Shaving down doors?

Aruffell

Aruffell

Aruffell

Soldato
Joined
29 Dec 2004
Posts
5,653
Location
Chatham, Kent
What a drama this has been. So long story short, the underfloor heating that we were looking to get was all priced up and everything was good to go for when the house build completes for us to get it all fitted in and screeded over.

At least that was the plan as the sales girl at Persimmon told us that between the sub floor and the bottom of the doors was 150mm. What they didn't tell us after going to see the house today is that they have put a upper floor within that 150mm gap so back to the drawing board I guess.

I'm waiting on them getting back to me to let me know exactly how much gap is now between the bottom of the doors and that floor as I've found a suitable overlay system which is only 18mm from Polypipe but then with 3mm decoupling matting, 3mm for adhesive and 10mm tiles we're looking at over 30mm in total.

With the one carpeted room, we'd have the 18mm overlay boards with pipes within the tunnels, and then have a 6-10mm board over the top, and then underlay and carpet.

What's the situation if we don't have that much room to play with? Can you shave down doors? What about the front and back doors?

I know the final option for underfloor heating is electric opposed to a wet system, but it seems much more expensive to run etc...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Andy
 
internal doors easy enough can be planned down significantly modern external doors much more tricky as they are probably composite/PVC so can't be planned sounds like this all needed to be done at the time of build not now it's up and finished!
 
a1ex2001 said:
internal doors easy enough can be planned down significantly modern external doors much more tricky as they are probably composite/PVC so can't be planned sounds like this all needed to be done at the time of build not now it's up and finished!
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Sadly not a bespoke property so they don't let you specify bits n bobs like this.

Andy
 
It depends on the doors really. If they are moulded doors then you are most likely limited to something like 5mm off the top and bottom. Even solid doors have limits to how much you can cut off them.
 
pastymuncher said:
It depends on the doors really. If they are moulded doors then you are most likely limited to something like 5mm off the top and bottom. Even solid doors have limits to how much you can cut off them.
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Not true. You can cut down hollow core doors as much as you want to. If you trim more than the recommended 5mm, you have to put a new filler piece in the ends which is more work but sometimes the only option.

http://www.finehomebuilding.com/item/20395/how-to-trim-a-hollow-core-door-to-height
 
Chopping down internal doors is easy enough. Back door you'll probably have an upstand so it won't need anything but the front door might be level access for lifetime homes so you'll have a problem with that.

What about all the skirtings, architraves, kitchen plinths, toilets, basins etc etc etc. These will all be installed off the floor.
 
maccapacca said:
Chopping down internal doors is easy enough. Back door you'll probably have an upstand so it won't need anything but the front door might be level access for lifetime homes so you'll have a problem with that.

What about all the skirtings, architraves, kitchen plinths, toilets, basins etc etc etc. These will all be installed off the floor.
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Here's some pictures of a showehome version of our home to give you an idea of the doors.

Front - http://prntscr.com/aa8fzh
Side - http://prntscr.com/aa8ga6
Back - http://prntscr.com/aa8gm0

Quite large kickboards in the kitchen and we will be ripping that out at some point for something more of what we actually want.

Any way around all of this?

Andy
 
You'll have a problem with the front door unless you don't run it right up to the door and leave a recess. So set the ufh back and create a mat well.


All sounds like a nightmare tbh. I wouldn't be trying this.
 
You'd give up on the dream of having underfloor heating in general?

The other option was the electric matting but over a 70 square metre area, it seems it's more costly than the benefits of having it.

We're mainly tiling (conservatory, 26ft kitchen and hallway) so wanted the "ahhh" feeling when stepping onto the tiles barefoot.

Andy
 
All the finishes wouldn't have been allowed for ufh you'll end up with odd looking trims, quadrants and heights everywhere.

Have you thought about how you'll deal with any of what I said first including how the stairs work on the top step and bottom step. You'll have a massive top step and a little bottom step. Will it even comply?

It's nice and lovely but to retrofit it to a new his to be sounds bonkers.

Electric would be better but even then the levels of modern insulation and efficiency of the heating system is it really worth it?
 
maccapacca said:
All the finishes wouldn't have been allowed for ufh you'll end up with odd looking trims, quadrants and heights everywhere.

Have you thought about how you'll deal with any of what I said first including how the stairs work on the top step and bottom step. You'll have a massive top step and a little bottom step. Will it even comply?

It's nice and lovely but to retrofit it to a new his to be sounds bonkers.

Electric would be better but even then the levels of modern insulation and efficiency of the heating system is it really worth it?
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We were only going for UFH downstairs, so no worry about the steps etc...

Would a conservatory, large kitchen etc... with large porcelain tiles not be freezing cold to barefeet in the winter? That was the whole reasoning behind having UFH in the first place.

Electric seems fine for small areas, but I think the cost to run it would just not be worth it to be honest.

Thanks,

Andy
 
maccapacca said:
They'll only be cold if not insulated and not space heated. It's a modern house the floors should be insulated.
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Yeah the floor is insulated, as has to be for building regs, but surely 500x500 porcelain tiles will still be cold on Christmast morning as the kids run down to grab their pressies, wouldn't it?
 
Buy them some slippers as an early Christmas present ;)

Have to agree with MP in that in a brand-new house it seems a huge amount of work and a potential source of permanent irritation.
 
Are you going to be keeping the radiators if you go with the underfloor heating? Just another aspect if not because you will have all the walls / plumbing to put right after removing the radiators.
 
#Chri5# said:
Buy them some slippers as an early Christmas present ;)

Have to agree with MP in that in a brand-new house it seems a huge amount of work and a potential source of permanent irritation.
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Indeed, that's why I'm trying to gauge whether it's worth the hassle. Always wanted underfloor heating and thought that this was a prime time to get it put in as a luxury item.

Entropy said:
Are you going to be keeping the radiators if you go with the underfloor heating? Just another aspect if not because you will have all the walls / plumbing to put right after removing the radiators.
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We was looking to ditch the rads and plug the hoses, poke them back in the wall and plaster over it so that we could always put them back up if wanted/needed.

Andy
 
Do you know what subfloor you have? If it's joists you can rip the existing floor up and go in between the joists, either on trays or baton, the celotex then pipe clipped to celotex, then screeded to joist height.
 
ash_91 said:
Do you know what subfloor you have? If it's joists you can rip the existing floor up and go in between the joists, either on trays or baton, the celotex then pipe clipped to celotex, then screeded to joist height.
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Big ol concrete slab :(
 
Aruffell said:
Yeah the floor is insulated, as has to be for building regs, but surely 500x500 porcelain tiles will still be cold on Christmast morning as the kids run down to grab their pressies, wouldn't it?
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Don't tile, put down engineered wood instead nice and warm and a bit more forgiving when you drop a tea cup! This seems like a ridiculous amount of work to do in a new build house which wasn't built with it in mind.

Personally if you want under floor that badly I'd go with electric and leave the radiators that way you can just use the electric to take the chill off the tiles but keep the heating for actually warming the house.
 
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