Would love to know about the floor construction on the kitchen side. I have done exactly this by recessing 150mm overlay boards between the joists. Was a nightmare to install especially when the house is 1850’s. Wish I knew about this product sooner though 🙈
one thing that always confuses me, how can the temperature be managed on a room by room basis ? in my situationI I have 3 rooms and 2 of them the occupier prefers a much hotter temperature than the the other room and also the living room is preferred to be lower, how can this be resolved if there's just one manifold and now actuators ?
Would be interested in how the owner ended up making the decision to go for UFH (I.e. what were the other options, and why UFH was preferred) and their perspective now on whether that was the right decision. You can understand the benefits in theory, but the amount of work / cost / disruption also feels huge!
Looks like an proper engineer designed this system. Love the thicker plates, proper connection between pipe and alu-plate, narrow distance between piping, and a good size on the pipes. This is not a cheap system to produce, but in the long run this should allow the heatpump to run very cheap.
Hi, great work & big fan of the channel as a plumber started in 1988. In my house I have installed 100mm Celotex between the joist (20mm below top of the joist to allow heat circulation and to avoid hot spots). Covered with pre-routed 22mm OSB (16mm pipe 150mm space), then covered the osb with 6mm Hardie backer board (good heat transfer & mass). Finished with 16mm engineered oak floorboards. All works great! Look forward to the follow up video!
I’ve fitted 16mm pipe on top of 100mm PIR, battened 25mm on top, then infilled with a semi dry screed throughout my house. It’s topped with 18mm OSB and then LVT. We have been through a winter with it and it’s kept us warm in our semi renovated bungalow. 50mm pir insulated plasterboard throughout too. Open loop system with Daikin altherma monoblock 8kw. Spacings are around 130mm, three pipes per joist bay. Curve set at 36c @ -2. Daikin heat pumps have a sort of minimum operating temperature so the curve is fairly shallow.
Looking forward to the follow up & seeing if it achieves the 70w/m. Great call on the extra rad to enable the lowest possible floor temp. Labour intensive indeed...at least you know now for next time!
Very good system, my parents have Jupiter UFH in their self build and it works at very low flow temps, even with carpets and wood floors. Most of the year it runs under 30c and it never needs to go over 40c even when it's freezing. But given that this is apparently a full house refurb, I'm astonished that the customer didn't instead insulate & plasterboard the external walls. The cost savings on the heating system (using cheap & quick standard overlay panels, and a smaller HP) should have covered most of the cost for the insulation, if not all of it, and then you have the energy savings on top. I'm guessing they didn't want to loose any floor space for insulation, but they will now be paying for those few inches year on year.
As usual a great video easily explaining the way to design and install low temperature heating. Hope you get the output for the panels, the insulation under the pipe looks like just 10mm. 👍 I’m surprised by the cost, I usually like a solid floor and screed, like you say, 2-3 hours to lay the pipe, job done!
200mm Rockwool below the OSB (the joists are deeper than is typical). More than I promised you Szymon. It might be overkill, but the void below that is a massive well-ventilated space - v important for the wood. And it’s a windy spot.
Hi there - it's engineered wood flooring, which can stand this and has better tolerance than hardwood. The key is not to expose the wood to rapid changes in temperature - which is easy to ensure with a heat pump of course. The other, connected, important element is to retain the ability of the wood flooring to absorb and release moisture for it to retain its state: preventing drying out + cracking, and damp + expansion either way. There's a quite a void beneath the subfloor and there are air bricks on each side of the house. The draughts beneath bring in and take away moisture constantly as the weather changes. So we had to make sure that every material used in the sub-floor construction is breathable (beneath the UFH panels it's 200mm mineral wool resting on galvanised mesh attached to the joists). The aluminium isn't, but it doesn't reach the edge of the wood-fibre panels and doesn't create a seal, plus moisture is also transferred in and out through the joists and OSB board.
07:17 What happens when the temperature is achieved in the room? How you can reduce the heat output there without automation in the manifold? This can happen in transitional seasons = fall, spring.
TLDR, its perfectly balanced and senses the outdoor temperature. The system is designed with weather compensation. So when it is cold or mild outside the heatpump/boiler will read the temperature and adjust the temp of the outflow. Because they have done a heat loss calculation (of each wall/ surface) and sized the radiators/ underfloor accordingly, the whole house can use the same temp hot water to achieve the same internal temperature.
Great video - i always learn new stuff. I have 5 zone small bore uf (nu-heat contraflow) layed in screed. Currently uses a oil boiler with a buffer tank for uf. If only I could find someone like yourself who could do a full analysis of the heat demands and design a system to move to a heat pump while maintaining the existing floor pipework where i live.......
Good that UFH manifold is so simply arranged and will work well worh wooden floor. How does a 40ish degree flow temp work when using LVT flooring, will damage to floor occur?
It shouldn’t damage the flow. Although the flow temp is 40C, the floor temperature is kept below 29C by the fact that it has air at 19C above the floor - you get a thermal gradient from the air to the water and so the lvt doesn’t get too hot. Solar gain is potentially a bigger risk, sunshades might be needed in certain rooms if the windows are large.
Have tried just putting pir between the joists 25-30mm below the joists then putting a thin screed in I've been doing this for 20 years (on low temp) and always got good results. The only thing i would advise the customer if fitting hardwood keep below 18mm thickness
what pipe did you use for this project. Don't recognise the blue pipe. Also some manufactures such as henco say the way their pipe is made and amount of aluminium in it gives them a greater heat output over cheaper UFH al pipe. Have you found any difference in pipe quality/output?
Great videos. What are your thoughts about having the hot water cyclinder / plant room outside the insulated envelope of the house, say in an uninsulated garage?
I can see the advantage of the straight sections with aluminium heat plates but if there are to be tiles over would not the nonaluminium areas that you had to route specially be better with your other under grout plastic clip system or just fed mid air and then the dry grout system you mentioned for tiles over the aluminium but just filling around the pipes and levelling to the rest. I would have thought that would be quicker to install with better heat transfer than the alternative you showed of fibre board routed without the aluminium heat exchanger?
Interesting solution. What would you do if the system did need to run at 55 degrees celcius? Maybe a tile floor can handle that, but I don't see a PVC floor holding up well.
