On the subject of underfloor heating

As longtime readers will know we've been renovating two houses down here for the past couple of years. It's all taken so long because we do some work, then go make some more money and then come back and do the next piece of work.

However, we are now cruising on the home straight and just doing the very last part of the second house: estate agents have already been alerted to the idea that the houses will be coming onto the market.

This last step is to put down the tiles and we've got to ask ourselves a final question before we do so: should we put down underfloor heating?

There are arguments against it, certainly. Like we're in southern Portugal and thus don't really need heating of any kind. For the perhaps one month of the year that you want to have heating a decent woodfire is usually enough. On the other hand, electric underfloor heating has become vastly cheaper in recent years, to the point where if you're laying a new floor then the cost is almost an irrelevance.

Further, in that one month when you do want heating it would be nice to have that sort of ambient heating, rather than having to huddle around a fire.

Hmm, perhaps we should go for some sort of compromise? Just put it in the bathroom(s) where it will do the most good? Clearly and obviously we don't have wood fires in them and given that they're the rooms in the house where you're most likely to be naked, they're the ones where you're going to want to be able to take the chill off the air.

It's the mulling over these sorts of questions that has meant I've always enjoyed moving into houses that other people have built to be quite frank.