Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Installing Electric In-Floor Heating


I've had several posts about the different aspects of our sunroom renovation project.
Well today, I present to you the source of heat for this room!

When we bought this house a year and a half ago, the "sunroom" was closed off from the rest of the house.  Back when the Lefere's owned it in the 60's - early 90's, it was their family/TV room).  But since then the doorway between it and the dining room had been walled up, new furnaces installed, and a pocket door separated the room from the kitchen.  There was no heat source and no basement underneath. It was SO COLD in this room last winter that I had set a couple of cans of paint on the floor and when I went to retrieve them a couple of months later, they were frozen solid!

Here is the old radiator heater that once kept the family warm in this "hang out room":


When this beast of a radiator got drug out with the tractor this summer, I had to convince hubby not to scrap it because I had the perfect spot for it!  Check out the radiator's story HERE.

There was old carpet in this room that was stained and we knew would eventually come out so while we did our home renovations on the rest of the house, we used this room as our tool room/work room/catch all....  and didn't worry about adding more to the already stained old carpet!


When we started pulling up the carpet and padding.... we discovered many, MANY more layers of flooring.


It's about like peeling off seven layers of wallpaper! Only on the floor!  With lots of dust and nails!


Down to the LAST layer.  I sure hope we don't die from asbestos exposure some day.



Finally!  It's all off and swept and ready for new layers!


Because there was no duct work on this end of the house, and it was going to cost about eight grand to get a heated floor with hot water, so we decided to try the route of an electric floor.  It was pretty easy to install (says the wifey who watched!).   The company that we ordered from is called Warmup and we went with Foil Heating Mats.  First you lay down a foam padding, and then lay your foil heating mats on top in strips like this:


We did not glue or tape them into place.  They are purely "floating". Next, we just laid the interlocking laminate right over top just as you would normally lay a laminate floor down.




After a long day of work, and a long evening of home renos, I'm not sure if he's pooped or totally frustrated with a bad flooring cut at 11:00 at night.  Probably both.


If you look on the wall, between the clipboard and the exposed brick, you will see the thermostat where we can control how warm the floor is.


There is a difference like black and white on the floor temperature.  Stand up a step in the kitchen and your feet about go numb in ten minutes.  Step down into the sunroom and catch yourself saying "ahhhhhh... nice".  


 I'm sure your main question is: "how does this play out on your monthly electric bill?"
Hard do say yet......  ask me in a couple of months!


Like what you see?  Follow Kammy's Korner on:




You might also be interested in:




4 comments:

  1. That is just awesome!! Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The hubby and I have been considering something like this for our family room. I am anxious to see how this affects your electric bill. Our family room is the furthest from the furnace and as such we find it to be the coldest room in the house. We were wondering if something like this would help to heat the room up.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your new floor looks great and it will surely feel great too, especially to the little bare feet!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Keep us updated on how it works out with your bill, I'm definitely interested in this in the future!

    xoxo, SS

    The Southern Stylista

    ReplyDelete

Comments - Next best thing to chocolate! :) Please let me know you visited!