Central heating installation with concrete ground floor

[Ian S Donaldson]

Help Please,

I wish to replace electric storage heaters with a wet central heating system. the downstairs floor is a concrete, upstairs is suspended timber.

Any advise on best way to run pipes in downstairs area. Can I cut a run in the concrete to lay the pipes?

Should I insulate the pipes in the concrete?

Should they be covered in grout on completion?

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[mikej2005]

I would have thought that running pipes down the wall from above would be far less effort than digging up concrete floors. They can either be 'chased' into the wall and hidden or concealed in trunking in the corner of a room.

 

[gasandoilman]

I hate these jobs

You can chase out the floor but hard work and dusty
use plastic pipe or copper but that will have to be sleeved to stop cement corroding the pipe.
I use hep pipe with copper tails from radiators

 

[peskymo]

Ian, I'd be interested to hear what you decided to do as I've got exactly the same dilemma in a house we're about to move into.

Ground floor has open fire with back boiler linked to hot water storage tank (also electric immersion). Room heat is from electric storage heaters. Floors are concrete. There is no heating upstairs.

Our first trademan has proposed electric panel heaters upstairs and keeping everything else in situ, but I'm convinced there must be alternatives!

Is there any easy method of adding radiators, so that at least the back boiler is heating the rest of the house when the fire is on?

Any thoughts 'grate'fully received.

 

[simond]

You want to be very careful digging into concrete floors. The chasing would be significant and could encourage cracking of the slab. You will only find out how diligently the house is constructed when it is too late.

The dust would be unbelievable, so you would be wise to empty the entire property of all furnishings.

If you must do it I suggest you employ a manifolded system, so that each rad is fed from a central manifold with its own pair of pipes. This way there are no joints, crossovers or pipes bigger than 15mm under the floor.

Use plastic pipe, which theoretically has to be sleeved to meet building regs.

Interestingly if you use the same pipe for underfloor heating it doesn't have to be sleeved.

 

[peskymo]

thanks for that - to be honest, we're not considering tampering with the floor, so the option seem to be bringing pipes down through the wall or trunking.... or just opting for electric radiators.

can anyone share experience of using these or similar?
http://www.easy-heat.co.uk/

 

[JohnD]

electrical heating usually costs about twice as much to run as gas, but it depends on your price per kWh. It is out of the question if you haven't got Economy 7 or similar cheap night electricity.

a problem with storage heating is that it tends to keep the house warm all day, and run down by evening. If you have babies or old people in the house, or are retired, this may be OK, but is not much use if you are out at work all day.