As our bathroom reno continues, I am excited to have hit this milestone. I am a huge advocate of heated floors in bathrooms. Not only are they luxurious, but they are also a nice selling feature.
People always assume they're very costly but if you're already renovating, they're really not. We chose electric heated floors over hot water, mainly because Corey works in electrical. For only $350 (The cost of our kit with an upgraded touch-screen thermostat) we have now added some real Wow-Factor to our washroom and it was actually fairly easy to do... For Corey. I realize that we don't all have a Corey at home. Still, I think the instructions were pretty straightforward.
Since our walls were already open, it was easy for Corey to add a box for our new thermostat.
And the rest of this post is going to involve some guessing on my part. I don't understand some of these pictures and this is what happens when Corey takes pictures of his work while I'm not around. I have absolutely no idea what is happening in these next three photos, although I can see that there are subtle differences between them.
My father would be so disappointed if he knew I'd forgotten all the electrical stuff he taught me when I was little but, here we are. I know nothing about this stuff, so I'm going to make up a good story to go along with the pictures. Enjoy and try not to cringe too much if you happen to have actual electrical knowledge.
Here is the wire which forms some sort of resistor and heats up to warm the floor above. You lay this directly on your subfloor and then cover it with a conductive material like mortar and porcelain tile.
Here is Corey testing the
I can only assume he's either recording his readings or calculating how far apart the wires should be for maximum floor coverage.
Now he's laying down these metal strips with slightly raised hooks. They sort of look like the metal fastener on an old-school tensor bandage.
We skipped the areas under the tub, toilet and sink, which actually gave us a pretty manageable surface area.
Then Corey ran the wires.
... And as wrong as this sounds, the instructions actually say to secure them with hot glue until you use the mortar to affix them permanently.
Unfortunately, when we turned on the thermostat, it told us that we need to wait 28 days before activating the heating system Story of my life.
How did I do, Corey?
This last section is going to be written by me, Corey. For the most part Taylor did really well here, there were only two things I could clarify. First of all, BRAVO!!! The statement about the wire heating up by resistance is correct! As for the testing and recording, I have to test the wires out of the box, again once they're installed, and again once the tile is installed. For warranty purposes you need to record all the readings at each step.
Great job Tay, overall I don't think you should be too disappointed in your electrical knowledge. ;)
