There are two kinds. One is electric mat, and the other is essentially pipes that run warm water.

We have both kinds.

The mats are far cheaper to install but more costly to run. We used them in areas where we expect to need to warm the floors for only a brief time (eg, my bathroom floor in the morning).

By contrast, we have a lakehouse upstate and there we use the hot water kind because when we do run it we run it all day and night.

I am a big fan. It feels sooo nice. As for maintenance issues, I imagine you could need to tear up the floor, depending upon if you have a crawlspace or basement underneath? Have had no issue in 6 years at the lake.

I have a few places in the house that have radiant heating, primarily the tiles in the bathrooms and the back entry tile floor to help melt the snow and evaporate water brought in.

I have the wire style in 2 bathrooms and the entry, I don't know what could possibly go wrong with the wires themselves. I have found the small problems are always with the controllers or something electrical.

I love em all, especially the back entry since it keeps everything nice and dry within a few minutes after taking off snowy boots.

We installed a mat heating unit in our master bath in our last house and liked it so much we had coils installed in the floors of the baths and lower level of our new home. In both cases we never had any problems with any malfunctions or breakdowns so I can't speak to the ease of repair.

Walking on warm floors in your bare feet in the dead of winter is pure luxury!!!

We have radiant heat in our basement floors. We run water heated with a dual purpose gas boiler system thru pex tubing installed under the concrete floor. It keeps the basement warm even when the temps are below zero. I don't see a huge difference in the gas bill either. It is wonderful to have warm floors in the middle of winter One of the things we have done right in this house!

i have it and i like it.

in the bathrooms forum you will find out more about it.

We LOVE our Nu-Heat heat mats under the tile in our MB and hall bathrooms!

*tip: install two sensors instead of one. Hook up the wire(s) from one to the thermostat, and leave the other wire(s) loose in/behind the thermostat. If your sensor ever fails, you'll have another one in place and ready to be hooked up. So sorry we didn't hear about this before ours were installed, but I am passing it along because DH wishes he'd thought of that!

In our last house we installed two types of hot water heat, warmboard and fins. The warmboard is an insulated "board" with grooves to hold the tubing. This can be/is installed before the flooring. The fins can be installed under an existing floor as long as the ceiling below is open. We much preferred the warm board which was under hardwood, but the fins did do a wonderful job heating up the bathroom. Our bedroom had a very thick pad under the carpet and it, the pad, provided too much insulation! We are about to embark on another heating project with fins at our current house because we have existing flooring that was just refinished. I can't wait!

Thanks for all the info everyone! We did not put it in either of our recent bathroom remodels, but we have rugs down so it isn't a problem, even in the middle of a cold winter night. Am not a fan of rugs in the kitchen, so am thinking of doing it for the remodel. So much to thunk about!

Hi there. I have the pipe kind in my floors. So has my brother (his is in 8 years). They work and are brilliant. The heat in the house is too much sometimes.

The way the system goes in determines its longevity and functionality. First the insulation goes in. Ideally you would put in a very strong board insulation (I have kingspan T10 accompanied by a blanket of foil insulation). Most people put in about 5 inches (130mm) of board insulation to achieve a U value of less than 0.15. The regs here demand that. You do not want to heat the ground (!) so insulation is vital. You are supposed to put an insulation barrier up about 4 inches all around the perimeter walls of each room too so that when the the screed (which will act as your storage heater)goes in it will not adhere to the wall as it dries. It will swell and move as it heats and the last thing you want is it moving the wall!. Then a layer of polythene has to go in to seperate the insulation from the screed cos the wet screed contains chemicals that damage the foils and makeup of insulation. Then the pipes go in. There are a few different systems for putting in pipes. In some the pipes are laid into grooves in the insulation and in others they are clipped into the insulation with little plastic pegs. Really makes no difference. Ive got the little plastic pegs one. Then the hot water pipe is pegged down. Its a flexible hose (like plastic) pipe about 1 and a half inches. The spacing between the pipes and the number of pipes is determined by the type of heating system you have. if you have geothermal then your water will have a lower temp and so you need more pipes at closer intervals. If you have gas or oil then you need less cos the water temp will be higher. Then the screed goes on top. Now this is where the mistakes are made. You have to be careful to pressurise the pipes before the screed is laid to ensure that they work and to ensure that there is no leak and that the weight of the screed doesnt cause a kink. The screed can be a sand and cement screed hand laid or an anhydrite screed. I used the anhydrite screed which is a better conductor of heat downstairs and sand and cement upstairs (where I had no issues with floor heights). with sand and cement you try to lay the floor at about 65-85 mill thick. With anhydrite screed you try for 35-55 mill. If you lay it too thick you wont get heat for days after turning on the system and if you lay it too thin you have cracking issues. Now mine all worked out. I am a regular housewife and I gleaned all this off the internet in a matter of days and was able to educate my building superviser who is a qualifed engineer on how to lay the system. he was making a mess of it and I had to step in and sort it out. Gladly I did and it worked out. The anhydrite screed is great if floor levels cannot be raised too high and they self level which is great. A day or two after they went in we could run a marble all across the floor. From a cost point of view the anhydrite worked out the same as the sand and cement and the upstairs is not level at all. We will have to use floor leveller (note we have solid concrete floors upstairs too - double width block walls to support).