Thanks for all the information. It makes hard topics, easy to understand for a layman. And that is a gift. And I wonder if I understood correctly, that in this design every room is always roughly at the same temperature? So you won't be able to lower the temperature for 1 bedroom? Or do you do that on the manifold?
Bedrooms have radiators here so can be controller by thermostatic valves. You can add actuators for bedrooms if needed. No one ever felt a need from my clients. Low temperature heating is pretty much self balancing when done right
@@UrbanPlumbers Thanks, that was the missing link. We have a similar house that was rebuilt from the ground up early 2000 but lazy/shoddy. Double walled and glaswool filled 70cm thick walls but wind is blowing through the cracks of the floor and wallsockets. And old fashioned central (oil) heating that we converted to solar heated (20m²). That we also want to convert to floor heating after we solved the obvious energy leaks. I like the idea of calculating the needed heat capacity and using 1 temperature for every room. But I am trying to get my head around possible gaps of Information that would bite me in my behind after installation. The professionals around here prefer doing new houses. And are not getting excited when asked to do >300m² old-fashioned farmhouse with multiple heat sources (wood burning stove with a boiler (18kW), significant solar heater, and later a heat pump). So now I spend my time binge watching your channel and alikes. Thanks again! And greetings from Germany.
What do you recommend, if i thinking about UFH on existing concrete uninsulated ground floor. Semi detached 1970 house poorly insulated . Might be ready for future Heat pump. At the moment runing on gas combi boiler.
What software do you use to calculate the heat loss from the building, and what external temperature do you assume vs. Internal temperature? It could be a really interesting video to see how you do the design for a typical house or a case study of a system you have designed.
Interesting. As one often has just one room that is difficult to heat on a UFH retrofit project, then this might be a good solution for just that room, while we can fit a screed or other less expensive and labour-intensive solution in the rest of the house.
this would build the floor height by additional 18mm of a panel and 18mm of a plywood backing. This system has flooring installed deirectly on to the joists so doesnt build the floor up at all. Also, the output of this system is almost double of the overaly XPS panels.
Do you have any opinion on Omnie Torfloor 2, integrated structural floor boards? I fitted a Wavin system under my floor in the joist space several years ago, but the heat transfer to the surface is poor.
I am not a fan of Omnie Toro. 12mm pipe will have high pressure loss so coverage per loop will be small or you will need separation. Output will be limited as well due to timber cap and being routed into timber. It’s labour intensive to install and expensive. Much easier systems out there with the same or higher output, cheaper components and 16-17mm pipework with less resistance. Toro floor quotes 50 watts output per m2 with tog1 at 50c dt7. There are systems that can do that at 15c lower temperatures. 50c is too high for an UFH system really.
Would a uniTOWER work in that cupboard instead of making it bigger? Apart from the smaller tank capacity, would there be anything else different that would prevent using a uniTOWER?
Hi there. Just finished your video. I like the idea of not having a buffer on the system. How many start stop session do your setup have doing a heating season? I put in a Nibe ground source heat pump myself June of last year. I have had 685 start-stop sessions. Witch in my mind is what takes ekstra energy and have skates wear and tear on the compressor. Really like your videos. Greetings from Denmark.
Io ho un impianto geotermico acqua/acqua con una NIBE f1127 molto vecchia ma l'acqua del mio pozzo si è rovinata quindi ho spesso problemi e vorrei passare ad una pompa di calore aria acqua piu semplice economico ed effiente.
Interesting video Syzmon. So with this Jupiter system what is the build up of materials to finished floor (I believe you said no screed). You also mentioned you had initially set up the wc at 0.6, so what has the user experience been over the winter and has there been any tweaks to the curve? Edit: I have just been on the Jupiter site so understand a little bit more. It would seem that the extra time needed to fit the Jupiter system is balanced out a bit by the avoidance of using wet screed/ drying time and all that marlarkey.
In my own house I have a 40 l buffer with 7 kW Vaillant. 22 mm primaries for 5 m with all rads piped in 15 mm. Would the system perform better without the buffer ?
Have I understood you correctly, that Vaillant rates its heat pumps at -7 deg C? Does it mean when calculated bivalent point for a detached building is 6,1-6,5 kW at -6/-7, a 75/6A arotherm plus should be the right choice, then? Will your system use additional heater, haven't seen any internal unit at your installation (like MEH)? Thumb up from PL.
looks like 20% is not with the aluminium top layer or does that not make a difference? I have a question for my system...I have floor heating and a gas CV system and I want to test something before I switch to 100% heat pump because I am not sure if it can handle it alone. As a test I want to use the monobloc heat pump as a hot fill for the gas cv unit (installed in serie as input on the intake) ....will this be possible or will the cv system cause bottle neck problems for the monobloc circulator?
I'm surprised it wasn't just overlaid on the OSB deck... were the extra batons between the panels specified by the manufacturer? Is it to bear the load?
Ahhh I see they're not batons, those are the joist tops. Weird way of doing it, laying the system between the joists rather than over them. But I guess it lets them have extra depth of their wood-fibre insulation... and means less build-up over the joists...
Hi, intrueging to see if Jupiter's system will deliver these outputs with 22mm timber/chipboard? What will the clients floor finish be? that will also effect the flow and floor surface temp? Have you ever considered the foiled chipboard system with a 6mm no more ply/screed board covering? always been a good system on suspended timbers where heights are an issue and no more ply gives a high thermal mass over plywood.
@@UrbanPlumbers you can get with 16mm pipe but majority of brands is 12mm. I totally agree with you on the 16mm pipe even for future proofing. Let me know if you ever want to try with 16mm.
The heatpump will run 24/7 because if the r value of the walls, or a lot of on and off I got a similar system but the pipes are covered with a Knauf dry screed system 32mm thick than wooden floor. Works well with 80w /m2 temperature 40 C . Got a 800 litre combi buffer with solar thermal booster. Stores about 40kw hot water at 60C . Enough for 4 to 6 hours . i think the lack of insulation in the walls could be challenging.
What I don't understand is how the floor temp is kept to 29 degrees if the pipes are running at 43 degrees? I'm doing a screeded system with no actuators, blending valves etc and my ASHP has been designed at 48 degrees. I can't get my head around how it will work! Surely the output per square meter is limited by the 29 degrees rather than the amount of heat that can be pumped into the pipework - putting pipework closer together just means the floor temp will get higher than the manufacturers limit? My system has been designed with 200mm centers, I'm assuming for this reason. If the floor temp does end up going to high, is there anything that can be done in this situation to reduce the temp of the water going into the UFH? So many questions, so confused.
