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With project kitchen in the planning stages, we are going to tile the kitchen floor and put in electric underflooring heating.

The floor at the moment is concrete, but its an 1880 house so doubt theres any dpm, its the only room which hasnt got a basement under it.
Would i need to dig out the concrete and install a dpm before tiling. theres not been any damp issues before.

Also is there any particular tile which works better with electric underfloor heating.

You could paint on a liquid DPM onto the existing concrete instead of digging it out. Do you realise how much a step into the kitchen you will have with underfloor heating? It's normally about 30mm ish.

the height change isnt too much of a problem as for some reason the kitchen floor is 300mm lower than all the other floors and we have to step down into it anyway. We are only going for underfloor heating as the we already have a big radiator in the kitchen which warms the room but the floor is like walking on ice.

Ill have a read up on liquid dpm.

Here's some info http://ardex.co.uk/Store/tabid/96/ProdI ... fault.aspx You'll need to install a heat deflecting insulation board under the heating wire, but I'm not 100% that gluing straight to a liquid dpm would be advised. I'm pretty confident you'll need to lay a self levelling compound on top first but check. Or some of the lads here might have a better idea..

Usually it's thermal board glued to floor followed by heating mat. Then self levelling over the whole lot, then fix the tiles.

Do you know if the thermal board can be glued straight to the liquid dpm Darren?

Can't see why not especially if you blind with sand with the final d&m coat like you would if you we're going to render over it

cheers for the advice, ill have a read up on what you've suggested

Always makes me laugh............................

10mm of insulation for electric underfloor heating................50mm under wet underfloor heating.

To be honest, the electric system is just a warm up and most of the heat will go downwards into your slab.

Yeah it's only to warm the tiles. It's not suitable for heating a room.

I know mate, but the principle is still the same..........more heat going down than up and reaching the tile.

Mind you, seeing as the floor defference is 300mm, he may be able to whack at least 50mm of insulation down.

with electric underflooring heating, what are some of the issues that needs to be addressed during planning, installing and ultimately its use? we have mostly been dealing with standard floor tiling and are looking into udnerflooring heating.

what are also the cost issues in particular, i.e. utilities. also I am curious how low the floor needs to be prepped before the heating system is laid and installed. What are the checks to be done before being certified safe to use.

thank you in advance

kitchenfloor

If there is 300mm of room then do insulate as thick as you can before using UFH. Pennies spent beforehand pay them self off in such a short time.

Insulation increases heat up time, and also the efficiency of the system in general.

UFH works fine with any type of tile (however a thicker tile will take longer to heat up, but generally will stay warm for longer when system is turned off)

Cheers

Matt

i cant go too mad on insulation as it will bring the kitchen unit height up and above the window sill level.