Very Cold Kitchen

[footers]

Hi,

I have just moved into a new house which has a kitchen extension of 5.7 Meters squared. It is an extension with 4 external walls (inc roof) and with a concrete base and no such heating. As you can imagine the room can get very cold, I have seen it as low as 6 degrees Celsius so far. The kitchen concrete floor is 20cm (8" roughly) lower then the main house floor ie You have a step down into the kitchen.

I was thinking about getting underfloor heating (UFH) to warm the room, would UFH be able to heat such a small room. If so, do you put the UFH under where the kitchen units will be or is this a waste of heat/electricity?

Is there are better way to warm the room?

I have searched the forums on this subject and some people say UFH will warm a room and other say the opposite, getting confused. I just don't want a sale person around saying 'of course it will warm the room' just to get the sale.

Thanks in advance.

Footers

[Bob Mannix]

Well, clearly UFH will warm a room otherwise no-one would use it for heating (and they do). It would be expensive and a pain to fit, I suspect. Easier alternatives would be a radiator (is there room) or under unit heater run off the central heating, a warmer floor covering (even the dreaded cushion vinyl - at least you can change it) and better insulation - is there any in the roof void, for example? Is there an outside door/window - are they d/glazed?

[David Hansen]

On 8 Jan 2007 02:58:06 -0800 someone who may be "footers" wrote this:-

Are the walls and roof insulated? If not get them (and the rest of the house if necessary) insulated.

Would this be a wet system, or one powered by electricity?

How is the rest of the house heated?

Likely to be far better is a radiator, if there is space, or a kickspace heater, both fed by any existing heating system.

[r.bartlett]

You could put down floorboards -or pushing the boat out that fancy oak stripping- which would break the feel of feet on cold concrete .

Cheers

Richard

[nightjar]

I had a similar problem with an extension. Double glazing, roof and wall insulation transformed it, even before the heating went in.

Colin Bignell

[Chris Hodges]

Insulate under that, and it would make a difference to the air temp as well. Electric UFH might be worth it then.

We had a similar setup in our last house, only the kitchen was up a step. It was much better after the flat roof was done - the insulation was wet until then. Cushioned vinyl helped (in place of thin vinyl) and stopping up a hole into the cavity wall where an old waste pipe had gone through (draughty).

If it's going as low as 6 in the OP's case a small electric convector on the wall with a frost stat might be a good cheap stopgap - the weather hasn't been that cold yet this year.

As for UFH, anything that produces heat will warm the room - it's more a case of whether it will make it warm enough for what you want. Kitchens don't always need that much heat - if you're spending much time in there you're normally cooking, but of course breakfast time is the coldest time of day.

Chris

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. I laid 3mm cork tiles in one kitchen years ago on cold screed..made a surprising difference, especially to bare feet. If well sealed it is surprisingly resistant to stains too..and about as tough as a good vinyl and a but warmer.

Totally out of fashion tho.

I rather liked avocado suites as well come to that, though I am glad to see the back of artex and woodchip, and I refuse to have stripped pine anywhere in sight.

UFH is really only effective with decent insulation underneath.

Heatloss through the slab and ground to outside is quite large, especially if there are external walls..a totally interior space is better..but even so you have to heat a huge volume of soil underneath as well.. so it's a 24x7 background heat type system you end up with.

The better way is a small convector like a kickspace. Or an aga.

[Chris Hodges]

Seems sensible - but whatever you choose, the insulation should come first - not just on environmental grounds (and no I'm not trying to start a flame war) but because if you're shelling out for new heating and can use a cheapersystem plus insulation it's going to a much shorter payback period than insulation which leaves an existing system over specced.

Dry (electric only) kickspace fans warm the room up pretty quickly, but (like the wet ones) needed to be sited blowing towards (ish) the middle of the room to bring the temperature up reasonably quickly.

My inlaws went for the aga. Nice and warm in the winter, hot in the summer, and take up quite a bit of space (and gas!).

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well All I can say is that our aga heats half a huge house most of the year without any extra heating being needed. And it appears to do so at an alarmingly high efficiency. The stove pipe that emerges from it is cool enough to put your hand on, and THAT goes up through a chimney stack.. Oil consumption compared to when the boiler DOES kick in is very low..

In summer it gets switched off, and we eat cold food, barbecues or use the electric stove.

[Tim..]

I've found quite the opposite!

Previously the Aga provided cooking, 1/2 heat and hot water in a house we have. It did none very well, whilst getting through about £700 oil / yr.

Following modernisation of the CH (new larger -38kw- boiler, larger fast recovery cylinder etc)- the decision was made to disconnect the back boiler of the Aga, and letting the boiler do *all* the HW & CW.

No other changes were made to the house insulation wise (6 bed Georgian farm house)

Immediately we found the Aga was blisteringly hot on anything more than setting 2 (previously needed to be on 4-5), and after 12months with the new set up, we are saving nearly £200 / yr on oil , depsite heating more water with a larger boiler.

Tim..

[The Natural Philosopher]

I didn't say use the aga to heat water.

It is not efficient at that.

I don;t understand that,because our aga is thermostatically controlled, and the setting controls the temperature?

If you had to run the aga at peak output to heat the water and the house, then I agree, it won;t be as efficient.

We seem to burn about £400 a year in the aga..and over £1300 a year with the boiler. However right now the CH is hardly coming on at all.

Hottest year ever predicted..phew.