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Replace / insulate kitchen floor help please!

K

King Biscuit Time

Well-Known Member
Apologies for the long winded post - but here goes.

I don't like my terracotta-tiled kitchen floor. It's hard, cold, lumpy to walk on without shoes on and a bugger to keep clean.

I spoke to a flooring company to put a wood floor on top - they suggested putting levelling compound on top, then their floor on top of that. I know that will cause a slight raise in the floor level (can live with that).

But I'm worried this won't really help with the cold - in fact I'm starting to think it will make things worse. That will mean my floor will now consist of the following layers. And the last few months kind of removed 'just bang the heating up' as an financially/environmentally sound option.

Kitchen
Wood floor (engineered oak type thing)
Floor compound
Terracotta tiles
Floorboards
Knackered lath and plaster from 1908. Hanging off where it's been taken down to put in wires and pipes and with cold air behind it
Cellar full of cold air (vented to outside air like you're supposed to for suspended ceilings).

I think that having a huge bulk of stuff under the floor will just take ages to heat up and the result will be that it stays cold. Of course the other way of looking at it is that it will store heat, but given the set up, and the fact the house is more often too cold than too hot I think it's much likely to act in the other way.

I know the proper answer is to get a heat pump / underfloor heating - but that's likely to be out of price range. What I don't want to do is spend money to make things worse or on something that will have to come up after a couple more cold winters.

So - specific questions are..

Should I get the terracotta tiles up first? I could probably do this myself and may even be able to get a few quid for them. This is critical to decide before the floor goes in.

Should I hack off all the old lath and plaster underneath and insulate with Kingspan/rockwool or similar (as best I can round all the pipes etc) - this presumably can't hurt and would probably make a big difference. Or is this a job that seems simple but that I will instantly regret starting.

Should I just put up with the shit floor and save up for the big job? Or might I get away with doing the above? There are a few other things I can sort in time. A big single glazed window and a drafty cellar head door that doesn't fit properly. But the walls are solid stone so not much that can be done there.

All advice gratefully received. I am pretty clueless about this stuff.
 
You can get insulating screed, I can't give any advice about it (just know of its existence) but if you were going to be using a levelling compound anyway, perhaps look into that as an option?
 
I'd go for the kingspan/rockwool option. When it comes to heating, insulation should always be the first answer with other options a distance behind.

Also I wouldn't have a wooden floor in a kitchen because I spill a lot of stuff.
 
So if I insulate up from the cellar floor (which seems like a no-brainer) would it be better to remove the terracotta tiles (which would now be above the insulation, and should in theory lose heat to the cellar much more slowly) or leave them in situ?

I also noticed a load of crap falling out the little fireplace every morning, so that's probably another source of draught that can be dealt with.
 
Insulating should make a difference but beware that removing the lath & plaster ceiling will be a messy job.

You can probably leave the tiles if it doesn't matter too much that the floor level will rise. Are there doors which open over it? Because you might have to take a bit off the bottom of them.

If you're going to get a flooring company in, I'd see what they would prefer, and also ask if they could give me one price where they go on top of the tiles, and another where they are lifted first.

You are right that the tiles could provide a bit of "thermal mass" which means the floor would heat up a bit more slowly but also cool down more slowly. But probably just a layer of tiles wouldn't have enough mass to really make a big difference.

One possibility is that removing the tiles would give you a little more thickness in the floor build up to play with, and you might be able to have a thin insulating board under the flooring instead. But the practicality of that might depend on things like how level your floorboards are, and again is something you could ask the flooring company about.
 
If you block up the fireplace, ideally put a ventilated cap on the chimney and perhaps vent the chimney flue to the outoor air, somewhere near the bottom, if that's possible.
 
Are you just putting the flooring around the cupboards or will it be going over all the floor?

If it's the latter then you could remove the tiles and floorboards and insulate between the joists from above. Fasten some batons to the sides of the joists and cut some PU insulation to fit but cut it slightly smaller then spray expanding foam around the edges to fully seal it. Then lay chipboard flooring over the joists.
 
I would suggest that you first remove the tiles, then see what the condition everything else is in. Old houses are full of surprises.

If you take off the tiles yourself you will be saving yourself money. Another advantage to removing them is that you are now committed to putting something else on.

Tiles in the kitchen are horrible....much better options on the market.
 
teuchter said:
If you block up the fireplace, ideally put a ventilated cap on the chimney and perhaps vent the chimney flue to the outoor air, somewhere near the bottom, if that's possible.
Click to expand...
Please explain this advice, as it (i am led to believe) would lose a person points on their EPC certificate. Is it to prevent damp and things like that?
 
bimble said:
Please explain this advice, as it (i am led to believe) would lose a person points on their EPC certificate. Is it to prevent damp and things like that?
Click to expand...
Yes, because chimney flues were designed with the assumption that there would be a fire at the bottom of them, which would generally help them to dry out if water got in.

Once disused obviously there is no fire and warm air going through them, but also if the fireplace is fully blocked up there is potentially no air moving through them at all, not good for letting damp dry out. Many properties which had fireplaces blocked up in 70s/80s/whatever will have a small vent, above the old fireplace, from the room to the old chimney flue. The idea being to let a bit of indoor air move up through the flue. That's obviously no good for energy saving though as you are literally losing heat up the chimney.

My advice was not to do that but to vent the chimney flue, somewhere near the bottom, to the outdoor air, in which case you can get a bit of air movement without drawing anything from the room. But this is usually only possible with a chimney that's on the end external wall of a house. It's not possible if the chimney is in the dividing wall between two terrace houses for example. In that case, all you can really do is focus on trying to make sure damp doesn't get into the old flue ... which might mean some repairs to the chimney above roof level if needed, plus some kind of chimney cap to stop the rain falling straight in. But it's chimney flues on the external walls of buildings that are at most danger of getting damp and not drying out, because they are more exposed.
 
Take a tile up and see what's underneath, it might be plywood, if so you could install insulation boards that hold the ufh and then floor over the top
 
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