We are thinking of under floor heating for our new build.
We really love solid floors (Oak for example). I am told its not recommended on top of the screed containiong the under floor heating pipes. Experts say the timber will move with all the temperature changes. They are recommending Semi Solid flooring. I hate that stuff !
Can anybody offer a way to have the best of both worlds?
Thanks in advance. C
Ok...I installed floating floor for this reason, and when money and time permits will rip it out and go solid.
The BIGGEST movement I got was in summer, when the RH goes very high..60-70% in a sticky summer. I got about a cm expansion over a 6m width.
The issue is not heat, its humidity...in use the floor seldom gets much higher than 30 degrees C.. which is no different from a hot summers day. In fact with proper UFH the range of temperature of the wood is probably narrower than with any other sort of heating as cold floors simply don't happen.
The greater issue is differential thermal conductivity - a cm of solid wood is not the worlds greatest conductor, and you may well need extra underneath the floor to prevent inefficiency. And you will need slight gaps between blocks or boards to take up normal humidity variations of course.
There is one way on which floor temperatures CAN rise quite a lot..and that is under cushions and furniture. WE have a large sofa with a floor trailing fabric fringe, and it gets very cosy under that - 35C or so.
Of course one thing that should go without saying, is that you will only get decent low floor temps if the house is insulated well enough to not need massive heat input to heat it. You MUST review all insulation, especially underfloor insulation, critically before installing UFH of any serious nature.
Info here;
This suggests the need for the application of much wonga. The chances of finding someone in the UK capable of specifying, installing and controlling such an installation is arounabout zero, approximately.
The site above is American. The Americans have much more hardwood than us. Solid wood floors are much used. They mostly heat with air and domestic installations often have AC. Humidifiers are fairly commonplace. They mostly have more wonga.
I'd go with the engineered floor option; unless you have a surfeit of said wonga.
I think there may be something about it on the Rehau website (Kahrs?).
Read the UFH & Flooring sections on the UK_Selfbuild FAQ
I would personally never use solid wood floor over UFH.
Or just have some flowers in vases through the winter. Or do some steamy cooking now and again.
Actually I have found the summer to be the worst.
USA has cold dry winters and use aircon in the summer - these reduce RH inside the house a lot.
I WOULD do it, but not without thought first. Probably Parquet..with mastic in between each block.
DX cooling does do that. Proper AC cools the air to condense out the excess water vapour and then re-heats the air to get it back up to the appropriate supply temperature.
So its well below the 70-90% humidity of a stocky hot summers day then.
50% ish summer or winter, rain or shine, ideally. It can be achieved. Wooden stringed instruments & paper move around a lot, thin material, so they're even more affected than floors. Willis Carrier first invented AC to control the humidity, not the temperature, in a printing plant.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.