We have porcelain tile and are in Ontario. I do not regret not having heated floors in the kitchen. Ours was a large space, and it was costly too. The heated floors were one thing I could live without when it can to cost cutting. We do have them in our much smaller bathrooms, which is where we are in bare feet more often!

Beth

We're on Long Island and have slate floors in our kitchen.

Here's a shot.

we have large travertine tile in a portion of our house and i wish we had done the underfloor heating - and i live in So Cal....

We are heating the floors in our kitchen, sunroom and master bath- and we have wood floor in those rooms, not tile. (We checked this out, we're OK as long as we don't turn them to over 85 degrees). We are in PA. I am barefoot all the time and I also wanted warm floors for the dogs. It's costing a lot since we got a separate boiler for it because I want to run it pretty much all the time when it is cold (as opposed to buying electric tube heat) but I am very glad we are doing it. It is not something that can be easily added later, so I would rather spend money there and skimp on something that I can alter or change or add later without ripping out my floor.

I used to be barefoot all the time and found our tile floors to be cold. I have had intermittent problems with pinched nerves in my feet (every decade or so, have been laid up for a few weeks), so now try to wear something to cushion them whenever possible. Standing barefoot on very hard floors is tough on your back, joints and feet. You may not notice it when younger, but I am only in my 40s and have to play it safe now. My last flare up was from wearing the wrong pair of shoes for 5 minutes and realizing they did not feel good. Within a few days, I was in 2 soft casts and off my feet for weeks. They were shoes I had worn numerous times before without issue. As you get older, repetitive stress on your body starts to be the straw that broke the camel's back.
I think the heated floors are better used in bathrooms where you are most often barefoot and not for long periods of time. I think if you put them in the kitchen, that is an encouragement to go barefoot to feel the benefit and that can cause physical problems over time. It will also cost for installation and cost to run them. A pair of slippers or sneakers are cheaper and better for the environment!

We love the Nu-Heat under the porcelain tile in our master bath.

The HVAC guy for our new build was a disaster. He didn't allow enough supply of forced air heat to north-facing rooms. We added a small gas-fired boiler in the basement and under-floor tubing. This was quite inexpensive. Now those are our favorite rooms in winter. There's nothing nicer than radiant heat.

debrak_2008,

1/. what is your subfloor? a concrete slab or wood?

2/. what is under it?

These two little questions determine the answer you are seeking.

I have changed a great deal of my floor from carpet and vinyl to tile. We were going to heat, but let it go when the budget got away from us. I don't regret it. I either go barefoot or wear flip flops, in the winter I usually wear socks because my feet are generally cold. I was also worried about the sub floor heating having issues and us having no way to access it to fix it. I think we made the right decision. I got so many things I can see for the money I would have spent on something I couldn't see. I guess it just comes down to priorities.

To everyone who said "money" please say how much it was. A range from $__ to $_-..

Thank you all for the quick and informative responses.

The kitchen is over crawlspace that is open to the basement. It is not heated but gets some heat from the basement. DH plans to add insulation to the crawlspace.

In order to somewhat level the floor, part of the floor is being ripped down to the rafters. So new wood subfloor.

We put heating under the tile in our master bath and really like it.

I know many don't like tile due to hardness issues. I have these concerns too but right now we need high durability. My hardwoods in the dining and living room are a mess.

Willtv, love your floor!

debrak, Thanks.
It sounds like we have the same crawlspace setup.
If you insulate the crawlspace you'll lose any residual heat you're now getting from the basement. On the otherhand, you won't lose any of the kitchen heat to the crawlspace, so you'll have to figure out which is best.
When our floor was installed, they stripped everything down to the subfloor and installed a layer of mud. In order to level the floor the mud is built up thicker in some areas than in others.
As for the floor being hard, that may be true if your barefoot or in slippers, but I live in sneakers and don't find it to be a problem.
If you have the time you might want to try what we did.
Before deciding on using tile, we picked up some samples and lived with them for a few weeks just laying on the floor in front of the sink so we could judge weather or not the hardness would be a problem.
For us it wasn't.

i find the cost of electric heating cables is next to nothing.

buying them in premade mats costs more. To save money, buy the loose wire and glue it down yourself. Lots of time needed. Figuring out how much to lay here and there, how far apart, etc. Then, to save money, you can mix thinset (or use mastic) and cover the wires partially. This helps when the tile layer arrives and he has a more regular surface to start with.

A programmable thermostat bought with the cables, and matched to the cables, is a good idea. Thermostats cost a lot.

staceyneil wrote that she installed two probes so that they could connect the second one to the thermostat if it needed it, if the first one got damaged or failed. Good idea.

