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Everyone loves warm floors when the weather gets cold outside and I know
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from personal experience that warmth coming up through your feet is a
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beautiful thing. This is why in-floor heating is getting more popular all the time but the
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trouble is and I know this from personal experience that actually installing in
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floor heating can be troublesome especially in retrofit or renovation situations and all this is why a new and I think more reliable form of electric
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in-floor heating caught my eye. It's called Dietra Heat and it's been used
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successfully in Europe since 2012. It comes from the German tile accessory
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manufacturer Schluter systems and if you remember they're the same people that
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invented modern uncoupling membranes that improve the reliability of ceramic and porcelain tile floors. So there are three main parts to the Dietra Heat
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system. A dimpled uncoupling membrane that makes the entire floor installation much more crack resistant. Electric heating cables that snap precisely into
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place between the raised sections of the uncoupling membrane during on-site installation. A programmable thermostat system that monitors floor temperature
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adjusting heat output to match. As you can see here the tiles sit immediately
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above the heating cables for rapid and effective heat transfer. You can really
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feel the heat coming up through a floor like this and it also functions without
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one of the biggest risks of in-floor heating systems that I've installed in
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other situations. Damaged wires and failure to heat is the biggest risk with
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electric in-floor heating systems especially mat style systems. Back in 2007 it's exactly what happened with one of my own building projects. It had a
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mat style system installed in the floor and less than one year after
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installation it failed with no warranty support from the manufacturer at all
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I've heard from a handful of homeowners over the years with the same problems
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too and that's one reason why Schluter's 10-year warranty on Dietra Heat
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impressed me so much. If the floor stops heating nine years 364 days after proper
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installation, Schluter tells me that they will replace the whole floor, tiles, labor
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and everything and make it right again. And the same warranty applies if cracked
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tiles or loose grout develop too. Modern uncoupling membranes were invented back
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in 1987 as a way of improving the reliability of porcelain and ceramic
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tile floor installations. But they do this work in a way that's really easy to
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misunderstand. While it's obvious that tiles need to be supported vertically so
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that they don't flex and crack, what's less obvious is the way the installation
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needs to be designed to resist horizontal movements caused by different rates of expansion between the subfloor and the tile installation itself
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Uncoupling membranes allow small amounts of the side-to-side movement so the tiles
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themselves and the grout stay in better shape and crack resistant. Now the Dietra
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Heat uncoupling membrane works exactly the same way except it's configured to
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allow the heating cables to snap right in on the top. Use modified thinset
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mortar if you're installing Dietra over a wooden subfloor and unmodified thinset
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if you're working over concrete. Later on you'll use unmodified to secure the
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tiles to the top of the Dietra Heat membrane. Besides the ability to customize
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every tile installation no matter what it is on-site, the thing that impresses me
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most about the Dietra Heat system is the way the wires snap into the top of the
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uncoupling membrane in a way that protects them physically while also keeping them very close to the underside of the tile so you really feel
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all the warmth that's coming through. Close proximity to the underside of the
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tiles gives optimal heat conduction up into your feet and when those wires snap
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into place they're just below the dimples on the top of the mat so they're
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unlikely to suffer any sort of damage once the wires are snapped into place
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Installers are also required to electrically test the whole installation just to make sure it's working okay before the tiles go down. Care does need
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to be taken when applying tile mortar with a notch trowel but like I said the
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wires are protected below the surface of the membrane so the whole arrangement is
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quite reliable by design. As you might expect the entire Dietra Heat system is
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controlled by a programmable thermostat but in addition to preset times when
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temperatures rise and fall there's also something called anticipated start. This works by bringing floor temperature up to a preset level by a certain time
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instead of just switching on the heat at a certain pre-programmed time. So you
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want to wake up to a full room temperature at say 630 a.m. the system
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learns how much earlier than this it needs to switch on in order to get your
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feet and your room warm to the level that you set at the time you set it
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People living with in-floor heating systems will tell you that they feel
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more comfortable at overall lower room temperatures than when heat is delivered
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by forced air systems. Now I know this is true because that's what I've found
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after I've installed in-floor heating at my own house. Now it's one thing to be
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able to reduce room temperature by several degrees and still feel comfortable but for me the biggest benefit of in-floor heating is the way
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that warmth comes right up through the floor and feels so great. It's almost
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enough to make you like winter
