On advice from here (which seems good) I've had a jumpax style floor delivered for my kitchen. It's not actually Jumpax it's HeatPak which is the same thing but with a separate depron insulation layer and some carbon heating elements for uncovered areas of the kitchen. The floor will be covered in Amtico or Karndean. All is well except I don't know which areas of the floor to cover. I've never fitted a kitchen before and I'm going round in circles trying to think everything through 
One option is to lay the Jumpax and polystyrene insulation over the entire kitchen and dump the units, appliances and everything on top - this worries me as the manufacturers state a 6-8mm expansion gap which implies the floor will want to expand - which it'll find hard with a few hundred kilos of kitchen bits sitting on it. I presume this is not the right way to go?
So the other option is just to cover the exposed areas of the floor under plinths etc - this brings up a few issues though. Firstly, the simpler one is that the system requires a DPC membrane (provided) between the insulation and jumpax - if the floor is only partly covered how will this do its job and where should it stop?
Secondly, and most annoyingly there are two places where a row of cabinets terminates with an integrated appliance which will be trimmed with a base panel. Now the base panel will need to support a reasonable weight of worktop (composite stone type). I've thought of a couple of methods of bracketting the end panel so that it will be raised off the floor to allow the Jumpax+tiles to go underneath but they are complex and fiddly and lead to other problems as the tiles will go down after the units and worktops are in which means I'll need to guess tile thickness in order to set the end panels correctly (I wont want to move them once the stone worktop is set in place).
I assume what I'm planning is the only viable approach? but if anyone can think of a simpler solution that doesnt involve nasty beading or the like I'd be very interested...
One option is to lay the Jumpax and polystyrene insulation over the entire kitchen and dump the units, appliances and everything on top - this worries me as the manufacturers state a 6-8mm expansion gap which implies the floor will want to expand - which it'll find hard with a few hundred kilos of kitchen bits sitting on it. I presume this is not the right way to go?
So the other option is just to cover the exposed areas of the floor under plinths etc - this brings up a few issues though. Firstly, the simpler one is that the system requires a DPC membrane (provided) between the insulation and jumpax - if the floor is only partly covered how will this do its job and where should it stop?
Secondly, and most annoyingly there are two places where a row of cabinets terminates with an integrated appliance which will be trimmed with a base panel. Now the base panel will need to support a reasonable weight of worktop (composite stone type). I've thought of a couple of methods of bracketting the end panel so that it will be raised off the floor to allow the Jumpax+tiles to go underneath but they are complex and fiddly and lead to other problems as the tiles will go down after the units and worktops are in which means I'll need to guess tile thickness in order to set the end panels correctly (I wont want to move them once the stone worktop is set in place).
I assume what I'm planning is the only viable approach? but if anyone can think of a simpler solution that doesnt involve nasty beading or the like I'd be very interested...
