How UFH and rad’s Can Leave Customers Cold

May 20, 2005 -- Recent changes to interest rates and media speculation about a turn in the housing market have generated an increased number of conservatories and extensions being built in the UK. Instead of moving, people are staying put and extending their current living space.

Fuelled by this change, underfloor heating companies are now offering single room and extension packages as a solution. Domestic underfloor heating suppliers are able to offer a product suitable to conservatories and extensions that can be easily integrated into an existing radiator based heating system.

The new single room and extension heating packages work in the same way as traditional underfloor heating, by pumping temperature controlled warm water from a normal central heating boiler (or other hot water home heating system), through jointless plastic tubing embedded in the floor.

Underfloor heating provides the warmth to a room from the floor up, not heating the ceiling space first like radiators. The floor temperature only needs to be raised a few degrees above the room temperature to maintain an effective comfort level, resulting in improved economy.

A clear benefit of installing underfloor heating in conservatories and extensions is the additional living space gained as the need for bulky metal radiators is released. This allows the occupant far greater design freedom as use of the whole space can be enjoyed.

Whilst you can tag the underfloor heating on to the last radiator on the existing heating system, which appears a quick and easy solution for conservatories and extensions, it does not offer controllability to the homeowner. The zone can only be heated when the rest of the central heating system is switched on. Due to the different heating characteristics of underfloor heating, it ideally needs to operate on a separate zone system with direct boiler control.

If single room and extension packages are installed without direct boiler control, the rest of the house will be warm whilst potentially the area heated by underfloor heating remains cold. This happens when controllability is not offered as underfloor heating takes longer to heat up than radiators.

One company that has created a solution to the dilemma is Nu-Heat warm water underfloor heating. They offer an additional solution to their full house system called ONEZONE™. It allows the homeowner complete controllability as the system is generally individually controlled and can call for heat independently from the boiler.

Andrew Grimsley, Technical Director for Nu-Heat explains ‘’Nu-Heat’s ONEZONE™ control unit carefully blends the water from an existing boiler to the correct temperature for entry into the floor. A simple to use wall-mounted thermostat ensures that the homeowner always has complete comfort control as occupants can stipulate the temperature required.’’

Andrew continued ‘’ONEZONE™ can easily be fitted during the build process; it’s literally installed in the final screed layer and from an installation point of view, the process could not be easier.’’

Kim Jolley, from Budleigh Salterton in Devon has used the ONEZONE™ package and explains why it is good news for homeowners ‘’everything about the system is easy. We were able to get a quote online and once we had ordered the system, it arrived in a box, the very next day – what could be simpler?’’

Kim continued ‘‘the space gained from not having radiators has been really worthwhile; we can place our furniture where we want, rather then being dictated to by radiators. We chose direct boiler control as we wanted to be able to control the temperature in our conservatory. It gets more sun than other rooms so without direct boiler control we would have had an uncomfortably hot room.’’

Enquires for ONEZONE™ can be made to Nu-Heat’s sales team on 0800 7311976. Quick estimates are available online via http://www.nu-heat.co.uk/onezone/.

Now everybody can experience the benefits of Nu-Heat warm water underfloor heating systems condensed into a simple to install, one room package.