@@UrbanPlumbers Thanks very much, that's reassuring. I'm going to chuck some temperature sensors in for my peace of mind and will report back here with the results. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has this concern with their installation
I can't help feeling that reducing the heat loss of the building would have been a better solution than having a large heat pump and expensive, high output UFH. Surely the building regs require that the thermal efficiency is improved as part of a major renovation?
Interesting - I'm doing a bungalow renovation with solid floors. I'm contemplating an ASHP with retrofit UFH but I don't want to gain 2.5cm+ in floor height so I'm exploring having grooves for the pipe run cut into the floor. There'll obviously be no additional insulation in the floor. Any thoughts/experience of this system?
I am also doing a similar job in a chalet bungalow. I want to router pipes into floor but am sure building control will have an issue with this. Can you point me to somewhere that can design the ufh so I can try and give them the design up front. Many thanks
JK has the only cutting system i would use. They use a 14mm pipe. We use them when a screed or overlay system is not possible. Although there may be no insulation under the existing floor, it seems to work well with ASHPs. The averages flow temp is 40 degrees c possibly less with tiles. Well worth checking out their website.
You could have installed marine grade ply in the kitchen with tiles on top instead of the screed board then the output would have been the same as the living. Albeit a little less efficient but still running at 43 flow. The radiator could’ve gone.
Could you please tell us the average monthly energy bills for the houses you worked on (heat pump installations) ? Please talk about this as in the end of the day we are interested in reducing cost by installing heat pump. We need to get rid of standing charge for gas. But is it worth it? My neighbor bought mew build small house. £400 monthly bill. I have 5 bedroom house with old boiler and cylinder my average bill £200. I am interested in technology but for the better. Please please talk about bills too. Feedback is more important.
Just had an email from the customer on this job - his electricity bill is down by 25% when compared to previous electricity and gas. He also pointed out that the house is much warmer now. My own bills are also around 30% down as compared to gas and electricity before. However my installs are not the norm sadly. A lot of heat pumps end up more expensive to run. I am organising an update with the client now.
one thing that always confuses me, how can the temperature be managed on a room by room basis ? in my situationI I have 3 rooms and 2 of them the occupier prefers a much hotter temperature than the the other room and also the living room is preferred to be lower, how can this be resolved if there's just one manifold and now actuators ?
A follow up to determine this board's effectiveness would be helpful! This product has the potential to resolve several incompatibility issues if it runs right.
we have a similar system called Warmboard in North America. Stupidly expensive. I really prefer a 40mm gypsum overpour on plywood floor. Even in an old house with two layers of brick and no insulation, I could heat the space with 70w/m2 .....unless they put in stupidly big sliding doors and I have to put a radiator for added heat. I've done more than 100,000m2 of floor heating over the last 30 years....and this is in Canada with -25C outdoors. Since doing only heatpumps for the last few years, my area has not seen colder than -15C and we have to design to -21C
We're getting doing building works. What is the natural order of things - I assume from your video: * Extension and interior remodelling building works * Kitchen installation * Underfloor heating installation * Flooring installation Is this right? I'm finding it hard to find plumbers that are confident to manage wet underfloor heating and keep getting push backs to either electric underfloor or radiators - I guess this is the difference between a plumber and a heating engineer.
this is not a concrete floor here. It is a timber structure and the system fits between existing joists. Existing concrete floors can be routed for pipework if you do not want to raise the level.
What I would like to know. When retrofitting underfloor pipework.The floor level is being hightend. What happens to doors. Is there a step when entering the home..
Not related to this vid specifically, but when you were discussing the h/w cylinder, I was reminded of a 'problem' I have before taking the plunge to a heat pump. I'm not a heating eng, so apols if it's a dumb question, but I'm not able to find the answer anywhere (so maybe it is really dumb!!). I live in a mid sized semi, with combi providing heat and h/w, I don't have and don't want a cylinder. I definitely don't want the expense of one. Is there a reason why something like a Stiebel Eltron couldn't be plumbed in where the boiler currently is to provide h/w. At
These types of electric heater essentially store a smallish amount of hot water, they're not powerful enough to provide instant hot water like a gas combi. They're good for a basin or kitchen sink at 'point of use' but you couldn't fill a bath with one. But they can be a useful option in conjunction with an electric shower if the bathroom and kitchen are close together so one unit could supply both taps.
WarmBoard adds thickness to the floor since it’s laid on top of the subfloor (in retrofits). The whole point of the Jupiter panels (at least in this installation) is that it fits between the joists so you have no net increase in floor thickness. WarmBoard is probably only 1/3 the labor to install as a result and requires very little on-site routing. Sounds like Jupiter is almost exclusively for situations where you can’t (or don’t want to) increase the thickness of the floor assembly. My take on WarmBoard is that you have to balance the higher efficiency of the aluminum sheeting and convenience of having the system and layout designed for you against the higher cost as compared with a screeded system. WarmBoard can be a good option for DIYers since they do so much of the front end work for you and the predesigned panel system is relatively easy and foolproof to install. WarmBoard SHOULD allow lower output temperature when using in conjunction with a wood floor (compared to a screeded system) and should therefore have lower operating costs over time. I plan to use a screeded system with porcelain ceramic floor tile throughout my house so I get both lower material/installation costs and lower operating costs. I happen to love the look of a large format tile floor, the variety of options available, and the feel of warm tile underfoot. If I was going with an engineered hardwood floor (for example), I would definitely look into WarmBoard or some other aluminum-clad panel system to evaluate the overall lifecycle costs.
Thanks , would interesting to know if they find it satisfactory, I am grateful for the info you supply I use it to hold our installer to account and even try and sound like I know something about it , useful lessons really and he does note I ask questions that others never have .
The system design lacks a reflective membrane underside (shiny side up). I resolved a badly performing hydronic system with 50 mm pipe spacings by dropping the water table by fitting a 3m deep ditch all round the property with drains and a pit holding a float activated submersible pump with DPC between house, down ditch and onto base using geotech fleece to outer ingress side. My research harvested several people who had tried similar and achieved as much as 500% improvement. My client was very happy with the actual 3000% my strategy achieved. Initially the pump would pump with increasing delays before culminating in being a bone dry space and now never pumping proving integrity of water barrier. It sets up a more stable thermocline which once charged massively diminishes heat losses from migrating cold water under house plus in theory there should be 2.8m depth of material under house that has merely saturated moisture content and thus substantially lowers conductivity. I believe my method should be industry standard even if much lower gains of say 500% are commonplace.
