Electric underfloor heating and wet rooms - The perfect match.

Electric underfloor heating and wetrooms? For real?

Nothing spoils the cosy feeling of your favourite dressing gown like having to dance across ice-cold bathroom tiles. In the winter months, our bathrooms quickly become the coldest room in the house.

The most common form of heating in a bathroom is a heated towel rail. Whilst great at heating towels, it doesn’t do a great job of heating the rest of the room. Convected heat from a towel rail is all too easily pulled away by the bathroom’s extraction fan before it can effectively warm the place up. But what if there was another way to warm your bathroom?

Can electric underfloor heating be installed in a wetroom?

Electric underfloor heating can easily be installed in wetrooms. For total flexibility and safety, we recommend an earthed IP68 rated system

An electric underfloor heating system can be easily integrated into the construction of a wetroom without compromising the tanking process. Having installed the drainage elements within the wetroom, electric underfloor heating is then laid on top of the waterproof membrane prior to the installation of the adhesive and floor tiles. This means your wetroom will benefit from the addition of underfloor heating whilst the tanking process will ensure the wetroom remains watertight for the life of the tiles.

For the ultimate feel good factor, the heating system can even be installed behind the shower wall tiles to provide an immersive shower experience! You’ll also need to ensure that the drainage trap doesn’t dry out by installing the underfloor heating at least 300mm away from the wetroom drain.

ThermoSphere Membrane electric underfloor heating is perfect for wetrooms

The benefits of electric underfloor heating in a wetroom

One of the key benefits of electric underfloor heating is its efficiency. Unlike water-based underfloor heating and convectional heating, homeowners don’t need to leave electric underfloor heating on for long periods of time for it to provide warmth. Responsive on demand, it will heat up quickly when needed and turn off when not in use.

This plays into two homeowner concerns simultaneously. The rising cost of energy bills is a perennial concern to homeowners, but more recently, homeowners are also looking for ways to help combat climate change. Electric underfloor heating addresses both of these issues, since it is both cost effective and energy efficient.

In fact, it costs less than the average takeaway coffee to run ThermoSphere electric underfloor heating in a 2m² bathroom for a month!

Other benefits include….

• Beautifully comfortable underfoot: Need we say more?
• Gentle heat: Unlike radiators, the heat emitted from underfloor heating systems is done so gently and consistently throughout the room. There are no cold spots and the surface never gets too hot to walk on.
• Maintenance free: Correctly installed underfloor heating does not involve any regular maintenance costs
• Energy efficiency: An electric heating element is 100% efficient at the point of use, meaning every watt of electricity is converted into heat energy.
• Design flexibility: Installing underfloor heating does not affect the layout or overall design of a wet room and removes the need to install a radiator onto the walls.
• Dries a wetroom floor: The even heat of an underfloor system helps dry a wetroom floor whilst providing a warm comfortable surface to walk on after showering.
• Added value: Like wetrooms, underfloor heating can help to increase the value of a property.

Combining wet rooms with electric underfloor heating

The latest Underfloor Heating Market Report indicates that underfloor heating is a market on the increase. Both domestic homeowners and commercial interests are seeing the benefits of this technology.

Whilst two-thirds of the underfloor heating market is in the domestic sector including new builds and retrofit projects, thanks to the growth in open plan living and minimalist design trends, opportunities are also arising in the care home, industrial, warehousing, leisure and entertainment, and commercial office and retail sectors.

For developers within these industries, the combination of a stunning wetroom with underfloor heating meets the demands of style conscious consumers, whilst providing maximum design flexibility for architects and designers.

This blog has been written in partnership with CCL Wetrooms. CCL Wetrooms are the UK’s leading wetroom specialists offering an unrivalled range of innovative products designed to create stylish contemporary wetrooms.

Got any questions about electric underfloor heating?

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