Solid kitchen floor?

[Agile]

I have a kitchen about 5m x 2.4m with a solid floor with no dpc and finished with quarry tiles. These tiles are fairly impervious but still some damp does come up throught the floor probably through the joints.

With the kitchen stripped out it gives me the opportunity to consider the labour intensive job of breaking up and digging out the floor and adding a dpc, insulation and probably UFH.

Do others think that that UFH is such a good idea in a long thin utilitarian kitchen which is only used for cooking with much of the space taken up by units and appliances?

Obviously there is quite a lot of work involved in doing this. Would others think that it is really worthwhile to do this?

Tony

 

[bellairaphon]

rip it up and get ufh down. i'll give you a good price

Nath

 

[electronicsuk]

If there is little uncovered floor space and the room is poorly insulated, which is likely if the house is old enough not to have a damp proof membrane in the floor, I shouldn't think UFH would be a good idea as your sole source of heat.

 

[Agile]

The room has over half of the walls as external and 9" solid.

About 45% of the floor area will be covered with kitchen units and appliances.

The heat output from the floor will be about 1 kW but thats IF one takes the view that UFH heat generated under the units is still getting into the room. I would expect that only perhaps 50% of the heat under the units will get out.

I went to look at some of the insulation boards today. There is Kingspan which I think is typified as suitable use under floor screeds and Xtratherm which looks the same but seems to be supplied only for use in roof insulation.

There are some polystryene boards but the ones supplied for underscreed use like Jablite 70 are about the same cost as Kingspan, But they are much softer and worryingly unable to withstand much finger pressure.

Tony

 

[oilman]

We have a kitchen similar to yours. Just leave it and ensure you have ventilation. Ventilation is a good thing anyway. A DPC isn't necessary, will cost you lots of money, and may even give rise to other problems.

We don't have any heating in thje kitchen, and the only heat it gets is leakage from adjacent rooms.

UFH is much over rated IMO, and I have several customers who are well off, had UFH put in, and are not over happy with the result. Ordinary rads would have been a better solution.

 

[mysteryman]

I don't think it is worth it in your case.

However, looked at on a whole house basis, underfloor heating installed properly has to be the best, especially if heated by a condensing boiler with weather compensation.

 

[Agile]

The problem is that in cold weather the kitchen is very cold in the morning.

What I should really do is to abandon the kitchen as a utility room and turn the adjoining small dining room into the kitchen and use the adjoining large room as a dining room. But as we all know the dining room then never gets used.

I agree that UFH is largely not very specially useful in an older house and in my case would consume about 24 kWh a day just to get a warmish room all day ( and night ) long. A plinth fan heater is probably the best answer, rapid warm up and only pay for heat used.

I will have to think more about it over the next few weeks.

Tony