Bravissimo ti scrivo da Roma Italia e sono molto curioso da come progetti i tuoi impianti io ho una pompa di calore da 8Kw ma fatto diversi anni fa. Ho 2 puffer di acqua tecnica uno da 1000 litri con un produttore istantaneo da 40l/m ed uno da 300 litri che funge da separatore idraulico che serve 2 appartamenti uno da 100 m2 ed uno da 70 m2 con tutti i gruppi di rilancio e miscelazione, perche facciamo anche freddo, ma tornassi indietro rivedrei la termoregolazione e farei l'impinto in maniera differente mi farebbe piacere mostrartelo se hai una mail ti mando un schema progettuale con delle foto.
You can't just route through the joists like it's nothing. Typically a joist for ground floor would be 100mm. On an old house, you'd be really lucky for the joists to be completely intact so by routing 16mm into an already weakened joist you may be introducing substantial weakness to the floor. Also this entire system completely ignore that you may need to repair floors and use blocking/noggins to strengthen the floor. In some cases, you may actually need to sister joists. Things like that would make it a right paint to fit the pipework between the joists. Oh and best of all, those timbers are external on the bottom and internal on the top. By heating in between the timbers, you are greatly increasing the chances for warping. What deflection can this system handle? This is just a guess but what I think might happen is the aluminium will separate on deflection and then you have a sharp piece of metal right up agains your plastic pipework. Sounds like a really bad idea. Honestly, it would be much easier is clients get told that in order to use underfloor heating you have to convert suspended into solid floors. Yes it cost quite a bit but you can insulate under the slab and install a screeded system on top and be sure that 40 years from now the system will work exactly as it does today.
You can upgrade a biscuit mix quite a lot if you add a bit of very fine sand (e.g. paving sand), up the cement content a bit, and also use a super plasticiser in the mix. All those things done together can increase the thermal conductivity of the cured mix by about 2x. Did that on my low flow temperature ufh (wood flooring) about 10 years ago. Works great.
@@UrbanPlumbers This is true - you would need to do a design check, and upgrade the joists (e.g. screwing ply along side) if necessary. In my case the existing GF joists had wood worm, so they all came out and were replaced by a raft floor, on EPS, on sand blinding, on hardcore. Sounds drastic, but done in 1.5 days with 2 people, and certainly no slower than replacing the existing joists. Also allowed installation of a radon barrier (advised in this area for new build).
Not quite - pioe spacing is only 125mm here and there is a think alu plate. On paper this system beats biscuit mix and seems to Sinai in practice as well
Heat pumps work best at low temperatures. You need a lot of big radiators to provide enough heat, underfloor heating has massive surface area and cannot see it. It’s a solution to a problem
I am organising a follow up ton to this video. What questions do you want answered by the owner of this system?
Would love to know about the floor construction on the kitchen side.
I have done exactly this by recessing 150mm overlay boards between the joists. Was a nightmare to install especially when the house is 1850’s.
Wish I knew about this product sooner though 🙈
What are they doing with the front and back doors now the floor height is raised?
@@blewett47 the floor height hasn't been raised - that is the whole point of this UFH system
one thing that always confuses me, how can the temperature be managed on a room by room basis ? in my situationI I have 3 rooms and 2 of them the occupier prefers a much hotter temperature than the the other room and also the living room is preferred to be lower, how can this be resolved if there's just one manifold and now actuators ?
Would be interested in how the owner ended up making the decision to go for UFH (I.e. what were the other options, and why UFH was preferred) and their perspective now on whether that was the right decision. You can understand the benefits in theory, but the amount of work / cost / disruption also feels huge!
Give your staff a tip. Looks like they work hard! 👍🏼😁
Will do. Thank you Dean
Looks like an proper engineer designed this system.
Love the thicker plates, proper connection between pipe and alu-plate, narrow distance between piping, and a good size on the pipes.
This is not a cheap system to produce, but in the long run this should allow the heatpump to run very cheap.
Hi, great work & big fan of the channel as a plumber started in 1988. In my house I have installed 100mm Celotex between the joist (20mm below top of the joist to allow heat circulation and to avoid hot spots). Covered with pre-routed 22mm OSB (16mm pipe 150mm space), then covered the osb with 6mm Hardie backer board (good heat transfer & mass). Finished with 16mm engineered oak floorboards. All works great! Look forward to the follow up video!
I’ve fitted 16mm pipe on top of 100mm PIR, battened 25mm on top, then infilled with a semi dry screed throughout my house. It’s topped with 18mm OSB and then LVT. We have been through a winter with it and it’s kept us warm in our semi renovated bungalow. 50mm pir insulated plasterboard throughout too. Open loop system with Daikin altherma monoblock 8kw. Spacings are around 130mm, three pipes per joist bay. Curve set at 36c @ -2. Daikin heat pumps have a sort of minimum operating temperature so the curve is fairly shallow.
follow-up video would be awesome. Just to know if the product really delivered on its promise.
It has, we recorded this video September last year. I will go back for a follow up when i find some time
What would you like to know in the follow up ?
@@UrbanPlumbers is the added cost/labor worth it for all builds or only in certain instances.
@@UrbanPlumbers Flow rates please, thanks
Looking forward to the follow up & seeing if it achieves the 70w/m.
Great call on the extra rad to enable the lowest possible floor temp.
Labour intensive indeed...at least you know now for next time!
Good idea on keeping the extra rad. A nice way to hit good efficiency on a retrofit job.
another great video. never stop being impressed by your team's dedication :)
Very good system, my parents have Jupiter UFH in their self build and it works at very low flow temps, even with carpets and wood floors. Most of the year it runs under 30c and it never needs to go over 40c even when it's freezing. But given that this is apparently a full house refurb, I'm astonished that the customer didn't instead insulate & plasterboard the external walls. The cost savings on the heating system (using cheap & quick standard overlay panels, and a smaller HP) should have covered most of the cost for the insulation, if not all of it, and then you have the energy savings on top. I'm guessing they didn't want to loose any floor space for insulation, but they will now be paying for those few inches year on year.
