How to make a warm water floor without a screed with your own hands

How to make a warm water floor without a screed with your own hands How to make a warm water floor without a screed with your own hands

Installation of a water heated floor without screed is usually used for premises, the pouring of which with concrete is difficult or even impossible, for example, in a house with wooden floors, with a low height of the room, which is not designed for the arrangement of an ordinary floor, or in a room where concrete delivery is not possible.

Underfloor heating system without screed with water circuits implies that heating pipes will be laid on a wooden or polystyrene base with special grooves when using heat-distributing metal plates.

On top of the pipe, it is required to cover with a moisture-insulating substrate and the finishing type of coating is laid - tiles, carpet, laminate and parquet. Floor pipes are available in copper, polyethylene or polypropylene.

General information

Advantages of warm water floor without concrete screed:

Structural lightness, which makes it possible to lay it on any type of floor.
A thin floor will not make a big difference to the usable height of the room.
It is possible to lay the topcoat immediately after the warm floor is installed, and there is no need to wait for the concrete to mature.
The minimum requirements for the subfloor are either wood or concrete.

We suggest considering what materials are required for laying the floor.

Details

Materials for installing a warm floor

I often prefer the last option due to the simplicity of the installation process , low cost, resistance to aggressive environment and long service life.
In a system that is assembled from polyethylene pipes, you can use not just water, but also any types of antifreeze - they will not have a destructive effect on the pipes.

The expanded polystyrene plate provides thermal insulation of the subfloor, and also prevents heat losses in the lower direction. Moreover, it will provide the convenience of the pipe installation process - special grooves or even protrusions on its upper part make it possible to lay pipes with the required pitch without additional marking and fix them. Slabs can be fastened to each other with a lock. The size of the slabs is 0.

5 * 1 meter.

Wood models made of chipboard or OSB with pipe channels are needed in order to lay metal plates in them, and pipe installation is performed on top of them. The modules are plates with a width of 13, 18 or even 28 cm - the dimensions are selected depending on the pitch of the pipe laying. The heat distribution plates are made of aluminum or even galvanized steel, and they also have a groove for laying pipes of the required diameter and stiffeners. The flat side of the plates can adjoin closely to the substrate and topcoat, redistribute heat over the lower surface area, and also warm it up.

Laying methods for the water type circuit

Before starting the installation, it is required to draw a plan for the placement of pipes inside the room. As a rule, each room is connected to separate circuits, and at the same time it will be more reliable to use the pipe in one piece and without joints. The contour is usually made in the form of a spiral, snake or even a double snake. In this case, the "snake" circuit is the easiest to install, and also economical in terms of material consumption, but due to the cooling of the heat carrier, temperature differences may appear in different places of the room / room. For this reason, this method of laying the contour is used only in small-sized rooms, where the heat carrier will not have time to cool down significantly.
After the plan is completed, it is imperative to determine the installation step based on the design requirements. For different types of bases, the step is also different.

Mounting on a polystyrene base

Polystyrene is a familiar foam plastic, and it has excellent sound-insulating and heat-insulating properties, and still does not decay and retains for a long time their wonderful qualities. The photo shows a sample of laying the floor on a polystyrene base. Let's consider how to make a warm water floor without a screed.

Polystyrene plates are produced with a standard thickness of 3 cm, and if, according to calculations, a thickness greater than this is required, then the subfloor must first be insulated by means of additional polystyrene plates.
If a polystyrene base is laid directly on a sub-floor, then it must be leveled, all debris must be removed, and also to get rid of the drops and mobility of the base.
Next, the polystyrene base is laid - plates with grooves, rotary and straight, subject to the layout plan. Such plates are produced in increments of 15 and 30 cm, and the plates are fastened together with a lock that snaps into place.
If universal lugs are used, then the laying contour of the pipes can be much more complicated, for convenience set the marks with a marker.
In the grooves, it is necessary to lay aluminum plates, and in them pipes in accordance with the contour laying plan.
On top of such plastic, you can lay a substrate, and also a finishing coating - laminate or parquet. If a tile is chosen as a coating, then a dry type of screed must be laid under it - chipboard plates, moisture-resistant drywall and plywood.

Separately, it is worth considering the features of installing heating under a wooden floor.

Wooden flooring for underfloor heating

Most often, this one is arranged in wooden houses, and the wood system can be assembled on the basis of specialized modules, and also on a rack basis.
The modular installation method implies the use of pre-fabricated wood-based board modules with grooves for pipe laying.

The rack system must be made using rails or planks.

Wood modules can be laid directly on the logs, and in increments of 0.6 meters, between the logs it is important to lay waterproofing and a layer of insulation. It is important to lay the modules with a 2 cm gap, which is essential to compensate for temperature expansion.
It is important to interlock the modules with each other using a standard snap-on lock.
The slatted method requires sub-flooring. It is important to lay the slats at a distance that is sufficient for placing pipes at a certain distance in accordance with the selected contour.
When installing rails or modules, it is important to follow the pre-prepared layout plan.
On a pre-prepared system of modules where there are grooves, it is required to lay metal plates, and already pipes in them.
Hard finishes of at least 1 cm can be laid on metal plates with a soft-type soundproofing backing.
For laying tiles or linoleum, the hardwood floor needs to be well prepared - lay plywood and drywall slabs over metal plates. Chipboard, fasten them together and seal the joints. By the way, the laying of the coating can be done by the simplest method.