Tiles with underfloor heating?

S

seanmc1

Guest
My question is that i've a kitchen/dinning room that is all tiled. We have underfloor heating installed but the room is freezing. The heat is on at constant and the stats for zone are all at 24*C. But it's still cold i don't understand why this would be?

Has anyone got any advise for me. Thanks
 
Hello there,

Is the zone you refer to i.e. kitchen dining room, a particularly large area, or long run of pipe? You may need to balance the system, in that you need to ensure that longer circuits receive more heated water by adjusting the valves at the manifold, plumber who installed should really do this. Have a similar problem at the moment myself with my upstairs UFH, but I think that is also what I need to do. However, the wee tool that I need to adjust the valves was lost during the cleaning up of the house (only in 6 months), bugger. Was looking at it wondering what it was, just lying there on the ground for months, and when I realised what it was, and why it was needed,it had up and disappeared.
Could also be a blockage in that circuit though, hopefully not.
 
yes the zone is the kitchen/dining area. It is a large floor space alright. I will try ringing the plumber and ask him about it. He should me before how to change the temp settings to come on at different times, but i've kept the heating on at constant, but like i said it feels like there's no heat coming up. I just don't want to be wasting oil.
 
Changing the stats in the room wouldn't make a difference if the system isn't properly balanced.
My plumber didn't seem to think that balancing the system was that important, but since then I have looked around a fair bit, and asked a few people, and have come to the conclusion that my system does need to be balanced.
It makes sense once you consider that a single pump is being asked to distribute water through circuits of differing length/pressure requirements, water will always travel the easiest route, or so I have led myself to believe, having a rudimentary knowledge of fluid dynamics
You could also try to isolate this room by knocking off the heat to all the other rooms to see if it heats up then. If its the only room looking for water then it should heat up, as the pump will only be circulating through this circuit. This will at least allow you to rule out that circuit being blocked.
 
Sean, have you more than this one zone feeding from the same UFH manifold? And are they all heating up ok?? If yes to both, and you want to eliminate the possibility of an "imbalance" as mentioned, then switch off all other zones from that manifold for a while eg. 2 hours and see if there is any heat.
Also, does your manifold have temperature gauges for both flow and return?
 
it could be blocked because i think my girlfriend switched off the other zones a few days ago and there was no change. Will i have to get tiles removed if there is a blockage?
 
seanmc1 said:
it could be blocked because i think my girlfriend switched off the other zones a few days ago and there was no change. Will i have to get tiles removed if there is a blockage?
Click to expand...

Is it not possible for you to loosen the return pipe for that zone at the manifold and check if water pumps out of it while the zone is "on" ie. heating is on and stat is calling for hot water? Water p'ing out would suggest there is no blockage and that water is flowing freely. A blockage I don't believe is a common occurance, but maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part!! If you follow the switching off all other zones, and monitoring the manifold temperatures as I mention above, this would also go some way to checking if it's just hard to heat that particular zone.
 
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