The heating was put on firs last christmas and it works great. We have one little cold spot beside the front door but I think thats because of an air pocket and I have to get the plumber back to look at it. it is only a few feet square and you wouldnt notice. The rest of the house is super cosy. The children love it. They sit on the floor and play and its nice and warm.

From a maintanence point of view there is nothing mechanical underfloor. All the pipes come back to a local manifold for each zone and are easily washed out if the need arises (it hasnt). THe boiler I have is gas and is remotely located outside in a shed.

I recommend the system wholeheartedly. Just be aware of the level the floor will rise - about 5 inches of insulation and then a further three inches of screed is a lot.

Dippy

Oops, posted too soon. Just wanted to say that the water radiant heating will take longer to heat up, usually, and on the flip side, longer to cool down. Not sure if that sways you one way or the other. My sister installed heat mats in her bathroom - heavenly...

The 1972 wires in my bathroom floor are going strong. I love it, and the cats do too. That's the only drawback really. If you're trying to do a midnight no light visitation, you have to do the "kitty cat shuffle" with your feet and kick them out of your way instead of stepping on one.

3 tiles recently cracked, and the contractor cut cables he had installed because he forgot he had installed them. What a story! You can't make this stuff up.

When three tiles crack, it is a symptom of a bigger problem. More will crack, later. I wonder if the OP knows this.

Here is a link that might be useful: melissastar has 3 cracked tiles + a contractor who wins the stupidity award of the day

to some extent it really depends on your location, application, and current set up.

if you don't have a boiler, doing hot water is pretty much out of the question, too much equipment to buy.

in my area electric is very expensive, heat mats are used very sparingly, I don't imagine people do kitchens with them.

I did my radiant heat flooring with hot water in all bathrooms and the kitchen. we did a full house remodel so we had the ability to do it and did in all tiled areas. We haven't been through a winter yet so I can't really comment on how great it is.

my plumber for whatever its worth, doesn't believe in floor sensors, only conventional thermostats. mainly b/c he's seen so many floor sensors break.

I know I am going to anger some experts here and I need to make something clear, I AM NOT AN EXPERT!!! That being said, when we had our first hot water heat, we actually used a gas hot water heater and not a boiler because we had run out of funds. The plumbers at that time were skeptical, but willing to try it as long as we knew it might not work. It did. Surprisingly enough, the part of the home that was to be heated was on top of piers in chilly Colorado (trying to save an old tree), it worked fine for a few years. This was in 2004 when natural gas prices spiked. Even though we had doubled the house to a whopping 1300 square feet, the bill increased only slightly. Now, in this house we'll be using a boiler, just more efficient, but there MIGHT be another option.

OT - please excuse!
chrisk327, do you have radiators in the rest of the house? We are trying to figure out what to do with the basement. Old house, slab already in place with 76" ceilings and no room to spare vertically. Thanks!

cluelessincolorado you are right, and I thank you for mentioning your experience. Conventional wisdom says one thing and reality can be the opposite. When I learn something new, I often go web searching in faraway places to see what they say there. In America, you can't use a hot water heater for hydronic floor heat = or so they say! In other places, they say something like the opposite, i.e. that you can use a water heater for a small system. Go figure. In one place, they all say it won't work, or that problems will develop. In another place they install it anyway and accept the problems as part of the system.

FWIW, we were heating a 16*18 two story addition plus a bathroom that was created out of the attic of the original doll house, I mean house. Just kidding, 3 of us were very happy in 625 ft sq, but when #2 came along we thought we needed some more space for plastic junk. I wonder if a tankless heater would work in a very small space application like a kitchen? Well at least the kitchen here is small. Probably not, but hmmm...

Our daughter has this in her home. It works great and they have the lines that are heated with water. It is warm and toasty in the winter. It is on the ceramic in the kitchen and bath area as well as the living room and bedroom. They built a studio type apt. that is on a concrete slab. This area is about 1500 sq. feet.
They plan on building a larger home in time and then this will be a guest home.
Cost is minimal to operate and not that crazy of a price to install.

We were going to do radiators in the rest of the house but decided to go with Hydronic forced air. basically its a hot water loop run off the boiler that goes to the air handler, and heats the air there.

We were doing central air, so this made sense to do. We haven't used it yet.....

We have the mat kind under slate floors in our bathrooms. We LOVE them. They are only a year old, so too new to have problems. Our kids actually entertain friends in the bathroom so they can rest their weary track team legs on the warm floors!

We had "Warm Tiles" in our previous baths. No problems with the system in 10 years, except had to replace the thermostat. The one that came with the Warm Tiles apparently was junk.

Our new home has geothermal with in-floor hydronic heating. Can't wait to try it out this winter. Cooler weather is moving into our area. Freeze warning tomorrow night!