Installing Hot Water Underfloor Heating

What’s the process to get hot water heat pump underfloor heating in your home? 

There’s a wee bit involved for getting underfloor heating, but we can show you some of the steps to get hot water heating installed in your Christchurch home.

​Building or renovating? Think underfloor heating.

​It all starts with concrete. It’s a lot simpler if we’re installing underfloor hot water heating on a new build project. If you’re thinking of building in Christchurch, have this conversation with your builder early on in the process. 

It’s a lot easier to do what needs to be done and install underfloor heating when there is only a concrete slab on an open section. But if you’re renovating and thinking about underfloor heating, it’s not too late.

You can see here that the Heat Pumps NOW team is working on a home renovation project, but installing underfloor heating is a much bigger job. First step is moving all of the furniture out of the house, and taking up the carpet and flooring to expose the concrete slab. It’s an involved process, and this family had to move out while all the renovation work was being done.

​Marking out the heating zones

​At the planning stage, we’ll talk with you about your home heating needs. How many rooms would you like to be heated? Based on our conversation and planning, we’ll go over the concrete slab or through your home and mark out where we need to lay the hot water piping.

We like to use hot pink as it’s a bright colour that really stands out. Just look at the lovely designs!

​Once we have marked out where the hot water needs to go, we need to cut trenches into the concrete for the piping to go in.

​Cutting the concrete slab

​Concrete cutting is not an easy job. We need the trenches to be very precise, especially in areas where we have lots of hot water hose running in the same direction. Each one needs it’s own little trench.

Cutting concrete for underfloor hot water heating can also be a messy job. Think about all of the dust running a big electric saw over concrete would create. In these photos, the floor looks muddy, because the concrete cutter is running water over the saw to help keep the dust down.

​Depending on the size of the underfloor hot water heating job, Heat Pumps NOW may handle the concrete cutting ourselves, or we might bring in an expert to take care of it all. Just look at all these lovely, symmetric trenches running through the floor. 

​Getting ready to install your underfloor heating

​Now comes the fun part: Tidying up. We’ll clean away all the water, as well as all of the little chips and stones left over as a result of the concrete cutting. Cleaning up is a very important step. You don’t want little sharp stones at the bottom of the trench just waiting to punch a hole into your hot water system.

Once the concrete floor is clean and clear, we run the rubber hot tubing through the trenches. This is probably the most effective visual picture to show you how your underfloor hot water heating system will work.
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The hot water heat pump creates hot water, and pumps it through the tubing cut into the concrete slab. As the tubing heats up, the heat radiates into the concrete. Because trenches have been cut into the concrete at even intervals, that heat is spread evenly throughout the floor and radiates up into your home. 

​Energy efficient underfloor heating

​Concrete can retain heat for a long period of time, so even if you turned the underfloor hot water system off, the residual heat would still keep your home warm for a few hours. One of the reasons an underfloor hot water heat pump system is so energy efficient is because that same hot water can supply the taps and shower in your home, but more about that in another article. 

There’s a lot of planning in the beginning to map out where the tubing needs to go and where the trenches need to be cut to make sure the underfloor heat is spread evenly and there are no sudden hot or cold spots. 

We’ll bring you more photos of this project in time, but now you have a great idea about what installing an underfloor hot water heat pump system looks like if you’re building or renovating in Christchurch. If you’re thinking about underfloor heating, contact the team at Heat Pumps NOW for a free, introductory consultation.

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