Advice needed for insulating a concrete floor

[Andy F]

My garage/workshop has a separate room at one end that I use for an office. It is kitted out nicely, desk, pc for sketchup , books, drinks cabinet etc, but it has the same concrete floor as the workshop and is effing cold. It is on the north side of the building so gets no sun. The previous owner has put some thin carpet tiles down that he probably acquired from his work's office flooring leftovers. I am working from home for the next few weeks or months now, and am spending a lot more time in here but my feet still go numb even when I have an electric fire going all day.

Does anyone have any recommendations for ways to insulate the floor? The ceiling is 9ft so I have a bit of scope to raise the level a bit. Should I go for a false wooden floor? polystyrene sheets? some kind of membrane? or something else entirely. I will want a nice finish on top, either wood, laminate or carpet, as long as it is warm, and easy to clean.

Ta

Andy

 

[Lazurus]

Underfloor electric heating with laminate overlay?

 

[gcusick]

Floating chipboard floor on 75mm of foam insulation, then underfloor heating, then laminate flooring. You’ll lose about 110mm of height, but gain a lot of heat!

 

[RichardG]

My office space is DPC/25mm cellotex/18mm chipboard/carpet tiles. Makes a big difference compared to concrete on its own plus you can loose the step up with a thick threshold. If you have the space then go thicker as above.

 

[Robbo60]

After the first lockdown I got a load of 18mm OSB, for free, that had been used to board some pubs up.
It was a bit of a patchwork quilt but I used it to floor out my workshop, which is part of a prefab garage with concrete floor. Made a hell of a difference -and cost nothing!

 

[Andy F]

Thanks for your replies. I will go for the thickest floor I can get away with I think plus electric underfloor heating.. Total floor space is about 6m2 so it wont be too expensive whatever I use.

There is an old combi boiler feeding some radiators and hot water in a room above, with one small (useless) rad in the office itself but I don't know if it is worth going to the trouble of adding that to the floor's heating.

I also have the problem of the door opening inwards. I will either change it to open outwards, or have a "cutout" in the floor with a mat to wipe my feet on.

Many thanks

Andy

 

[pils]

glue cork, then osb, (then wood flooring if you like)
I was advised this and will be implementing at some point when I get the time.
" A better solution might be one we have used in our office re-fit here, which is to lay expanded cork boards on the existing concrete floor slab (glued to it) and then lay a 'floating' floor of 18mm OSB glued to the cork. The cork board we used was 40mm thick but you could obviously go thicker if you wished. Mike Wye Associates or Ty Mawr would be potential suppliers of expanded cork board. We plan to lay softwood floorboards over the OSB in due course."

 

[Donald Sinclair]

I have used solid rubber stable mats on a concrete floor in our well ventilated lockdown sitootery.
https://www.equineplus.co.uk/horse-stable-mats.html

 

[Fitzroy]

I find working from a desk for a long period it is hard to stay warm, especially extremities, unless the room is very warm. I've been working from home for nearly the last year, and our house runs at 18degC during the day and that's normally fine, but sitting in the office I get cold, especially my feet and lower legs. My solution has been to have an old sleeping bag under the desk that I put my feet in to.

 

[HamsterJam]

Have a look at the Tuin website. They sell log cabins and cover methods for floor insulation in some detail.
https://www.tuin.co.uk/blog/insulating-a-log-cabin-floor-and-roof/

 

[JBaz]

I should have another look at the cost of running electric underfloor heating as the primary heat source.

I have installed it in a bathroom and it really is just for making the floor warm to walk on when the bathroom is in use.

If you have a combi boiler upstairs you can access, it may be better to use a wet underfloor system or, for the size of room, just a radiator.

75mm of underfloor insulation will make a big difference to the heat loss on its own.

 

[Andy F]

Ok, its been a while since I posted this, but I thought I would update for anyone that wants the information to do the same.

Supplies are limited here and we are also in another lockdown so I ended up putting down 25mm polystyrene, 18mm chipboard flooring panels, 5 mm B&Q green underlay panels and laminate flooring. Total cost for 12 sq metres about £200

It has made a great difference and with a small standard combi-fed radiator it is toastie warm.

The softwood door in to the room is rotten at the bottom so it needed trimming anyway and in the fullness of time I will get the door and windows replaced with PVC stuff.

Ta

Andy