Underfloor heating & wooden floors?

[Zofia]

Does anyone have underfloor heating with parquet/wooden floors? Having laid the piping and concrete for the heating in our house, our builders have now chosen to tell is that it's not suitable.....the floor has been ordered, weeks ago. We still want the wooden floors on the first floor. We asked again and again and again if it was ok, always to be told yes. Today, they got a 'technician' in who said no.

Would be interested to know if anyone has this, and does it still work ok?

[hillybilly]

It can be done but the underfloor heating needs to be designed specifically for a parquet floor finish (e.g. it has to be at a lower temp than "normal" underfloor heating etc) and the parquet supplier must be advised that the parquet is to be installed over underfloor heating so that it can be prepared to that specification (correct thickness, treatment etc).
Google underfloor heating parquet for plenty of installation advice.

[Zofia]

Thanks HB, have been googling and discovered that it can be done with the right wood, so we may have to change the wood. We can't really have it set to a different temp though as we are having one system for the whole house, the ground floor will be tiles, wood only on the upstairs bedrooms.

Will see what the carpenter (who also said it was ok for underfloor heating....) says.

[esteponaman]

Hello Zofia,

I have laid wooden floors over floor heating.
I have a solid hard wood floor but instead of it being fixed to battens it is installed as a floating floor.
I used a rubber matting with a very sticky top side.
The wooden floor is stuck to this top side
The floor is allowed to expand and contract as one unit, but it is held together by the adhesive on the rubber matting
The mat is laid out, then the first row is floor is laid . a protective cover onthe adhesive is then pulled from under the wooden floor . Press the floor onto the wood. That It.
The ends of the wood are glued as normal but the sides are not glued . They are held together by the matting.

[country boy]

Yes. we had a wood block floor laid on a 3/4" t&g chipboard (8'x2')floating floor (glued joints); worked a treat and no probs, with heating pipe under.

[hillybilly]

We can't really have it set to a different temp though as we are having one system for the whole house, the ground floor will be tiles, wood only on the upstairs bedrooms.

In that case you will have to run the whole of the underfloor heating system at the lower temp as recommended for the wood finish. But try monitoring the heating system before laying the floor to record the temps at the various levels and rooms in the house to see what you can "get away with".

[Zofia]

HB, I don't think we can test it as the floors will be finished before the heating machine (olive pellet burner) is put in. And it's summer, so we really won't have any idea how warm (or not) we will need it)Thanks for good advice, I've passed on all the suggestions to the project manager who is looking into ways of doing it. Still fuming though....

[Enrique]

Hi Zofia,
I take it you did your homework on the pellet boiler, like having to clean it out every 2 - 3 weeks, can be very dusty, getting the thing to fire up when the pellets are damp.
Best to stock up on pellets now so they have time to dry out over the summer, the " new season" ones in December will be very damp.