Great informative video.
What are your thoughts on the cement based dry screed panels? (such as thermrite etc)
Hey Szy! Great video mate! Love your stuff ❤
Hi Todd, thanks for watching - hop you are keeping well.
Great video! I'm just designing a similar system. How are you getting a different flow temperature in the kitchen? Is it a separate manifold?
Great videos man. Do you fill your systems with tap water or destiled water?
As usual a great video easily explaining the way to design and install low temperature heating. Hope you get the output for the panels, the insulation under the pipe looks like just 10mm. 👍 I’m surprised by the cost, I usually like a solid floor and screed, like you say, 2-3 hours to lay the pipe, job done!
There is 50mm Rockwell below ply and the ufh panels have 30mm insulation
200mm Rockwool below the OSB (the joists are deeper than is typical). More than I promised you Szymon. It might be overkill, but the void below that is a massive well-ventilated space - v important for the wood. And it’s a windy spot.
Great video again. Presumably the hardwood (?) floor covering in the lounge can stand being in direct contact with pipes at 43 degrees?
Hi there - it's engineered wood flooring, which can stand this and has better tolerance than hardwood. The key is not to expose the wood to rapid changes in temperature - which is easy to ensure with a heat pump of course. The other, connected, important element is to retain the ability of the wood flooring to absorb and release moisture for it to retain its state: preventing drying out + cracking, and damp + expansion either way. There's a quite a void beneath the subfloor and there are air bricks on each side of the house. The draughts beneath bring in and take away moisture constantly as the weather changes. So we had to make sure that every material used in the sub-floor construction is breathable (beneath the UFH panels it's 200mm mineral wool resting on galvanised mesh attached to the joists). The aluminium isn't, but it doesn't reach the edge of the wood-fibre panels and doesn't create a seal, plus moisture is also transferred in and out through the joists and OSB board.
Thanks for that detailed reply. Great info !
07:17 What happens when the temperature is achieved in the room? How you can reduce the heat output there without automation in the manifold? This can happen in transitional seasons = fall, spring.
TLDR, its perfectly balanced and senses the outdoor temperature.
The system is designed with weather compensation. So when it is cold or mild outside the heatpump/boiler will read the temperature and adjust the temp of the outflow.
Because they have done a heat loss calculation (of each wall/ surface) and sized the radiators/ underfloor accordingly, the whole house can use the same temp hot water to achieve the same internal temperature.
I am new here on your channel and I like your videos, Professor
07:05: Why the switch to copper pipe?
Is this a suspended timber floor... hence the joists getting in the way...?
Mlcp fittings are smaller bore than copper / once you need to start using elbows copper is lower pressure loss = higher efficiency
@urbanplumber so does the cylinder supply hot water for the house and the heating for the radiators?
Great video - i always learn new stuff. I have 5 zone small bore uf (nu-heat contraflow) layed in screed. Currently uses a oil boiler with a buffer tank for uf. If only I could find someone like yourself who could do a full analysis of the heat demands and design a system to move to a heat pump while maintaining the existing floor pipework where i live.......
Good that UFH manifold is so simply arranged and will work well worh wooden floor. How does a 40ish degree flow temp work when using LVT flooring, will damage to floor occur?
It shouldn’t damage the flow. Although the flow temp is 40C, the floor temperature is kept below 29C by the fact that it has air at 19C above the floor - you get a thermal gradient from the air to the water and so the lvt doesn’t get too hot. Solar gain is potentially a bigger risk, sunshades might be needed in certain rooms if the windows are large.
Have tried just putting pir between the joists 25-30mm below the joists then putting a thin screed in I've been doing this for 20 years (on low temp) and always got good results. The only thing i would advise the customer if fitting hardwood keep below 18mm thickness
what pipe did you use for this project. Don't recognise the blue pipe. Also some manufactures such as henco say the way their pipe is made and amount of aluminium in it gives them a greater heat output over cheaper UFH al pipe. Have you found any difference in pipe quality/output?
Just blue mlcp. I doubt you will ever notice any difference between manufacturers
Great videos. What are your thoughts about having the hot water cyclinder / plant room outside the insulated envelope of the house, say in an uninsulated garage?
Thats what I have done and it’s fine
I can see the advantage of the straight sections with aluminium heat plates but if there are to be tiles over would not the nonaluminium areas that you had to route specially be better with your other under grout plastic clip system or just fed mid air and then the dry grout system you mentioned for tiles over the aluminium but just filling around the pipes and levelling to the rest. I would have thought that would be quicker to install with better heat transfer than the alternative you showed of fibre board routed without the aluminium heat exchanger?
Brilliant, your best video yet!
This is actually a really old video that i never got around to upload !
So do you have follow up video?
Coming soon
Interesting solution. What would you do if the system did need to run at 55 degrees celcius? Maybe a tile floor can handle that, but I don't see a PVC floor holding up well.
Thanks for all the information. It makes hard topics, easy to understand for a layman. And that is a gift.
And I wonder if I understood correctly, that in this design every room is always roughly at the same temperature? So you won't be able to lower the temperature for 1 bedroom? Or do you do that on the manifold?
Bedrooms have radiators here so can be controller by thermostatic valves. You can add actuators for bedrooms if needed. No one ever felt a need from my clients. Low temperature heating is pretty much self balancing when done right
@@UrbanPlumbers Thanks, that was the missing link. We have a similar house that was rebuilt from the ground up early 2000 but lazy/shoddy. Double walled and glaswool filled 70cm thick walls but wind is blowing through the cracks of the floor and wallsockets. And old fashioned central (oil) heating that we converted to solar heated (20m²). That we also want to convert to floor heating after we solved the obvious energy leaks. I like the idea of calculating the needed heat capacity and using 1 temperature for every room.
But I am trying to get my head around possible gaps of Information that would bite me in my behind after installation. The professionals around here prefer doing new houses. And are not getting excited when asked to do >300m² old-fashioned farmhouse with multiple heat sources (wood burning stove with a boiler (18kW), significant solar heater, and later a heat pump).
So now I spend my time binge watching your channel and alikes.
Thanks again! And greetings from Germany.
Will it be on Priority hot water ? and will the heat pump cope heating the cinder quick enough .
What do you recommend,
if i thinking about UFH on existing concrete uninsulated ground floor.
