Bonded flooring – ideal for use on underfloor heating

More and more people are opt­ing for under­floor heat­ing so that they can still walk bare­foot at home dur­ing the cold sea­son. Apart from the com­fort and cosy warmth under­foot, under­floor heat­ing offers oth­er bene­fits, ran­ging from more flex­ible space plan­ning to a lower house dust load. A bon­ded floor cov­er­ing in par­tic­u­lar is ideal for trans­fer­ring the heat gen­er­ated by the under­floor heat­ing. Here a few use­ful tips from experts.

1. Tiles, natural stone and wood – the preferred materials

Ceram­ic tiles and nat­ur­al stone are espe­cially recom­men­ded for use on under­floor heat­ing. Both fea­ture excel­lent thermal con­duct­iv­ity, but also cool down quickly after switch­ing the heat­ing off. Wooden floors require a longer heat-up time, but are able to store the heat for a longer peri­od of time. With par­quet, the right choice of wood is cru­cial. Ideally, wood spe­cies with a long mois­ture change time (equi­lib­ri­um mois­ture con­tent) such as oak or doussie should be selec­ted. In addi­tion, small par­quet strips are prefer­able: the struc­ture of the joints tends to be more homo­gen­eous dur­ing the heat­ing phase.

2. Full-surface bonding of soft floor coverings

Suit­able types of floor­ing also include lux­ury vinyl tiles, car­pets, PVC, lam­in­ate and cork. How­ever, they must be approved by the man­u­fac­turer for use on under­floor heat­ing. Loose lay or float­ing install­a­tion is not advis­able. After the pro­fes­sion­al floorer has bon­ded the floor­ing over the entire sur­face, there will be no sep­ar­at­ing air space between sub­floor and cov­er­ing. As a res­ult, the heat reaches the room more quickly while the impact sound is reduced at the same time.