AFFINITY HOME & DESIGN

Should I add electric floor heat in my bathroom?

Tile floors can be shockingly cold to the feet during the cold Winter mornings.  If this is your case then adding electric floor heat will dramatically improve the comfort of your bathroom or any tile floor.

Here are a few questions to help decide on heating your floor?

1. Is there room in your electrical panel to add a circuit?  Read the specs on the system you are using to see if it will require 120v or 240v.
2. Is your floor square or oddly shaped and chopped up?  If you have separate chopped up spaces then you may need the system that uses a continuous wire to place throughout the floor as needed.
3. Is the bathroom generally colder than the rest of the house?  The continuous wire system can have a gap as little as 2″ between each strip of wire as in the photo above which puts out a little extra heat for the space.
4. Do you want to warm the tile floor of your shower or the tile around your bathtub? There is a special wire to order for wet locations.
5. How accessible is it to run new wire from the electrical panel to the area you are installing the system?  Typically this would be the attic or crawl space.
6. Where would you place the thermostat? I suggest hiding it if possible, once you set the timer you will likely not use it often.

The images show the wire system in a West Linn master bathroom remodel which provides very flexible placement. You can see where it stops in the front of the toilet as your feet never touch behind it, although it is capable of being distributed evenly along small chopped up spaces, angled and curved walls.

Have a patio that gets used year round? Adding floor heat is possible outside.