UNDER TILE HEATING.

Under floor heating and under tile heating have come on in leaps and bounds in the last few years and we are now fitting it in over half the bathrooms and kitchen floors we tile. There are many types on the market that are all very similar and we have included links to lots of these manufacturers in our links page.

There are no drawbacks to under tile heating apart from ensuring it is not turned up too high too soon. We have had a marble floor crack just after the under tile heating was turned on and no one could work out why. Then next day, just as we were leaving to fill the hairline crack the builder phoned to say that the crack had closed and vanished. This illustrates our main concern when advising about under tile heating.

When you introduce rapid heating and cooling to any new solid floor for the first time, the effect on all its various component parts cannot be predicted and you have to expect that you may have some movement. We therefore as a matter of course recommend that there is a continuous and unbroken expansion joint to the whole of the floors exterior with particular attention to areas such as door ways and enclosed patches.

With regard to the heat output, if you open up a room that has had under tile heating on for a while, the room will feel warm when you enter. Soon the room will cool but the floor will remain warm. If you turn up the floor temperature to try and keep the room warm it will have to get fairly hot and this feels very uncomfortable with your feet resting on it, it really does.

We suggest that you should only think of under tile heating as a floor warmer that will give off a little background heat and that you won’t want to turn up the heat to much more than what your hand or foot tells you is warm.

One last, but very important thing, always take photographs of the layout of the cables of your under tile heating and in particular where the temperature probe is located. These will be priceless in the event of a problem with the floor and are evidence of the way the thing was installed. Sods law, if you do this you will never have a problem but if you don’t….

.

.

.

.

.

.

And always have the floor wired up by a qualified electrician, have it done properly.