Underfloor heating..

Has anyone installed one? I'm talking about the electric mats. Since I have to redo the floor in my bath, I'm considering adding one due to the distance from any major heat source.

Yes, my house has gravity heat - ie, wall furnaces. No ducts.

It also has concrete slab, so I'm worried about the slab sucking the heat out..

 

[Turdle]

Funny you should mention this-
My neighbor was tired of passing out on a cold bathroom floor, so he installed this under his floor tile. It was very nice when I looked it over, and felt real warm in there.
I believe there is a radiant , insulator barrier between it and the slab-under a thinset bed.

 

[BrooklynBay]

Do you have a link for the electric mats? They only sell hard plastic tubing with special adapters where I live. This is for running hot water through the tubing to make it hot. This system has a small cartridge circulator pump with a thermostat, or a switch to heat the floor up. Some people also have this kind of set up for their front sidewalks, and driveways to prevent snow, and ice from accumulating on cold winter days. The only disadvantage to the electric, and hot water systems is if it breaks, you will have to break the floor to repair it.

 

[tdavis]

http://www.warmyourfloor.com/

http://www.warmlyyours.com/homeowner/

 

[JIGAWHAAT]

Just a side note on radiant heat. If you are building and are putting radiant heat in the house where hardwood is going to be installed on top of it. Make sure you get 1/4 sawn hardwood. Otherwise you will run into major issues down the road.
JIGA

 

[msmith65]

I installed a 110V electric-wire system called WarmTiles when I re-tiled my bathroom five years ago. It's a thick copper wire sheathed in plastic that you lay in the thinset under the tile. A WarmTiles thermostat controls the temperature. I used an Intermatic timer rather than the expensive one sold by WarmTiles.

It's the most popular room in the house on cold mornings.

All I would do differently would be to use a thicker mix of thinset. As it is, some of my tiles are a bit uneven.

 

[BrooklynBay]

Are these electric heater designed to run on 120 VAC, or 220 VAC?

 

[tdavis]

Both, with a low current draw - the area I want to cover is basically 5ft x 5ft, and according to what I can find, that should be less than 2amps of draw.

 

[BrooklynBay]

I would recommend using a GFCI circuit breaker on that line.

 

[RockRanger]

My parents have it in ther bathroom. For the one day it worked it was great. It quit working cause the tile guy set some tiles wrong. When he took them out to repair it he cut the wires. Now they have 4 missing tiles in the master bath of their two week old house.

If you have gravity heat I would get it forsure. Sure would make them morning showers much nicer.

 

[tdavis]

I would recommend using a GFCI circuit breaker on that line.

Code already requires that for all appliances and power plugs in the bathroom around here.

Besides, if you get their thermostat, it also has a GFCI circuit interruptor in it.

I'm leaning towards it hard, I can't find anything that says 'do not do it!', other than stupidity on my part when it's installed that damages it..