Heated Floors near you

Bathrooms are the classic choice: tile is cold underfoot, the room is small and the floor is often being redone anyway. Kitchens, entrances and mudrooms benefit too, and a warm floor helps dry melted snow and wet boots. Basements gain the most comfort, because the slab keeps the floor cool much of the year, and they are also where insulation under the heat matters most.

Decide early whether the floor is for comfort or for heat. Most electric bathroom floors are comfort heat: they take the chill off the tile while the home's regular system heats the room. Making the floor a room's main heat, or heating a whole basement with it, is a design question, since the floor must deliver as much heat as the room loses; a heating contractor should calculate it. Heated floors are often called efficient because warm feet make a room feel comfortable at a lower air temperature, but real savings depend on the house, the energy source and how the floor is used.

Planning comes first: the installer draws the heated area around fixtures and cabinets, orders mats or cable to fit it and decides where the thermostat and its floor sensor go. Makers forbid cutting the heating cable itself, so the layout has to be accurate before anything is ordered.

Over a concrete slab, especially in a basement, much of the warmth can flow down into the cold concrete instead of up into the room. System makers commonly offer or call for an insulating underlayment beneath the heating element on slabs, and a new hydronic slab is usually poured over rigid insulation. Without it, the floor is slower to warm and costlier to run.

A hydronic floor is part of the heating system. Tubing is laid in loops that return to a manifold and pressure-tested before it's covered, then connected to a boiler or, in some homes, a water heater approved for space heating, usually through a mixing valve that sends the floor cooler water than radiators get. That design and connection belong to a heating contractor; see the radiant heating and boiler installation pages.

An electric heated floor is part of the home's wiring: it needs a suitable circuit, the protection the electrical code requires, a thermostat and a proper connection at the panel. The flooring or tile installer can lay the mat or cable, but connecting it is work for a licensed electrician, never a homeowner project.

In Ontario, the Electrical Safety Authority (ESA) says a notification of work should be filed before electrical work starts; a Licensed Electrical Contractor you hire files it and requests the inspection, and ESA issues a Certificate of Acceptance once the work passes, which is worth keeping with your house records. In Quebec, the Corporation des maîtres électriciens du Québec (CMEQ) states that no one may carry out electrical work of any kind for others unless they are an electrical contractor, so hire a master electrician and check the licence. Other provinces have their own permit systems, which the electrician will follow.

An electric heated floor runs on its own thermostat, mounted on a nearby wall, which reads a sensor set in the floor between cable runs. Reading the floor rather than the air lets it hold a steady surface temperature and respect the flooring maker's limit, which matters for wood and vinyl. Programmable and connected models warm the floor before you usually get up or come home, then turn it down, so it isn't heating an empty bathroom all day.

Hydronic floors are controlled by zone: each thermostat opens a valve or starts a pump for its loops, while a mixing valve or the boiler's controls keep the water at the lower temperature floors need. A slab responds slowly, so steady settings suit it better than deep daily setbacks. Electric floors need little care beyond pressing the thermostat's ground-fault test button as its manual recommends; hydronic systems need the boiler and pump servicing the heating contractor sets out.