Best Underlayment for Underfloor Heating

At QA Flooring, we provide everything you want in an underlayment. However, it’s impossible to deliver everything all at once, which is why our range is so extensive. For example, flooring cannot both be heat insulated and compatible with underfloor heating, as underfloor heating requires the free flow of heat to be effective.

Today, QA Flooring will help identify the best underlayments for underfloor heating – across several underlayment types. Before beginning, it’s important to point out that Tog Ratings are a system in place to calculate thermal resistance, which is how hard the underlayment resists heat rather than letting it pass. These numbers will be incredibly important as you read on today.

Best Wood Underlayment for Underfloor Heating

First, we’ll begin with underlayments that are made for wooden floors.

Light Traffic – Unibase

Unibase underlayment provides support for laminate or engineered wood floors using a floating floor installation method. It is a lightweight material that makes it easy to handle, ensuring a smooth installation. On top of that, Unibase can extend the lifespan of your floors in a low-traffic environment, by absorbing a lot of footsteps to reduce damage to the actual floor.

Unibase comes in three different types: bronze, silver and gold. The differences between them are numerous, including thickness and heightened ability of insulating heat. This is why, when selecting the best wood underlayment for underfloor heating, the bronze version of Unibase is the only suitable option – provided the room is meant for low traffic.

Medium Traffic – Quicktherm Series

The Quicktherm series has been specially designed for underfloor heating – making them easily the best medium-traffic wood underlayment for underfloor heating by far. Their perforated profiles allow them to conduct heat effectively and spread it around the room evenly.

There are two variants of Quicktherm and Quicktherm Vapour. Aside from a 0.2mm increase in thickness, the vapour addition has a moisture barrier that protects your flooring from moisture rising from the subfloor. You can expect an average tog rating of around 0.3.

Heavy Traffic – TimberTech Elite Series

Timbertech is one of QA Flooring’s leading underlayment options on the market for wooden floors. Timbertech’s main achievement is its ability to provide stunning acoustic insulation. The stats on each floor are different, but you can expect the noise of your floors to reduce by up to 32%, and impact sound up to 21dB.

On top of this, each underlayment boasts a moisture barrier, which protects your finished floors from damage caused by moisture rising from the subfloor.

We have made sure to include compatibility for underfloor heating on each Timbertech Elite model. That being said, the other models, Timbertech Neo, Timbertech Neo Acoustic and Timbertech Gold, each have tog values higher than 0.50. This means they are less effective at heat transfer when compared to the Elite models (though still an option if you want the increased sound reduction on offer by these three underlayment options). Timbertech Elite each has a tog rating of 0.1 – the lowest in our overall range of underlayment flooring, making them perfect for underfloor heating.

Whilst this is a heavy traffic underlayment, that doesn’t mean it’s not suitable for areas of low traffic – just that it would be overkill for purposes of durability.

Best Carpet Underlayment for Underfloor Heating

Next, we move on to carpets.

Heavy Traffic – Extrastep

Extrastep is a high-density PU foam underlay. It has a thickness of 6mm and a density of 180 kg, making it a highly durable underlayment best used in heavy-traffic areas. Its standout feature is its ability to drown out 33dB of sound.

Extrastep’s thickness does not hinder its performance when it comes to underfloor heating – with a Tog value of 1.77, consider the combined values and thermal properties of the carpet when intended for use with underfloor heating..

Heavy Traffic – Heatwave

Heatwave is an underlayment made of the purest PU foam, meaning it has an unparalleled soft feeling underfoot – maximising the comfort of your carpets. It has a thickness of 8mm, which offers comfort under foot, and it is designed for heavy traffic.

Heatwave is touted as our ultimate flame retardant underlayment for carpeted floors. With a Tog rating of 1.2, and a perforated profile it is the most compatible underlayment in our range for carpets intended for use with underfloor heating.

Best LVT Underlayment for Underfloor Heating

LVT flooring is soft, comfortable and has warmth of its own – but it’s possible to enhance it with underfloor heating. Since LVT relies much less on underlayments to provide resistance to foot traffic, we’ll focus less on traffic in this section.

SoundBarrier

SoundBarrier is designed to heighten acoustic insulation, essentially providing a 24dB impact sound reduction and a 31% reduction of footfall noise. It has a moisture barrier, protecting your floor from moisture rising from the subfloor, and boasts a Tog rating of 0.4, making heat conductivity easy on top of the other bonuses this underlay has.