Help & Advice | Cosytoes Underfloor Heating

Pre-Installation Guides & Advice

Underfloor heating is now an essential lifestyle choice for any professionally designed room. At Cosytoes we offer a variety of systems and sizes so that you can choose the perfect system and control unit for your specific room and requirememnts.

All Cosytoes® products are manufactured to comply with UK and EU safety standards. Our underfloor heating cables are also manufactured to meet the underfloor heating standard EN 60335-2-96:2002 and are IPX7 rated for use in wet areas.

Determine Your Requirements:

10 Essentials of Underfloor Heating

Service
We are always happy to help our valued customers and especially the installer. We will exchange unused goods for a different size, send out replacements for probes free of charge and discuss any other problems that you have.

Lifetime Guarantee
Cosytoes’ high performance, teflon insulated heating cable is manufactured to the highest standards and specifications, which is why we can confidently give a lifetime product guarantee.

Timber floors
Cosytoes is suitable for fixing directly to timber floors. Boarding out the floor with a well fixed tile backer board will provide an excellent base for the heating cable and will improve efficiency.

New concrete floors
A concrete sub-floor that has been laid over an insulation layer (as required for new buildings - post 1994) acts as a storage radiator. It takes longer to heat up (hours) but also takes longer to cool down. Installing on a tile backer board will give a much faster heat-up time.

Old concrete floors
Non-insulated concrete floors will soak up the heat and you will end up with poor performance and high-energy costs! Only lay on these floors using a suitable tile backer board.

Sizing and laying
If you need help planning your underfloor heating system, please don’t hesitate to contact us and we will be more than happy to assist you.

Controllers
Whilst giving you a luxurious warm floor, Cosytoes systems deliver the same results as conventional heating but operate at a much lower temperature giving you maximum economy and efficiency.

Laminate, timber or carpet
Cover the TradeMat Plus with a good thickness of self-levelling screed to fit a floating floor of laminate or timber as required. Always ensure there is free space around the edge of the room so the gripper fixings don’t damage the heating cable. Or use Cosytoes Softmat system that has been specifically designed to fit under laminate or wood flooring.

Running Costs
Our combined time and temperature controllers help keep energy costs to a minimum, TradeMat Plus will use just 1p/hour/ sqm (approx) in a modern home. Insulating the floor with tile backer board can improve the efficiency and heat-up time by up to 50%.

Wet Rooms
All Cosytoes heating cables conform to IPX7 and are suitable for installation in wet rooms, which means that our TradeMat Plus can help dry a bathroom floor in a matter of minutes.

Help & Advice

Order the correct amount
It is important not to order too much as you cannot simply cut the end of the mat or cable off. Products can be combined if your surface area exceeds that provided in any single mat or cable.

Use mats where possible
Mats come with fixed cable spacings to provide uniform heat over the floor surface. Loose cable systems are designed for smaller and more awkward areas.

As a sole heat source
Generally, 150w per square metre mat is suitable for modern buildings for tile warming, or as a sole heat source, but older buildings and conservatories may need further heat in very cold weather. An old building will clearly have more heat escaping than a modern well insulated building. The floor space that is available for heating in relation to the room size is also important, e.g. a kitchen can be a large room with a relatively small floor area when fixed objects are deducted.

Insulate for the best results
We always advise the use of insulation to give the best performance, economy and quicker heat-up times. Do not install underfloor heating on an uninsulated concrete floor* as this will waste energy. Use Cosyboard over uninsulated concrete or on insulated concrete or timber floors for a quicker heat-up time. *Pre 1995 building regs.

Choosing a Control Unit
Choose a Cosytoes® Control Unit (timerstat) to regulate energy use for maximum efficiency. We offer a variety of units, so choose the one with the features you require. Each Control Unit can handle 22sqm (or 26sqm for the Gloss Timerstat) of heating mat. Mats can be connected in parallel if the surface area exceeds any single mat, e.g. 20m2 can be heated using two 10m2 mats. Even larger areas can be controlled using a wireless timerstat where the transmitter can be set to communicate with multiple receivers. Each receiver can handle 22m2, so two receivers can be used to control up to 44m2 of mat and so on. Alternatively, two Control Units could be used with two heating zones.

Preparing the floor
TradeMat Plus should be laid on an insulated concrete or timber floor and then covered with self levelling compound. Tiles or stone surfaces are then laid on a continuous screeded bed of adhesive in the normal way. For vinyl type floor finishes, the thickness of self levelling screed should be increased to at least 10mm thickness.

Calculation Examples

Our Customer Service line is available for free advice should you have any sales or installation queries.

TradeMat Plus
Calculate your surface area: 4.1m x 3.8m = 15.58m2
Deduct 10% (and for fixed objects if present) to leave the amount of mat required: 15.58m2 x 0.9 = 14m2
14m2 can be heated using 2x TM+7.0 mats.

Loose Cable
Calculate your total room (e.g. bathroom) dimensions: 2.3m x 1.8m = 4.14m2
Approximate the surface area of fixed units (e.g. bath, toilet and cabinets) and deduct: 4.14m2 - 2.14m2 = 1.73m2
1.73m2 can be heated using 1x B300 cable (1.5 - 2.5m2).

Softmat
Calculate your surface area: 3.1m x 2.8m = 8.68m2
Deduct 10% (and for fixed objects if present) to leave the amount of mat required: 8.84m2 x 0.9 = 7.8m2
7.8m2 can be heated using 1x SM7.0 and 10x SMU boards.

Note: Always make sure there is an RCD on the supply. If not, install an RCD spur.

Note: If your surface area is greater than any single product, you can combine sizes to total your requirements. Be sure to always choose the product(s) smaller than your requirements.

Typical Layout Example

The illustration shows a typical layout for a TradeMat Plus system. The layout includes two sizes of TradeMat Plus, TMP4 (shown in green) and TMP5 (shown in yellow), a timerstat and works around fixed objects (shown in blue) within the room to be heated.

Requirements:

1x TMP4.0
1x TMP5.0
1x Cosytoes® Mirage Timerstat - White (Mir-W)
1350watts/6amps