Underfloor Heating Canberra

Under-tile heating and underfloor heating are the same job in a bathroom: an electric heating cable laid in the floor before the tiles go down, and run from a thermostat on the wall. We lay cable, not a mat. It warms the floor you stand on, and the floor warms the room.

The floor and the thermostat in the photographs are an ensuite of ours, with heating cable under its timber-look tiles.

People ask about it because of the winters. A tiled floor on a concrete slab is cold first thing in the morning, most houses here are slab-on-ground, and porcelain in particular is cold underfoot. If you are renovating a bathroom or an ensuite, or retiling its floor, that is the one time heating can go in without lifting a finished floor.

1. It is decided at the design stage. Heating sits under the tile, so it has to be planned with the substrate before the floor goes down, and it goes on your written, itemised quote as its own line.
2. The floor is prepared with the rest of the job. The old tiles come up and the substrate is made sound, with the waterproofing done to AS3740:2021 where the room needs it.
3. The cable is laid and set out before the tiles go down.
4. A licensed electrician on our team makes the electrical connection. Electrical work is a licensed trade in the ACT.
5. The tiles go down over it, and the floor is finished with the rest of the room.

Every job comes with a 10-year warranty on our workmanship, waterproofing included.

• Now or not at all. Adding heating afterwards means lifting the floor you have just paid for, so decide it at the same time as the tile. Our bathroom tiling page and the floor tiling guide cover the rest of what goes into a new floor.
• The fan stays. A heated floor does not ventilate anything, so the exhaust fan stays either way. Our guide to waterproofing and ventilation covers fan sizing.
• The price. We do not publish a price for it, because it depends on the room. It is a line in your written quote.

Oleg's case for heating cable under the tiles rather than heat-lamp bulbs in the ceiling is in his guide to heating a bathroom in winter.

If your bathroom floor is staying, this is not the time. The heating goes in under new tiles, so it belongs with a renovation or a retile, not on its own. And if the problem is condensation running down the walls, the exhaust fan is the first fix: a warm floor helps, but it does not take the steam out of the room.