Underfloor Heating Installation in Gloucestershire

Underfloor heating used to be a luxury fit. These days it’s the standard choice on new builds and a serious option in plenty of refurbs: quiet, invisible, more comfortable than any radiator setup, and better suited to modern low-temperature heat sources than anything else. The catch is that it only works as well as its design and commissioning.

Priority One Plumbing has been fitting underfloor heating across Gloucestershire for over twenty years. We’re Gas Safe registered, OFTEC accredited, City & Guilds qualified and Worcester Bosch and Vaillant accredited installers.

Wet vs Electric Underfloor Heating: Why We Only Fit Wet Systems

There are two types of underfloor heating, and they’re not really competing products.

Electric underfloor heating uses heating mats or cables laid under the floor finish. Cheap and quick to fit, which is why it turns up in single bathrooms and en-suites. The problem is what happens afterwards: you pay full electricity unit rates for every watt of heat, so running costs are roughly 3/4x a wet system’s for the same output. We don’t install electric underfloor heating.
Wet underfloor heating circulates warm water through pipework laid in or under the floor, fed from the boiler or heat pump you already have. It costs more up front and takes longer to fit, and it’s the system we install on every job.

Why wet, every time:

Running cost: Water-based systems run at low flow temperatures and draw their heat from whatever is already heating the house. On a heat pump the difference against electric mats is dramatic; even on gas it isn’t close.
Comfort: A wet system heats the whole floor evenly and holds that heat; a genuinely warm floor across the room rather than a warm patch where the mat is, and no cold spots at the edges.
Longevity: Pipework laid properly has no moving parts and no electrical components buried in the floor. A well-designed wet system will still be running in thirty years.
It works with a heat pump: Electric mats are a dead end if you ever move to a heat pump. A wet system is the ideal partner for one.

It’s Not Just Pipes in a Floor

Anyone can lay pipe. The reason underfloor heating gets a reputation for cold floors and slow warm-ups is almost always design, not pipework. Two numbers decide whether a system heats the room or just warms it slightly.

Pipe centres. How far apart the pipes are laid. Tighten the spacing and you get more heat out of the same floor area; which is what a north-facing room, a room with a lot of glazing, or a space under a tiled floor actually needs. Space them at a uniform 200mm across a whole house and some rooms will be fine while others never quite get there. We calculate the spacing room by room from a proper heat loss figure, and in most houses we do it changes three or four times across a single floor.

Flow temperature. Underfloor heating runs at roughly 35 to 50°C, against 65 to 75°C for radiators. Set it too low and the floor can’t deliver the output the room needs. Set it too high and you get an uncomfortably hot floor, wasted energy, and on a heat pump a serious efficiency penalty. It follows from the pipe centres, the floor construction and the finish going on top, which is why those decisions are made together, at design stage.

Then it has to be commissioned: every loop balanced so flow is even across the whole system. It’s the step that gets cut from cheap quotes, and it’s the difference between a system that works for thirty years and one that nags you forever. We do the heat loss calculation, the loop design and the commissioning on every job, and we hand over the design figures in writing.

What Underfloor Heating Costs

Underfloor heating is priced by floor area, at a rate set by the system your floor calls for:

Screed system, from £50 per m²: New solid floors: new builds, extensions and dug-out renovations.
Low-profile overlay, from £60 per m²: Retrofit over an existing solid floor where build-up height allows.
Aluminium tray system, from £70 per m²: Suspended timber ground floors and first-floor rooms.

Those rates cover the underfloor system itself, insulation, pipework, spreader plates or trays, manifold, zone controls, thermostats and commissioning. The screed pour, floor finishes and the boiler or heat pump feeding the system sit outside them. What moves the number is zone count, how far the manifold sits from the rooms it serves, existing insulation depth, and whether floors need lifting first. We survey before we quote, and the price we give you is fixed.

The Three Systems We Install

Which system suits you comes down to what is under your feet right now. New builds and extensions are straightforward. Retrofits depend on whether you have a solid floor or suspended timber.

Screed system, for new floors: Pipes clipped to insulation and buried in 65 to 75mm of sand and cement screed. Best output per square metre and the cheapest of the three, because the screed does the work: it stores heat and releases it evenly across the room. It needs a floor built from scratch, so this is the route for new builds, extensions, and renovations deep enough that the existing floor is coming out anyway.
Low-profile overlay, for existing solid floors: Insulated panels laid straight over the floor you have, with the pipework routed into them, adding about 18 to 25mm of build-up. Far less disruptive than digging out, and it performs close behind screed. The constraint is always height: internal doors need trimming and the transitions between rooms have to work. We measure that at survey and tell you honestly whether it is realistic.
Aluminium tray system, for suspended timber floors and upstairs: Aluminium spreader plates fitted between the joists with the pipework running through them. The plates conduct heat sideways across the underside of the floor deck, so you get even warmth rather than hot lines above each pipe. This is the answer for the suspended timber ground floors common in period properties, and it is how we install first-floor rooms, so if you want underfloor heating upstairs as well as down, this is the system that does it.

Larger properties are zoned room by room with their own thermostats, and we site the manifold somewhere accessible so future maintenance never means lifting flooring. Listed buildings and conservation areas may need consent for floor build-up changes, we flag that early.

Where We Install

We install Underfloor Heating throughout Gloucestershire:

Underfloor Heating Cheltenham: period property specialists: joist tray and overlay routes for the suspended timber floors of Montpellier, Lansdown and Pittville
Underfloor Heating Gloucester: from servicing the built-in systems on the Quedgeley and Kingsway estates to full retrofits in the city’s terraces
Underfloor Heating Tewkesbury: barn conversions and larger rural properties, with flood plain manifold siting done properly.

We cover the wider county too.

A Heat Pump Works Best With the Right System Around it

Underfloor heating runs at 35 to 50°C flow temperatures against 65 to 75°C for radiators, exactly where an air source heat pump is most efficient. Paired with underfloor heating, a heat pump delivers more heat per unit of electricity across the year (its SCOP, the seasonal efficiency figure) than the same heat pump running radiators. If you’re switching from oil, that combination usually makes the most sense. Staying with gas? Modern condensing boilers run underfloor heating perfectly well.

Why Gloucestershire Homeowners Choose Priority One Plumbing

A proper in-person survey: floor type, build-up depth, insulation, manifold position and zone planning.

A fixed written quote with the full system specs; pipe centres, insulation, manifold model, controls and commissioning.
Engineers who arrive on time, polite, tidy, plain English.
Aftercare, we service what we fit and we’re back round quickly if anything needs adjusting.

Where underfloor heating goes in as part of an air source heat pump installation, the whole job falls under our MCS certification; which brings the Insurance-Backed Guarantee and Renewable Energy Consumer Code protections with it. On a standalone underfloor heating installation those schemes don’t apply, and we don’t claim them.

For a free no obligation survey and fixed quote, get in touch or call 07727 015 843.