For consideration if building new workshop

[Woody2Shoes]

I found this calculator for electric underfloor heating costs Electric Underfloor Heating Running Cost Calculator | ThermoSphere

I can’t tell how accurate it is, it seemed strange that a bathroom was cheaper than a living room & dining room to heat, our bathroom is the warmest room in the house.
That said it predicted it would cost £2.34 for a 6 hour period to heat my workshop classing it as a dining room & £2.17 if it was a bathroom. Now I appreciate I wouldn’t want the workshop as hot as domestic rooms but chances are I would need to heat it longer than the 6 hour period each day.
With those kind of figures for a month I’d be looking at a higher price to heat the workshop than I pay for gas to heat the workshop & a 3 bedroom house.

That calculator seems to take no account of how well insulated the room is, which means its "output" is pretty much a vague guess, but yes you're right.

 

[Adam W.]

Electric UFH is cheap to install and has a slim profile which makes it convenient for renovation work, but water UFH is much more expensive to install and far cheaper to run.

In renovation work for private customers, the only thing that seems to matter is the cost of installtion, which is why it's a popular system.

 

[TRITON]

How does putting 100-400kg of weight on 1-2sq meters work with underfloor heating ?. I'd have thought the especially heavy machines would possibly affect it.

My old boss's take on being cold... Work harder.

 

[Adam W.]

Use a reinforced concrete slab and don't put the pipes under the machine.

Here in Denmark they put the UFH pipes in the slab tied to the reinforcement, pour the slab and build all the partition walls on top of it all. They have about 2 1/2' of polystyrene underneath the lot with no DPM.

It seems odd to me, but that's the way they build all the new houses. And to be honest, I don't think I'd like UFH in my workshop, as it'll be too warm and also play merry hell with the timber.

 

[Doug B]

How does putting 100-400kg of weight on 1-2sq meters work with underfloor heating ?. I'd have thought the especially heavy machines would possibly affect it.

My old boss's take on being cold... Work harder.

I used to work in a workshop with UFH albeit water not electric it had a felder combination machine in there which was certainly very heavy but it was no detriment to the heating.
On a freezing January day it was bloody lovely working in there, it had a stat to control the temperature so it was never too hot I’d certainly consider UFH if I was to build another shop, not that that is likely to happen.

 

[Soylent1]

Just this last week my little 3.5 x 4 workshop has had the electrical work connected up.

8 x double sockets
4 x 4200 lumen led batton lights
And electrical under floor heating

100mm celotex in the roof
150mm limecrete slab on 150mm glaster insulation
50mm celotex in the walls
12mm OSB for the walls

So far I've set the thermostat at 16 Celsius and it's maintained the same temperature for the last 48 hrs.

I installed the electrical UFH as an experiment really, I think it was about 200 quid as I was doing the floor slab anyway I thought I'd give it a try.

From memory the electrical UFH is 1200w so just a background heat I suppose. I'm going to leave the stat at the same temperature and monitor the bills. If it turns out to be costing a bomb I'll just turn it off, but for the time being I'm quite confident that it's maintaining the temperature quite efficiently, but I'll see what happens when the weather gets cold.

 

[clogs]

my 2 story 4 bed house is heated with a wood or oil burning boiler.......will never burn oil......
all the pipes to the rads are under the concrete floors......
radiators here are very expensicve comp to the UK......
so why bother with rads at all, just a little more piping would work a treat......
u can easily find the warm spots in the floor as there's always a cat sleeping on it.....hahaha......
This winter we bought 1 ton of Olive wood and any rubbish we found around the place....the first winter we burnt 2 ton.....
at 130 euro's per ton....not bad for heating and hot water....admitadly winter is 6-8 weeks long.....
we evan had a frost one morning......hahaha......
the rest of the year all hot water 300ltrs is free by solar panels.....
just got to make solar panels for the s/pool now.......

ps, anyone for putting UFH in a building use high density foam norm blue in colour.....not the norm expanded polystyrene sheets....

 

[Spectric]

I installed the electrical UFH as an experiment really, I think it was about 200 quid as I was doing the floor slab anyway I thought I'd give it a try.

How much screed on top of the wires?

admitadly winter is 6-8 weeks long

Lucky you, we have a 6 to 8 month winter here and if it gets to 24°C in mid summer we are into a severe heatwave.

 

[Soylent1]

How much screed on top of the wires?

There's about 2" screed on top. The system I installed isn't really designed to work in the way I'm using it - to heat a slab as a thermal bank but it seems to be working at the moment. I think the most important thing is having a well insulated space.

 

[Spectric]

Yes insulation is key, otherwise a lot of heat warms the sub base but your system may take longer to heat the slab but it will get there providing the heat loss is minimal and I found it to be a nice feeling having warmth from the bottom up.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

Yes insulation is key, otherwise a lot of heat warms the sub base but your system may take longer to heat the slab but it will get there providing the heat loss is minimal and I found it to be a nice feeling having warmth from the bottom up.

There's very definitely a psycho-/physiological benefit to UFH!