A good tile laying job is not DIY unless you are really good at reading instructions and a whole lot more.

We have heated floors (marble) in the master bath and I love it. Can not imagine not having it --If I happen to go in there really late or early after the program turns it off -- it is really cold on the feet!

But, I am always barefoot in there. In the kitchen we are never barefoot. Have never had heat under the tile (old or new) so I guess I don't know what I'm missing but it seems fine without it. We are upstate NY -- it does get cold here!

We also considered in floor heating of our tile in our recent kitchen remodel. (We live in the upper Midwest) We have a crawl space beneath it so the installation would have been easy to handle. But the quoted cost wasn't -- about 3K for the kitchen and adjacent laundry. We have hot water heating (gas boiler) which would have handled the in floor heating as well. The cost was for the all the piping and installation.

We decided against it for several reasons. First, the advantages didn't seem to justify the expense. Second, we could much more cheaper replace the baseboard hot water heaters with three fan driven hot water vents in the toe kicks under the kitchen and laundry cabinets. They each have a thermostat that turns on the fan automatically when the boiler sends water through the pipes. We put one under the island and it blows directly on our feet when we are in front of the cook top or sink. Very comfy. And there are no more unsightly baseboards in the kitchen and laundry. One option if you happen to have a boiler rather than a hot air furnace.

I have tile floor in bathrooms and the laundry room....... I get cold in the winter, but the tile never bothers me. If you're very sensitive to cold surfaces and spend a lot of time standing on tile, do it..... For us, it would be money wasted.

(Things I thought about: I would never remember to turn the system on beforehand, I would be bothered wasting the electricity if it were on all the time, I am cheap and would rather not have even a nominal increase in electricity, I don't stand on the tile for long periods, our schedules vary so much they couldn't be on a timer, I grew up with tile floors and never was bothered by them, etc. These are just my thoughts for our situation. Everyone is different, of course...)

We have radiant floor heating in our lakehouse and i really like warm floors because we do go barefoot. In our reno/expansion I put it in our MBAs and MBR, and the kitchen. I hate being cold when we get up for breakfast.

But i have a totally diff q. You are heating your island? Ive never heard of that. Are you sure you want to? What about baking?

In our major remodel/addition we are adding hydronic heating on the ground floor and in upstairs master. Right now it's our second home but we will retire there in about five years.

House is at 6400ft elev and can get 20+ feet of snow over a winter. Even with crawlspace insulation tile floors in kitchen were cold! I do go barefoot, having a muscle disease that affects my balance when I wear shoes. I need to feel the floor.

In winter when we go up on Friday night the house is cold, even with heat on to 54F. Our electrician says we will be able to turn heat on by computer several hours ahead so it will be warm when we arrive.

Right now the forced air fan comes on with a vengeance and is very noisey. We look forward to a quiet system that keeps a more evem temp in the house. Floors will be tile in kitchen, bath, and entry with hardwood elsewhere.

After next winter I'll report our experience.

davidro1 ~ ours would have been approx. $2,000 for the wiring, thermostat, electrician's work, etc + an additional approx. $1,000 for the extra cost of the tile setting.

I adore living with under-floor heat. Had it in a house in northern VA and it was the absolute nuts. The floor rarely felt warm to the touch, but the rooms always were comfortable. It was gas-fired hot water in tubes laid in a slab with oak flooring above. The cost to heat that house was very economical.

I long to put it in our house in northern NY.

Unfortunately this house, unlike the VA one, was built more than 150 years ago, so its weatherization possibilities (in modern terms) are essentially nil.

I constantly scheme to change that to allow radiant floor heating, but I'm not holding my breath.

In your situation I think you have to take into account what you would fire the system with. In some parts of the country electric heat tape would be fine, I expect your electric rates aren't any cheaper than our very high rates in upstate. Heating your counter slab is a diffrent story - it won't demand so much energy (smaller area and may be affordable for that reason.) A whole room over a crawl space using electricty may be a significantly more costly.

Gas or oil-fired systems might create issues if you need to have a special boiler for it. Both gas and oil boilers can be used, but if they are designed for conventional hyrdonic, or forced air they may not be adaptable to the radiant floor system.

Radiant floor heating works best (most economical) when applied to large areas and, especially, large thermal masses like slabs. You can install them over (well-insulated) crawl spaces but it's not the optimal position.

If you are undecided, and if you would need a special boiler for the system, perhaps you could install the tubing under the tile, and wait and see if your existing heating system will be satisfactory. If not, then you aren't behind hand. Unless you're kitchen in enormous, I would think that the cost of the requisite boiler (assuming you don't already have one) would be the biggest component, rather than the under-tile stuff. If you found you needed additional heat you could buy and install a boiler and connect it to the radiant tubes already installed under your tile without having to disturb your floor.

