Wet underfloor heating, worth the cost?

[JackReacher]

We are moving to a new house shortly, a 4 bed detached built in 2002. Nothing has been done since new, so it is relatively dated/tired on the inside. There are plenty of jobs to do, including re-decoration, new staircase, new flooring/carpets etc.

Someone suggested considering putting wet underfloor heating in downstairs before we so anything else due to disruption caused, and I hadn’t considered this previously. The downstairs is roughly 78sqm, and the internet tells me to expect installation costs of about £100sqm, making this a very expensive job, one which I’m struggling to see the benefit of. As I understand it, the key benefits are removal of radiators creating more wall space, a more regulated temperature, and potentially slightly more efficient compared to radiators. In addition to the cost, the concrete floors would need to be dug up creating a bit of a mess.

Is this all worth it? It’s a 10 year house for us at least, and we intend to finish the flooring with a mixture of carpet, engineered wood, and tiling, if that makes any difference. I doubt we’d recover costs from an efficiency perspective (correct me if I am wrong), so it’s just whether it makes it a nicer place to live.

[JackReacher]

Thanks, I expected that it wasn’t economical from a financial perspective, so it’s interesting to see comments on the benefits in other respects. There is a likelihood that in 3-5 years we will open up the back of the house with a small extension to create an open plan kitchen/diner/living area. Perhaps we could look at that stage to just have that area with the UFH, as I can see the additional benefit with more open areas. We’ll definitely be putting electric UFH in the upstairs bathroom and ensuite.

I’ve heard that in some cases, it can be installed to quite a low profile to avoid digging up concrete, but on a 15 year old house, will the insulation provided by that concrete be sufficient?

The alternative is something like evohome to provide more regulated heat and control through radiators. Probably not as effective, but vastly cheaper.