How To Make Concrete Floors Warmer

Hardwood will stay warmest in newer well insulated homes.

How to make concrete floors warmer.

This allows the new floor to not come in direct contact with the old subfloor which can give you a warmer floor. The most common application however is an in floor heating system installed between the finished concrete slab and the flooring above. Get 2 boxes and a roll or two of vapor barrier. Lay the barrier down first and tape the seams really well.

On a cold winter s morning the air temperature up close to the edge of the concrete floor can be colder than the ground underneath the house. Transform your old floors for a cushiony delight by merely placing an area rug on the cold floor. Carpet your buddy to savage through those winter months carpets and rugs are ways to keep your home from losing heat at a convenient cost. Make sure to measure out the room you are doing to get the square footage.

In cases of a concrete slab in a basement for example this can be easily done without too much of an issue as demonstrated in the diagram below. Some issues are structural and logical. While choosing your vinyl flooring prefer the thicker variety to provide softer and warmer feel under your foot. Get that amount of rigid board insulation.

Take up as much flooring as you can without breaking it too much hence the extra flooring for oops. Floors of ceramic stone or concrete are the worst culprits with hardwood a runner up. Keep cold air out warm air in. Cold concrete floors are a rather common problem and there are several approaches to warming them up.

Below the surface will be a bit warmer than this. Shown on the right are our unfinished subfloor tiles. Determining the cause of cold floors however is usually fairly simple and can be addressed without massive expenditure. Hardwood isn t quite as warm as carpet or cork but it s still one of the warmer flooring surfaces on the market.

Start with the simplest solution which will help provide a comfortable temperature for the whole house not just the floor. You can expect the stone floor of your screen porch or the basement linoleum laid on cement to be cold and carpet is the logical warmer. Thermaldry flooring is also available in two tiled and two carpeted designs. A few are expensive or not practical.

For example a bathroom on a slab would feature a layer of cork or synthetic cork underlayment on top of the concrete subfloor followed by the electric heating element and topped with the flooring substrate. A few are expensive or not practical for some homes. And the ground underneath your house will be warmer still because there s a relatively warmer house sitting on top of it.