bump.

we are also looking at these underfloor heating mats. anyone have any experience with them?

Resistance electric heating can be very expensive depending on your electric rates and how often you run the heating mat.

What are your electric rates (cents per kw-hour)?

not sure what i pay per kw-hour, but we had the electric mat radiant floor heat in our last house and it didn't add any appreciable difference to our electric bill.

it's hooked up to a thermostat that's programmable, and we set it up to only run for a few hours in the morning and a few in the evening when we'd be in that room (we had it in the kitchen).

"it's hooked up to a thermostat that's programmable, and we set it up to only run for a few hours in the morning and a few in the evening when we'd be in that room (we had it in the kitchen)."

OK - that is indeed the smart way to do it.

Good luck.

Here are some previous forum posts concerning the subject:

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/bath/msg0302584011551.html

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/bath/msg0100100022344.html

it's really a great little luxury. we don't think of it as part of our heating system for the house, it's just an extra that warms the floor so our tootsies don't get so chilly on the cold tiles during the winter.

just as an update, it appears that the costco underfloor heat mats are manufactured by Watts, which markets the same product as Sun-Touch elsewhere.

Sun-Touch (and the costco Premiere brand) are ultra low EMF-output systems. they utilize a self-canceling system that reduces the EMF output to about 1/40th of Nu-Heat, and 1/20th of WarmTiles.

And they're much less expensive. I did some measuring and figuring and went ahead and ordered up five mats that I'm going to use in our kitchen remodel. Five mats (about 110 sq. ft) plus the installation and control kit for a bit less than $1000.

They haven't arrived yet, but I figured with Costco's return policy (they take anything back for whatever reason for a full refund, including shipping) it was kind of a no-brainer.

I'll post an update once we get the product and then install it and get it up and running.

Ok, I just have to ask....How does one return an underfloor heating mat?

Regards

well, obviously i'd only be able to return it BEFORE we install the tile.

maybe i wasn't clear.

but i at least have the option of returning it if it appeared to be of poor quality, or my contractor pointed out something alarming, or i purchased too many mats for the space, or planned the layout badly. or something of that nature. thought that was obvious.