Coming soon: Toasty toes
As an incurable do-it-youselfer, I'm always in the middle of two or three home-improvement projects. And what I've learned over the years is that you can never start a project too early. Even the simplest DIY tasks take twice as long to complete than you'd ever think humanly possible.
And that's why I didn't wait until winter to upgrade the heating system in our bathroom. If I had, chances are it wouldn't have been ready until next spring.
So, last week, prior to putting down a new tile floor, I installed a Nuheat electric radiant-floor heat mat. The thin, woven mat has flexible heating cables embedded in the fabric. It delivers about 41 Btus of sole-soothing heat per square foot.
Nuheat offers several standard-size mats, which are suitable for most installations, but I ordered a custom mat that was specifically designed to conform to the layout of my bathroom. Installation was fast, easy and virtually impossible to mess up (always a selling point to me).
I prepped the room by first covering the plywood subfloor with thinset mortar and cement backerboard. The next day, I troweled down more thinset and then laid the Nuheat mat onto the wet mortar, pressing it down with a flat trowel.
After allowing the mortar to cure overnight, I could've simply spread thinset on top of the Nuheat mat, and then immediately set the tiles. However, I added a step to enhance the performance of the radiant-heat mat.
I poured a thin layer of self-leveling underlayment, which is essentially very liquidity cement, over the entire mat. Once the underlayment hardened, I spread more thinset and set the tiles.
The result is a floor with superior thermal mass that can absorb and radiate heat much more efficiently--and much longer--than other radiant floors, providing soothing warmth for bare feet this coming winter.
Posted by Joseph Truini | Categories: HVAC | Permalink
(4) Comments
This is great! We have a contracting laying down Nuheat and will be sure to ask him about the underlayment for greater efficiency in heat transfer.
We're getting ready to put down a heated floor of this type made by "Warm-Up". I hadn't thought about putting the self leveling floor material on top. We may just do that too. Ours is going over a concrete slab in a room that is next to get heat ducting to that has always been chilly. Wish we'd had it done before winter started!
I have thought about using this heating source several times but the instructions are terrible on the box. I would love to see more detailed pictures of how and when to install this product. Does anyone have a detailed source? Thanks!
I am looking at a contractor installed ceramic tile floor over electric radiant heat (I have solar panels) in a former garage turned office. The contractor raised a concern about the heat sinking down into the concrete instead of flowing up through the tile because there is no "heat barrier" in the poured concrete floor. Is this a significant cause for concern? Thanks so much!