't really looked into the costs, but along with the cost of the boiler (or whatever heat source you use), there's the circulation pump, storage tank, piping & other components. As with many things here, the cost of labour is high. This is particularly true in this case, as this type of heating is not very common, compared to say Europe. So you have to pay for that 'exotic' expertise. One advantage of hydronic heating is you can heat the water at a time of your choosing, store it, & release that heat when necessary. If you choose to use a heat pump, & have solar PV panels, you can heat the water in the daytime when the sun is shining, then release it into the house once the suns down & it's cooled off. Free heating ![]() Re: Under Floor heating Costs and Options 5Apr 14, 2014 6:12 pm A couple of questions first Gipps. Where are you building and what type of house are you going for? Is it two story and what floor coverings will you have? Ill jump ahead anyway, Hydronic heating has been the best bang for buck we had for our build, we love it. Due to the nature of our renno/extension we went for a combination of both slab and panel heating. This in effect zoned our heating into sleeping and living areas which has worked out perfectly. Ill briefly touch on some of what was said earlier... its rubbish that you might have to open the house up on warm days. We set the thermostat at 21 degrees during the winter months. If there is a freakish warm spell.... the house stays at 21 degrees. The beauty of a heated slab is that is such a huge thermal mass..this works both ways. Its ideal for our Melbourne climate, the crazy fluctuations in temperature are totally ironed out by our slab/concrete floor. In the depths of winter our boiler does work quite hard, but we only have it on in the evenings, turning off at about 11pm, back on at 6am and the room only loses around 2 degrees the whole night! The only mistake I made was not getting a condensing boiler, the only type you can get in Europe. Our HWS is a condensing type and is insanely efficient. As far as cost of installation $20000 is insane for a standard build. Underfloor can be cheaper but id go for the insulated method, more expensive but cheaper to run. have a look at my build thread, especially mid way when the polished concrete and the heating goes in. Happy to answer any questions. Re: Under Floor heating Costs and Options 6Apr 15, 2014 10:09 pm Hi, Thanks for your reply. We are building in country Victoria. Over winter the highest temp seems to be 16C and lowest around 5C. At this stage we are looking at 34 squares living with single storey. So when you get back home at night how long does it take to get the place heated up again? We like to come home to a nice warm house. What is the running cost of your system like? Have you done any comparisons to gas and inverter? We will have a mixture of carpet and floor boards or tiles. You mention a cost of $6000 what this for the whole system including controllers and boiler? Do you know roughly how many sq your system covers? Many thanks, Re: Under Floor heating Costs and Options 7Apr 22, 2014 12:37 pm I don't think you can regard underfloor heating as "turn it on and wait an hour for it to heat the room" kind of heating. Some of them take a long time to have any effect but that depends on whether you have the heating just under the carpet or incorporated into the slab. I know someone who has it and basically at the start of winter they turn it on and when spring comes they turn it off. Stewie Re: Under Floor heating Costs and Options 8May 05, 2014 3:12 pm Hmmmm ok our boiler runs for about four hours a day give or take. Its controlled by a thermostat timer, coming on at about 6am till 830am and again at around 5pm till 1030pm. During those times its set for about 22 degrees and gets to that temp in about an hour. Overnight i have it set at 17, in the dead of winter the boiler may come on a couple of times during the night. Remember the slab is a huge heat bank, so long as you keep it ticking over it irons out all the wild fluctuations in melbourne weather. I'm looking to install a new heating and cooling system in my home, which has 3 bedrooms, 1 master bedroom, 1 theater room, and 1 living room. Iām considering a Midea… 0 3188 For anyone reading this, they ended up putting brick sills under the window. 5 16786 Two years ago, a forced draft Arca Ecofat 32 FR boiler was installed (heating only), with a 3-way servo-motorized valve and a 150l external Vaillant boiler. 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