Semi detached 1970 house poorly insulated .
Might be ready for future Heat pump. At the moment runing on gas combi boiler.
What software do you use to calculate the heat loss from the building, and what external temperature do you assume vs. Internal temperature? It could be a really interesting video to see how you do the design for a typical house or a case study of a system you have designed.
I have been planning to do a video like that for a while
Interesting. As one often has just one room that is difficult to heat on a UFH retrofit project, then this might be a good solution for just that room, while we can fit a screed or other less expensive and labour-intensive solution in the rest of the house.
Would it have been possible to adjust for the different heat output in the kitchen by laying fewer pipes at a wider spacing in there?
Possibly. The job was done half a year ago. I now know that it can be relatively easily adjusted just with flow.
For a low-height floor build-up, could you have used the Pro-Fix system witt XPS Panels below the trays ?l
this would build the floor height by additional 18mm of a panel and 18mm of a plywood backing. This system has flooring installed deirectly on to the joists so doesnt build the floor up at all. Also, the output of this system is almost double of the overaly XPS panels.
Do you have any opinion on Omnie Torfloor 2, integrated structural floor boards? I fitted a Wavin system under my floor in the joist space several years ago, but the heat transfer to the surface is poor.
I am not a fan of Omnie Toro. 12mm pipe will have high pressure loss so coverage per loop will be small or you will need separation. Output will be limited as well due to timber cap and being routed into timber. It’s labour intensive to install and expensive. Much easier systems out there with the same or higher output, cheaper components and 16-17mm pipework with less resistance.
Toro floor quotes 50 watts output per m2 with tog1 at 50c dt7. There are systems that can do that at 15c lower temperatures. 50c is too high for an UFH system really.
Would a uniTOWER work in that cupboard instead of making it bigger? Apart from the smaller tank capacity, would there be anything else different that would prevent using a uniTOWER?
What about heating at the ceiling ?
Hi there.
Just finished your video.
I like the idea of not having a buffer on the system.
How many start stop session do your setup have doing a heating season?
I put in a Nibe ground source heat pump myself June of last year.
I have had 685 start-stop sessions.
Witch in my mind is what takes ekstra energy and have skates wear and tear on the compressor.
Really like your videos.
Greetings from Denmark.
Io ho un impianto geotermico acqua/acqua con una NIBE f1127 molto vecchia ma l'acqua del mio pozzo si è rovinata quindi ho spesso problemi e vorrei passare ad una pompa di calore aria acqua piu semplice economico ed effiente.
Interesting video Syzmon. So with this Jupiter system what is the build up of materials to finished floor (I believe you said no screed). You also mentioned you had initially set up the wc at 0.6, so what has the user experience been over the winter and has there been any tweaks to the curve?
Edit: I have just been on the Jupiter site so understand a little bit more. It would seem that the extra time needed to fit the Jupiter system is balanced out a bit by the avoidance of using wet screed/ drying time and all that marlarkey.
No tweeks as far as i am aware and no complaints. System is flush with the top of the joists so there is no additional build up
fantastic video
what was this job priced at
what was materials and labour
I actually don’t remember - it was a while ago. From memory the system works out around £200 + vat per m2 to supply and fit
In my own house I have a 40 l buffer with 7 kW Vaillant. 22 mm primaries for 5 m with all rads piped in 15 mm. Would the system perform better without the buffer ?
Have I understood you correctly, that Vaillant rates its heat pumps at -7 deg C? Does it mean when calculated bivalent point for a detached building is 6,1-6,5 kW at -6/-7, a 75/6A arotherm plus should be the right choice, then? Will your system use additional heater, haven't seen any internal unit at your installation (like MEH)? Thumb up from PL.
looks like 20% is not with the aluminium top layer or does that not make a difference?
I have a question for my system...I have floor heating and a gas CV system and I want to test something before I switch to 100% heat pump because I am not sure if it can handle it alone.
As a test I want to use the monobloc heat pump as a hot fill for the gas cv unit (installed in serie as input on the intake) ....will this be possible or will the cv system cause bottle neck problems for the monobloc circulator?
If it’s not a screeded floor installation how do avoid running nails into the pipe?
Please do a video on underfloor/wall heating+cooling; that would be great!
I'm surprised it wasn't just overlaid on the OSB deck... were the extra batons between the panels specified by the manufacturer? Is it to bear the load?
Ahhh I see they're not batons, those are the joist tops. Weird way of doing it, laying the system between the joists rather than over them. But I guess it lets them have extra depth of their wood-fibre insulation... and means less build-up over the joists...
Yeah, that’s the whole point as he emphasizes in the video.
Hi, intrueging to see if Jupiter's system will deliver these outputs with 22mm timber/chipboard? What will the clients floor finish be? that will also effect the flow and floor surface temp?
Have you ever considered the foiled chipboard system with a 6mm no more ply/screed board covering? always been a good system on suspended timbers where heights are an issue and no more ply gives a high thermal mass over plywood.
Pipework is too small on those systems for most open loop / no buffer applications
you can get for 16mm pipe?
Jupiter has 16mm pipe - the system you describe is only 12mm - no?
@@UrbanPlumbers you can get with 16mm pipe but majority of brands is 12mm. I totally agree with you on the 16mm pipe even for future proofing. Let me know if you ever want to try with 16mm.
foiled chipboard ls that is
The heatpump will run 24/7 because if the r value of the walls, or a lot of on and off I got a similar system but the pipes are covered with a Knauf dry screed system 32mm thick than wooden floor. Works well with 80w /m2 temperature 40 C . Got a 800 litre combi buffer with solar thermal booster. Stores about 40kw hot water at 60C . Enough for 4 to 6 hours . i think the lack of insulation in the walls could be challenging.
Do you do all the wiring ,or use an electrician ?
What I don't understand is how the floor temp is kept to 29 degrees if the pipes are running at 43 degrees? I'm doing a screeded system with no actuators, blending valves etc and my ASHP has been designed at 48 degrees. I can't get my head around how it will work! Surely the output per square meter is limited by the 29 degrees rather than the amount of heat that can be pumped into the pipework - putting pipework closer together just means the floor temp will get higher than the manufacturers limit? My system has been designed with 200mm centers, I'm assuming for this reason. If the floor temp does end up going to high, is there anything that can be done in this situation to reduce the temp of the water going into the UFH? So many questions, so confused.
