What are the best options for heating your bathroom?
It sounds simple right? Put a Heat Lamp unit in like I had when I was a kid and that will work fine.
Well today, thankfully, there are a lot more options. The old heat lamp units were great but
they could be quite expensive to run and who needs lights that bright first thing in the
morning? I know I don’t. So what are the other Best Bathroom Heating Options?
Another possibility is to install a heating duct in the bathroom. (Assuming you have a ducted
system) This will certainly heat the bathroom, with most zones covering a third of the house,
it is a lot of heating to warm up the bathroom!
Of course, you could use a portable electric heater of some description, however, they take
up space, can be quite costly to run, and are not great to look at.
So what else can we do?
It may surprise you to know that Under Floor Heating may very well be the cheapest
all-around option to heat your new Bathroom. Adding to the cost-benefit is the absolute
luxury that floor heating offers.
Imagine stepping into your bathroom on a cold winter’s morning and instead of feeling like
you’re stepping into a fridge, you feel like you are outside on a lovely spring day.
This level of luxury is available and the whole process is easier and cheaper than you might
think.
Even once you have reached the conclusion that you must have floor heating, there are still
quite a few different styles of floor heating out there. It can become quite confusing.
Let’s clear it all up for you.
What is Under Tile Heating
Under Tile Heating as the name suggests is installed directly under the tile. The element
comes in a mat form or loose wire.
Typically the element is 4 mm thick and is spread across the floor around 70mm apart.
You can then use a thin layer of tile glue or self leveller over the element or simply tile
straight over it.
Under Tile Heating will heat your bathroom in around 30 – 60 minutes.
Hotwire systems are all supplied with a fully programmable touch screen thermostat. So you
simply set the system to turn on an hour before you normally get up and your bathroom will
be toasty warm when you need it.
What is In Screed Heating
In some states of Australia, a bathroom floor needs to “fall” or slope toward a drain or waste
in the floor. This fall is achieved by laying a sand and cement screed on the floor.
The In Screed element is installed before the sand and cement screed is laid.
The Heating element is approximately 8 mm thick and installed further apart than the Under
Tile Element, at around 100mm.
The end result is still the same. You have a beautifully warm bathroom.
In Screed heating can take up to two hours to reach optimal heat, so simply program the
heating to turn on a little earlier than Under Tile heating.
Other benefits
So Floor Heating will heat the bathroom, sure, but what are the other benefits of floor
heating?
As the floor is dry it is also free from mould. Your grout lines will look better for longer, you
will have to clean your bathroom less often and it’s a healthier place to be due to the mould
reduction.
How do you control floor heating?
Every system comes with a fully programmable touch screen thermostat. Hotwire also offers
a WiFi Thermostat that can connect to the Google Home or Amazon Alexa system. You
could be on your way home from work and simply say to your phone, “Hey Google, turn on
my floor heating” and by the time you get home, your Bathroom is toasty warm. Or you could
simply show off when your friends are over!
What does floor heating cost?
So hopefully you’re now convinced that floor heating is the best heating option for your
bathroom.
The next obvious question is “What does floor heating cost?”.
In most cases you should be able to have Hotwire Floor Heating installed for less than
$1,000. When you consider that it would cost almost as much to install a good heat lamp unit
it is a very small investment.
Floor Heating is also very cheap to run. Running costs are as low as 2c per m2 per hour.
The majority of bathrooms have 4-5 m2 of heatable area. So they only cost 8-10c an hour to
heat.
Imagine that! All the luxury that floor heating offers for only 8c an hour.
Floor Heating really is the perfect heating solution for your bathroom.
Contact Hotwire today to find out more.
