Warmfloor heated flooring

September 03, 2021, 07:52:59 pm

I want to replace my carpet and put in new wood flooring. Really want to put in heated flooring but am wondering if anyone has done this and the expense of purchasing? I'll probably do the install myself. I'm looking at the electric stuff at warmfloor.com
1994 U240 '36

Re: Warmfloor heated flooring

Reply #1 – September 03, 2021, 08:58:53 pm

Looks interesting. We have friends who had some electric heated floor elements installed and then vinyl plank flooring over it. The connectors protruded up a bit and made small humps (wear spots) on the flooring. The connectors should have has a small recess cut into the subfloor so they wouldn't stick up.

It looks like this product suggests an underlayment layer above the heat panels and then the wood floor. I would get detailed installation instructions and understand exactly how it is going to work before you order. Make sure there is someone there you can talk to and ask questions. That availability made a big difference for us when we did our own floor redo.

Warm floors are nice.

Re: Warmfloor heated flooring

Reply #2 – September 07, 2021, 02:45:32 pm

We have a retirement home in the smoky mountain. 3000' elevation, and plenty cold winters. Over the last few years of a remodel, I did an entire rear of the house 900sf with electric in the floor radiant heat. We love it. takes a few hours to get the house up to temp as we leave all things off until we arrive, but once its there, its great. If I had wifi, I could link in and start it while on the way up, but not there yet.

Heat cables are low amp draw once up to temp. When running at warm up state draw based on the cable length. 110 or 220v designed, I dont think they make any that are 12vdc. I have not taken the time to see what sort of circuit availability we have in our RV main boxes, but I am running my entire rear of the house off of 2, 20a double pole breakers. I know this is getting quite popular in newer rigs, so surely there is capacity as I see even knew are still in the 50A design range.

Two suggestions. 1, as Roger states, all connection points, underfloor thermostat wires, etc need to be routed into the subfloor to avoid any humps. you only need to imbed them about 1/2 way due to the fact that the heat cable itself is 1/8" diam. You can use hot glue for attaching the wires, but suggest the cheap mounting strips, unless you got with the rubber inlay mat,

2nd, to get the most efficiency, you really need to have the heat wires imbedded in thinset, and topped with Ceramic tile. If you go with wood floor you will lose about 25% efficiency. If you go with laminate you lose a bit more, and if you go with Carpet you really lose near 50%. Think a very old camping in the cold trick, a stone in the fire.Stone retains heat for a long time, other items wont. I remember reading where you could also install using floor mastic, but the thinset does better as the wires themselves are roughly 1/8" in diameter,and the mastic tends to not hold up under gravity that well when doing the setting. They also make a rubber grid type mat that the wires can be imbeded in, but once again it is recommended to apply some sort of adhesive for better heat transmission. I have read of those that have just layed interlocking floor on top of the rubber mat, but unsure about the efficency on that. I remodeled my home for max efficiency at 3000', zero to single digit degree for many days/weeks. R 21 in the floors, R34 in the walls, and R 30 in the ceilings(combined foam and batts all 3 ). I can only attest to how a properly designed setup works.

Due to the small footprint, if I were to do it an my RV, I would go with the rubber grid mat (Ditra mat I think they call it), then skim with thinset and go what either Tile or wood.

Be sure and imbed 2 control sensors per zone, 1 for live and 1 as a spare. Go with the better thermostats that can run on either floor temp or room ambient temp. We usualy run ours based on floor temp as the floor temp will radiate to near 6' before it starts to drop in efficiency. But in our RV's that should not be much of an issue anyway. BUT, if you were to lose a floor sensor, the sensor in the controller can take over until you can pull, and wire in the spare.

Lots of work, and design layout time consuming....but worth all the work once done.

Hope this helps,
Mike

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