DIY Heated Tile Floor - Let There Be Heat
Sunday's work started with grouting the wall tile. The grout is gray, so it makes a real mess on the white tile. It is unsanded, though, so it is easy to work. I still ended up wearing my finger tips off trying to get it just right.
It took almost all day to finish the grout, but what I really wanted to do is test out the underfloor heating system that I put in two weeks ago. It is a Schulter Ditra Heat system with a programmable thermostat. The heating element is a long cable that snaps into a molded plastic film that is installed under the tile. I did the floor grout last weekend, so this was my first chance to test out the floor heat.
It only took a few minutes to wire up the heater so that we could give it a try. Rebecca and I were sitting on the floor trying to figure out how long it takes before you can tell that it is getting warmer. She looks like she is warming her hands by a tiny invisible campfire.
We found that it takes one beer to get noticeably warmer compared to an unheated floor, but two beers before it feels warm to the touch. The nifty thermostat will let you program it to start warming early in the morning so that when you step on the bare tile on your way into the shower it will be nice and toasty. There is also a function that tracks the energy consumption so that you can keep an eye on it. The heater draws 338 Watts if it is running continuously. It looks like it runs about 15 to 20 minutes per hour, so that works out to about 100 Watts on average to keep the floor at 72 F when the air is 64 F. We can probably get that down quite a bit by adjusting the program to only heat the floor when someone is likely to be using it.
The tile cleaned up nicely, didn't it? Now I need to put up a glass shower door, install the shower faucet, and put the toilet back in place. The next big step is building a new vanity. Stay tuned for an upcoming visit to a local soapstone quarry to get a piece of stone for the counter top.
Cheers, Professor Bromide 
Ha love your time measuring with beers. Seriously... underfloor heating is the bomb. Clever you.
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It's a good thing that I didn't get a slower, underpowered heater. If it had taken 10 beers to heat up I wouldn't have made it to work the next day.
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Hahahahhaa
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Two beers seems like a pretty reasonable timeframe! Bit after about six beers, everything is warm! ;)
Did I hear you on The Survival Podcast recently talking about your project? Seems I remember hearing about this on there first.
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I was on Meadows and Makers with @makinstuff and @jackdub. That's a good show. It got me into the whole idea of Discord and all the shows on PALnet.
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The remodel is coming along nice. We opted for a heated floor as well. My current tester was busted so it took a couple day to get a new one to make sure everything was working right. Man would it suck to finish your tiling only to find out it did not work.
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Oh yeah. That would be horrible. I don't know that I have the energy to tear out the floor and start over. This is looking like it is going to turn into a > 6 month project without any rework.
I think that the low voltage continuity tests that you can do with a plain old multimeter will tell you whether or not the heater will work. They just tell you if the heater wire is broken or shorted out.
The high voltage insulation tester seems like it is supposed to give you an indication of a tiny flaw that will shorten the life of the heater wire. If you have an insulation defect it might only show up as a 1 MOhm resistance, but over time the leakage current would cause corrosion of the heater wire.
We had a similar problem with some poorly insulated power lines buried in the ground between my house and my shop. Someone had damaged the insulation and just wrapped it up with electrical tape. It worked for a few months until the wire corroded through.
A heated floor in the bathroom would be really nice!
We keep out house pretty cool in the winter, so a tile floor feels very cold. Even just heating the floor to 72 F makes a big difference. When it was up to 77 F it felt warm to the touch. I didn't let it keep going, but the default setpoint was 82 F. That would feel like a sauna.
With the floor at 82, it would heat the entire bathroom. Very nice when you're getting out of the shower...
Hmm you may need to do a control group where you test how warm people feel after 1 beer vs. 2 beers even if there is no heat at all LOL
I've written my will so that my body can be donated to science. No reason I can't start experimenting now.
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That looks really great! I have never had a heated floor and kind of wondered how they worked. That is going to be so nice
It feels pretty nice on bare feet when the house is chilly. My neighbor has a bigger system in his kitchen that uses hot water tubes in the concrete slab. It is supposed to be pretty efficient for space heating that way.
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My son has in-floor heating in his 4th floor condo in the city. It really is pleasant. I would love it! My floors get icy cold in the dead of winter.
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