I will throw out one additional notion: we are presently noodling on a system of (partially gas-fired) hot water radiant that uses solar hydronic tubes as preheaters for the fluid. That way we are not having to do the entire temperature lift using fossil fuel. (See, I told you I was constantly scheming to get radiant floor heat in my old house!) Maybe a system like that might help you, too.

HTH,

L

So much to ponder...Have to talk to DH tonight.

As for the island. The island will be used for breakfasts, lunches, occasional quick dinner. Granite slab or granite tile. The heating idea came from Fine Homebuilding magazine. This Old House has information about it too. If interested, check out these articles, they really explain the benefits of heated counters better than I can.

During cold weather we don't want to have to sit at the island putting our arms on a cold slab. Also heard lots of people say their food, coffee/tea cools down quicker on cold stone. Also would help with dough rising. It would not be hot, just not cold. It would have an on/off switch, not programable. Come into the kitchen, flip the switch, make breakfast, then sit down in a comfortable spot.

Thank you all for the help, will keep you posted.

My neighbor had the electric heating mat put under their slate kitchen floor about 10 to 12 years ago. This was early on when the heated flooring was starting to take off. It stopeed working after a few years. Not sure why. You may want to look into the warrantee and how that is handled.... They have since replaced the slate floor with wood floor.

We put hydronic in floor heating under all of our tile/slate about the same time in our bathrooms. It is still working and we love it.

I thought about heating my kitchen floor because my powder room floor is cold. BF insisted that we didn't have smooth tile floors in the kitchen and I think that made the difference. My porcelain tiles have a bit of a rough texture and the floor feels as warm as my wood floors do.

I live on the cold Canadian prairies, and I didn't consider putting heat under my tile kitchen floors. And I don't regret it. We seldom go barefoot. In fact, like dianalo, I find it extremely uncomfortable to walk around without firm slippers or shoes, due to neuropathy in my toes. When you wear shoes, the so-called "hardness" of tile is a non-issue.

We put heat in our master bath a few years ago and loved it so much that we also put it in our kitchen, breakfast nook, and then sunroom, as we continued our remodeling. I know I would regret not having it, as we went through times when it was laid but not turned on yet, and the floors were bitterly cold. We don't wear shoes in the house.

Cost was about $5/sq ft. We DIY'ed and taped the wire to the floor (from Warming Systems). It wasn't very complicated, just a bit tedious. And the layer of thinset over the wires takes care so you don't nick or pull up the wires. But overall well worth it to us.

I'm up north and would go for radiant heat under every single floor in a hot second, if we could afford the installation. I'd make a lot of other concessions before giving that up. Go for it!

A friend of mine has heating coils under all her floors. She said that it takes time to get used to this type of heat. Most of us are used to turning up the thermostat to get the heat to "kick on". But with subfloor coils it takes a long time to heat up all of the floor mass before the floor mass can then adequately radiate heat to warm up the room. From what I remember reading back when I was looking into this . . . you end up spending more money/energy with this type of heating system. I like to turn down the thermostats when we aren't home all day and then inch them up a tad to make the furnace turn on when we get home. You can't really turn the heat down with these floors because if they cool down they take a while to recover. Correct me if I have this wrong.

People say stone floors are cold. They are no cooler than the wood floors in a home. They may feel cooler . . . but they are no more cooler. It's physics.

Thank you all for posting. It gave us a lot to think about. Seems it won't be the end of the world if we don't do it but it would be nice. Decided if we do it we will not do the entire floor. Thinking about just around the island in the main work area.

It will be on a programmable thermostat which is the most efficent no matter what type of heating you are using. The master bath floor is still "on" if the temp of the tile gets below 70 it goes on. The gas furnace is programmed also.

The next issue is the island. If we are going to do the under floor heat around the island we need to know its exact size and configeration. Those will be my next posts : )

I live in a ski resort town...so cold here in the winter. We put thermostatically controlled electic heated flooring under our tiles in the bathroom in our guest house and we LOVE it..and our cats think it was made exclusively for them.

We omitted putting the heated floor under the tiles in the entry/kitchenette area....that tile floor gets COLD on the feet in the winter! Big mistake. For our main house we are putting in thermostat controlled heated floors in EVERY tiled area of the house.

Good luck on your decision.

I dearly wish I had heated floors in my kitchen. We put it in the master bath upstairs and have it programmed to come on in the morning for about 2 hours and it is fantastic.

In the winter we turn off the heat downstairs at night (northern California), and so the tiled kitchen floor is like ICE when we come downstairs in the morning. Of course it is cheaper to just wear slippers......