Flow temperature is always higher than surface temperature. Most jobs running 35-45c flow only end up with 22-25c surface temp
@@UrbanPlumbers Thanks very much, that's reassuring. I'm going to chuck some temperature sensors in for my peace of mind and will report back here with the results. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has this concern with their installation
Hi. I assume the radiator has been off in order to assess the output from the floor?
All coming soon! Promise 😀
yep a follow up vid would be very good
Will see if this can be organised
I am doing it soon - do you have any specific questions?
Great job. That looks like it’s probably a 1960s Crosswall house.
What is the issue with plastic pipe?
I can't help feeling that reducing the heat loss of the building would have been a better solution than having a large heat pump and expensive, high output UFH. Surely the building regs require that the thermal efficiency is improved as part of a major renovation?
Great video, do you prefer copper to MLCP? No joints and pre insulated sounds like a better system, why not use MLCP throughout?
Both materials have their use
Interesting - I'm doing a bungalow renovation with solid floors. I'm contemplating an ASHP with retrofit UFH but I don't want to gain 2.5cm+ in floor height so I'm exploring having grooves for the pipe run cut into the floor. There'll obviously be no additional insulation in the floor. Any thoughts/experience of this system?
No need for floor insulation most of the time. Router system will perform fine.
@@UrbanPlumbers Thank-you....I wish you covered Dorset!
I am also doing a similar job in a chalet bungalow. I want to router pipes into floor but am sure building control will have an issue with this. Can you point me to somewhere that can design the ufh so I can try and give them the design up front. Many thanks
JK has the only cutting system i would use. They use a 14mm pipe. We use them when a screed or overlay system is not possible. Although there may be no insulation under the existing floor, it seems to work well with ASHPs. The averages flow temp is 40 degrees c possibly less with tiles. Well worth checking out their website.
Omnie do as system with pipe centres down to 50 mm I think!not sure if it is only available for screeded floors
Isn’t it a 11.5mm pipe though?
You could have installed marine grade ply in the kitchen with tiles on top instead of the screed board then the output would have been the same as the living. Albeit a little less efficient but still running at 43 flow. The radiator could’ve gone.
Could you please tell us the average monthly energy bills for the houses you worked on (heat pump installations) ?
Please talk about this as in the end of the day we are interested in reducing cost by installing heat pump.
We need to get rid of standing charge for gas. But is it worth it? My neighbor bought mew build small house. £400 monthly bill. I have 5 bedroom house with old boiler and cylinder my average bill £200. I am interested in technology but for the better. Please please talk about bills too. Feedback is more important.
Just had an email from the customer on this job - his electricity bill is down by 25% when compared to previous electricity and gas. He also pointed out that the house is much warmer now.
My own bills are also around 30% down as compared to gas and electricity before.
However my installs are not the norm sadly. A lot of heat pumps end up more expensive to run.
I am organising an update with the client now.
Why copper and not steel heating pipes?
one thing that always confuses me, how can the temperature be managed on a room by room basis ? in my situationI I have 3 rooms and 2 of them the occupier prefers a much hotter temperature than the the other room and also the living room is preferred to be lower, how can this be resolved if there's just one manifold and now actuators ?
Great job as usual but I'd have been disappointed about keeping thar radiator.
3 brick house = council house.
Very easily removable if it turns out it’s not needed
A follow up to determine this board's effectiveness would be helpful! This product has the potential to resolve several incompatibility issues if it runs right.
It does run fine. Video is from Sep 2023, so it has gone through the winter just fine. (I think / the client hasn’t complained so far)
we have a similar system called Warmboard in North America. Stupidly expensive. I really prefer a 40mm gypsum overpour on plywood floor. Even in an old house with two layers of brick and no insulation, I could heat the space with 70w/m2 .....unless they put in stupidly big sliding doors and I have to put a radiator for added heat. I've done more than 100,000m2 of floor heating over the last 30 years....and this is in Canada with -25C outdoors. Since doing only heatpumps for the last few years, my area has not seen colder than -15C and we have to design to -21C
We're getting doing building works. What is the natural order of things - I assume from your video:
* Extension and interior remodelling building works
* Kitchen installation
* Underfloor heating installation
* Flooring installation
Is this right?
I'm finding it hard to find plumbers that are confident to manage wet underfloor heating and keep getting push backs to either electric underfloor or radiators - I guess this is the difference between a plumber and a heating engineer.
When followup ?
How can it not raise the floor level if you have a concrete floor?
this is not a concrete floor here. It is a timber structure and the system fits between existing joists. Existing concrete floors can be routed for pipework if you do not want to raise the level.
And under those windows, the panelling could just be an plywood backboard, some stud work and then plasterboard. Insulation was often not fitted.
Exactly that's what we found - we insulated with 75mm Kingspan.
What is exacy plastic piping and what is mlcp ? Is uponor mlcp or plastic?
Uponor make lots of different pipe including mlcp
What I would like to know. When retrofitting underfloor pipework.The floor level is being hightend. What happens to doors. Is there a step when entering the home..
Not on this system - floor level stays the same here
Yes, must be a nightmare with solid floors.
Not related to this vid specifically, but when you were discussing the h/w cylinder, I was reminded of a 'problem' I have before taking the plunge to a heat pump. I'm not a heating eng, so apols if it's a dumb question, but I'm not able to find the answer anywhere (so maybe it is really dumb!!). I live in a mid sized semi, with combi providing heat and h/w, I don't have and don't want a cylinder. I definitely don't want the expense of one. Is there a reason why something like a Stiebel Eltron couldn't be plumbed in where the boiler currently is to provide h/w. At
These types of electric heater essentially store a smallish amount of hot water, they're not powerful enough to provide instant hot water like a gas combi. They're good for a basin or kitchen sink at 'point of use' but you couldn't fill a bath with one. But they can be a useful option in conjunction with an electric shower if the bathroom and kitchen are close together so one unit could supply both taps.
Would love to see Jupiter compared to Warmboard. Similar concept, different execution and I suspect different trade-offs.
WarmBoard adds thickness to the floor since it’s laid on top of the subfloor (in retrofits). The whole point of the Jupiter panels (at least in this installation) is that it fits between the joists so you have no net increase in floor thickness. WarmBoard is probably only 1/3 the labor to install as a result and requires very little on-site routing. Sounds like Jupiter is almost exclusively for situations where you can’t (or don’t want to) increase the thickness of the floor assembly.
