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Heated Tile
Author:
A.Jeffers
Date Written:
10 Oct 07
Copyright © 2006 www.click4bathrooms.com
Placing your foot on a cold bathroom floor on an equally cold winters morning can be as unwelcome as flatulence in an elevator. An expensive and otherwise luxurious bathroom can quickly become torturous if thermal discomfort must be endured to use it. I personally suffered this problem for many years in my mother’s house. I enjoy taking a shower, but strongly dislike a freezing cold bathroom, particularly a freezing cold bathroom floor.
When discussing heated tiles, I am not referring to tiles that actually heat the floor of their own accord, but rather to tiles that dissipate heat from the heating system concealed beneath them.
There are several ways to ensure you install the right tiles for you in your bathroom. Besides underfloor heating, which is a mechanical means of heating, adopt psychological methods too, for example by using warm coloured tiles such as reds and oranges. Try painting the walls with a warm colour such as soft gold or terracotta to counteract the coldness of the tiles and any sanitaryware. Try covering the bathroom tiles with a comfortable rug, as this will at least prevent ice cold feet.
Underfloor/Undertile Heating
Underfloor heating can be electrical or mechanical. Traditional systems such as radiant panels, gas unit heaters and gas-fired radiant tubes heat from the top down over and tend to over-heat your head.
This can lead to a sense of stuffiness. With radiators the heat is concentrated into relatively small areas and this is unsuitable for large open spaces. Even in smaller spaces, the air locally heated by radiators rises up the wall, along the ceiling into the centre of the room and cools. When it does so it descends towards the floor. In order to heat lower areas of the room sufficiently, i.e. to get warmer feet, you may need to overheat your head and body. As the feet naturally act as our body's thermostat, warm feet generally make us feel more comfortable.
Underfloor heating on the other hand heats the whole floor area uniformly resulting in the opposite vertical heat stratification i.e. warm feet and a cool head. This suits our body's natural comfort zone. We emit a high proportion of body heat through our heads, hence why we are encouraged to wear hats in winter. This means our heads are usually warm anyway. In cold rooms it is the hands, legs and feet, which feel the cold first.
Underfloor or “undertile” heating is a gentle source of warmth that reduces the heat loss from our bodies without overheating the surrounding air. Radiant heat is considered the most comfortable form of heat, gently and evenly warming us without a sense of discomfort or stuffiness.
There are many underfloor heating installers around and there are even user-friendly do-it-yourself mattresses, which are electrical heating cables or mini-bore pipework woven into a mesh-like fabric. On a commercial level, underfloor heating tends to be bespoke and is fitted using a floor grid and manually formed pipework and heating manifolds.
Loose Wire Method
There are electrical underfloor heating systems available to take the sting out of a cold tiled floor. The do it yourself version consists of an ultra-thin heating element of approximately 2mm to 4mm diameter, which can be stuck directly to the sub floor and tiled over. For advice on tiling see bathroom tiles-how to fit.
The piped versions require the floor level to be raised slightly to accommodate heating pipework, but the miniature electrical version does not. These systems will heat the floor, but may not provide sufficient heat to heat the entire room i.e. they should not be relied upon as a primary bathroom heating system.
