Take these 2 examples here. On the left is a carpeted upstairs child’s bedroom, already decorated and looking pristine. On the right is an entrance hallway with lovely lime washed timber floors. In both instances the owners wanted to remove the radiators and fancied UFH.
When discovering the cost and disruption of making good afterwards, they thought their hopes of freeing up their walls and creating a more inviting (and safer) space for their family was lost. Until they googled ‘UFH alternative’ and found ThermaSkirt.
In both cases, ThermaSkirt could connect onto the existing radiator pipework meaning minimal disruption and cost. By being an ‘above ground’ solution, there was no need to lift any floor coverings or carpets, nor plane down any doors.
By taking care, each system was installed in a day, with no cleaning or redecorating required (except to touch up the dirty patch where the radiator had left its mark).
The Future
They say that history repeats itself (firstly as a tragedy, the second time as a farce according to Karl Marx).
In the 80’s and 90’s similar small bore, 10mm pipes were all the rage in underfloor heating. The concept of small bore pipes for UFH is not new. Admittedly, in the 90’s these were set into the screed, but the principle is the same, in that small areas, typically 10~12m2 were each heated by a small pipe, requiring 2~3 circuits for an typical room.
So what happened?
Well, unfortunately, a small bore pipe with a series or curves is prone to clogging and building up deposits – especially in hard water areas, or where there is a mixed system using radiators which create sludge over time. It’s one of the reasons that ‘microbore’ copper tube (remember that?) is no longer available for central heating systems.
Admittedly, if you kept the system regularly flushed, used an appropriate inhibitor and changed it regularly, and didn’t have steel radiators on the system, you would probably not have a problem. But if you did...
At DiscreteHeat, we have spent a lot of time replacing those small 10mm bore systems from the 80’s and 90’s that have failed.