Conservatory or Garden Room
Conservatories and garden rooms bring the garden into our home; however, the cold evenings don’t need to signal the end of using your conservatory for another year. The luxurious warmth of an invisible underfloor heating system means that these rooms can be used all year round and at any time of day.
What are the main benefits of electric underfloor heating in your conservatory or garden room?
- Conservatories and garden rooms are often built as an extension to a property to create more living space and to bring the outdoors in. It seems ludicrous, therefore, to restrict this new space with radiators on the little wall space there often is in these rooms. Heat Mat’s underfloor heating systems allow you to furnish as you wish while taking up no wall space at all.
- An underfloor heating system allows you to use your conservatory all year round, even in the depths of winter, rather than it becoming neglected in the colder months. Underfloor heating is a great alternative to a radiator system as you can heat only the conservatory on a cold spring or autumn day when you want to use it, rather than having to start up the whole central heating system.
- Garden rooms and conservatories often have cold to touch floors such as tile, stone or laminate flooring. An underfloor heating system transforms these cold floors with lovely warmth; and our more powerful systems have a very fast reaction time capable of heating the floor in as little as ten minutes.
- The gentle heat the underfloor heating provides minimises air movement and thus prevents draughts and helps to create a low dust and allergen environment. By distributing the warmth around the room underfloor heating avoids the excessive radiant heat that radiators can create.
- With their nearly 100% efficiency and fast heating time each of our electric underfloor heating ranges operates at a lower temperature than a conventional heating system, which helps to reduce energy usage and therefore the costs of heating your rooms. Most Heat Mat systems are supplied with a Lifetime Warranty and they are sure to outlast the floor covering above them.
What else should you consider when heating your conservatory or garden room?
- Garden rooms and conservatories usually have high heat loss. Therefore, a powerful 200W or 240W/sqm system is desirable to ensure a fast-reacting system that can overcome these losses. This allows the system to heat up quickly so rather than having the system running all day at a low level, you simply turn on the heating for the times you want to use your conservatory saving you money in the process.
- Even if your new conservatory screed is well insulated, we suggest considering the use of Heat Mat’s structural thermal insulation boards beneath your heating system. These boards will speed up the reaction time of your heating meaning it is up to temperature in less time once the heating clicks on, saving you energy and money.
- In your conservatory or garden room it can sometimes be useful to be able to control the heating system from inside your house. The main options you have are to place the controller in your house and to operate it on floor temperature only, or alternatively you could use one of Heat Mat’s wireless controllers to operate your heating from your phone.
- In most cases our underfloor heating will create significantly less air movement than a radiator system, lowering the heat loss of the conservatory and saving you energy.
- Electric underfloor heating does not suffer from the harmfully hot surfaces of many water and electric based wall heating, and unlike conventional radiators and water based underfloor heating there is no risk of water damage from burst or leaking pipes.
- In-screed heating cables are particularly suited to properties that have their own solar/PV source on site. By burying the heating cables beneath a thick insulated screed you can charge the screed bed up with heat during the day when the sun is shining and the screed gradually releases the heat well into the night, much like a storage heater. This allows you to make the most of the free energy that you are producing.
Which electric underfloor heating system is most suitable?
- The most common floor covering in a conservatory is tile, and a heating mat system is perfect for heating tile and stone floors. Our 200W and 240W/sqm systems offer a very fast heating time. A heating mat system can also be used if you have chosen a luxury vinyl floor (LVT) or a bonded engineered board because the heating mats can be covered with a levelling compound or latex screed and the flooring can be laid on top.
- 3mm heating cable can be used in preference to a heating mat if that is your heating system of choice. They are more suited to small or complicated areas whereas heating mats are quicker to fit in most conservatories. 3mm cables are most commonly used when installed onto Heat Mat’s Decoupling membrane because it speeds up the cable installation process, and the membrane takes the movement out of the sub-floor, preventing any risk of the floor surface cracking from sub-floor movement.
- If you have chosen laminate or engineered board flooring in your conservatory or garden room, our fast-to-fit Combymat system offers a great heating option. The system is installed onto a 6mm insulation board which prevents downward heat loss as well as providing sound insulation. The entire heating system requires only 6mm of build height including its insulation layer and it is a dry installation, requiring no levelling compounds or screeds. If you have chosen carpet or luxury vinyl tiles you can add overlay boards on top of the heating system to allow these floor coverings to be laid. As Combymat is a ‘floating floor’ electric underfloor heating system, this is the perfect choice if there is a lot of movement in your sub-floor.
- In-screed heating cables are often used in a conservatory when a new screed bed is being laid. They have the lowest material cost of any electric underfloor heating system and they create a very stable temperature, so are most appropriate when the room will be regularly heated to the same schedule. The cables do not increase the floors build height (if a 55mm or more screed is already being laid) and they can be installed at any Wattage output desired, although we recommend 200W/sqm for most conservatories, garden rooms and orangeries due to their higher than average heat loss.
