Underfloor Heating: Ready for Pour

The pour of the liquid screed floor in the kitchen wing at Balintore Castle is teetering on the brink of becoming a reality. :-) This has been delayed 3 years by a variety of factors, out of my control sadly, and this part of the castle has in consequence been frustratingly unusable for all of that time as everything had been pulled out in preparation. Things get real this Tuesday when the workmen arrive, so fingers crossed there are no leaks in the black plastic membrane, or the wine cellars beneath will be filled at £300 per extra cubic metre !

This blog post forms a room-by-room visual record of the kitchen wing before the pour and could form a useful resource when locating the pipes in the future. If there are two views, one will be the reverse angle to get all the pipework on camera.

Many thanks to Andrew for his sterling work in laying the pipes - he invented two special tools to get the job done! :-)

Covered Walkway

Note Andrew's wiggle when an odd number of runs fits the width! The boards protect the pipe as we need access through the utility room door.

Bedroom 1 (former Coal Cellar)

Utility Room (former Dairy Larder)

Bathroom (former Meat Larder)

Bedroom 2 (former Pantry)

Bedroom 3 / Snug (former Scullery)

Kitchen/Living Room (former Kitchen)

Under my intimations of its superior heat distribution, Andrew branched out from his pedestrian boustrophedon to a archimedean spiral, nay, a double spiral due to the size of the kitchen floor area.

Corridor Radiators

The slab floor is intact only in a single room in the kitchen wing. So for this room (an interior corridor) we had to use two large radiators instead of underfloor pipes. These radiators and a few others were obtained for the princely sum of £1.19 on eBay and fit the window alcoves perfectly. This is not a coincidence, this was years of searching! :-) The radiators come from a mansion flat next to the Albert Hall in London. Needless-to-say the shipping was the more expensive part of the bargain.