Last week I was visiting a housing estate for Francis Jackson Builders and noticed another carpet company taking up all the carpets in the house opposite and putting the Cloud 9 underlay into their van. Of course I was interested in what was going on and the site manager told me that the new owners had called them in because they thought the underfloor heating wasn’t working. However it turned out there was nothing wrong with the heating, but the carpet company had fitted the wrong underlay. The company were putting it right but it meant the home owner had to put up with the hassle of them moving all the furniture, taking up all the downstairs carpets and underlay, putting down different underlay and refitting the carpets.
If you have underfloor heating, the floor covering plus any underlay must allow heat transfer. How well a product allows heat to transfer is measured in tog ratings. Unlike a duvet where you want a high tog rating, for underfloor heating you want your flooring coverings to have a low tog rating which means the heat can escape from the floor into the room. Recent research by the Carpet Foundation in conjunction with the Underfloor Heating Manufacturers Association has found that the most carpets can be used with underfloor heating. The exception is foam/felt backed carpet and some underlays. So if you have underfloor heating make sure your carpet fitter knows this and selects the right underlay with a tog value of 1.0 or less. The underlay we use with carpets where there is underfloor heating is Duralay Heatflow which has a tog value of 0.75.
If you would like an information sheet on underfloor heating underlay or other different flooring products please contact us.
[...] couple of months ago I told you about a carpet fitter who used the wrong type of underlay with underfloor heating. Last week I saw another problem with the carpet fitting at a house with underfloor [...]
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