My take on WarmBoard is that you have to balance the higher efficiency of the aluminum sheeting and convenience of having the system and layout designed for you against the higher cost as compared with a screeded system. WarmBoard can be a good option for DIYers since they do so much of the front end work for you and the predesigned panel system is relatively easy and foolproof to install. WarmBoard SHOULD allow lower output temperature when using in conjunction with a wood floor (compared to a screeded system) and should therefore have lower operating costs over time.
I plan to use a screeded system with porcelain ceramic floor tile throughout my house so I get both lower material/installation costs and lower operating costs. I happen to love the look of a large format tile floor, the variety of options available, and the feel of warm tile underfoot. If I was going with an engineered hardwood floor (for example), I would definitely look into WarmBoard or some other aluminum-clad panel system to evaluate the overall lifecycle costs.
So crazy that even OFGEM don't know the difference between model name and model output depending on environment.
A mess like no other really all of this heat pump business
BTW - can believe there is 2646 Patrick Wheelers 😀
Nice job! 👍🏼
With a cascaded pair of 11kw pumps I assume you would have to have a buffer .
I know someone who is installing 2 x 12 without one / just reverse return
Thanks , would interesting to know if they find it satisfactory, I am grateful for the info you supply I use it to hold our installer to account and even try and sound like I know something about it , useful lessons really and he does note I ask questions that others never have .
I wokder why copper plates are not used
Massively expensive and does not conduct heat as well as aluminum.
Thank you, very good.
The system design lacks a reflective membrane underside (shiny side up). I resolved a badly performing hydronic system with 50 mm pipe spacings by dropping the water table by fitting a 3m deep ditch all round the property with drains and a pit holding a float activated submersible pump with DPC between house, down ditch and onto base using geotech fleece to outer ingress side. My research harvested several people who had tried similar and achieved as much as 500% improvement. My client was very happy with the actual 3000% my strategy achieved. Initially the pump would pump with increasing delays before culminating in being a bone dry space and now never pumping proving integrity of water barrier. It sets up a more stable thermocline which once charged massively diminishes heat losses from migrating cold water under house plus in theory there should be 2.8m depth of material under house that has merely saturated moisture content and thus substantially lowers conductivity. I believe my method should be industry standard even if much lower gains of say 500% are commonplace.
Dropping the water table could cause settlement to the foundations of the building, or a neighbouring one. That would not be good.
Buongiorno a tutti volevo sapere come in UK considerate le pompe di calore del gruppo MIDEA, visto che stanno prendendo piede in tutta europa.
Bravissimo ti scrivo da Roma Italia e sono molto curioso da come progetti i tuoi impianti io ho una pompa di calore da 8Kw ma fatto diversi anni fa. Ho 2 puffer di acqua tecnica uno da 1000 litri con un produttore istantaneo da 40l/m ed uno da 300 litri che funge da separatore idraulico che serve 2 appartamenti uno da 100 m2 ed uno da 70 m2 con tutti i gruppi di rilancio e miscelazione, perche facciamo anche freddo, ma tornassi indietro rivedrei la termoregolazione e farei l'impinto in maniera differente mi farebbe piacere mostrartelo se hai una mail ti mando un schema progettuale con delle foto.
You can't just route through the joists like it's nothing. Typically a joist for ground floor would be 100mm. On an old house, you'd be really lucky for the joists to be completely intact so by routing 16mm into an already weakened joist you may be introducing substantial weakness to the floor. Also this entire system completely ignore that you may need to repair floors and use blocking/noggins to strengthen the floor. In some cases, you may actually need to sister joists. Things like that would make it a right paint to fit the pipework between the joists. Oh and best of all, those timbers are external on the bottom and internal on the top. By heating in between the timbers, you are greatly increasing the chances for warping. What deflection can this system handle? This is just a guess but what I think might happen is the aluminium will separate on deflection and then you have a sharp piece of metal right up agains your plastic pipework. Sounds like a really bad idea. Honestly, it would be much easier is clients get told that in order to use underfloor heating you have to convert suspended into solid floors. Yes it cost quite a bit but you can insulate under the slab and install a screeded system on top and be sure that 40 years from now the system will work exactly as it does today.
You can - those joists where 300mm and most of the jobs done this way are 200mm
I think you must work for the competition 😂 the joists have osb between them, they ain't going nowhere! Also, I've never seen a 4 inch joist.
Where is the mixing valve???
No need for mixing / it’s weather compensated and designed to run at the same temperature as radiaotrs upstairs
@@UrbanPlumbers impossible!
@@Swwilsyet o have done it on 10 jobs last year and it works just fine
@@UrbanPlumbers I will stick to my 1800s heating system
@Swwils coal fireplace?
Surely a biscuit mix would give you higher output and cheaper than this system
You can upgrade a biscuit mix quite a lot if you add a bit of very fine sand (e.g. paving sand), up the cement content a bit, and also use a super plasticiser in the mix. All those things done together can increase the thermal conductivity of the cured mix by about 2x. Did that on my low flow temperature ufh (wood flooring) about 10 years ago. Works great.
@Tim_Small but you add considerable weight , which you can’t do on british 4inch ground floor joists
@@UrbanPlumbers This is true - you would need to do a design check, and upgrade the joists (e.g. screwing ply along side) if necessary. In my case the existing GF joists had wood worm, so they all came out and were replaced by a raft floor, on EPS, on sand blinding, on hardcore. Sounds drastic, but done in 1.5 days with 2 people, and certainly no slower than replacing the existing joists. Also allowed installation of a radon barrier (advised in this area for new build).
shame none of the wholesalers sell it
Biscuit mix would be cheaper and more powerful
Not quite - pioe spacing is only 125mm here and there is a think alu plate. On paper this system beats biscuit mix and seems to Sinai in practice as well
@@UrbanPlumbers Great to know this. Many thanks
Use an over floor system not this system
Underfloor heating seems like a fad to me. Radiators are simple and effective.
Heat pumps work best at low temperatures. You need a lot of big radiators to provide enough heat, underfloor heating has massive surface area and cannot see it. It’s a solution to a problem
Underfloor heating is lovely and no unsightly blocks of metal on the wall
A 60+ year-old fad!?
😂😂😂