Most customers have never watched an underfloor heating system go in, and the unknown makes people nervous reasonably enough, since it happens underneath a floor finish they've spent months choosing. So here is an honest, hour-by-hour account of a typical electric installation: one bathroom and one bedroom, two crew members, one day.
9:00 Protection and setting out
Dust sheets go down along the access route first; your home stays your home. The crew then marks the heated area on the subfloor from the layout drawing agreed at survey keeping the statutory clearances from walls, the WC and the shower drain, and skipping the zones under the vanity where heat would be wasted.
9:45 The first resistance test
Before anything is unrolled, each mat is tested with a multimeter and the reading logged against the manufacturer's tolerance. This matters more than it sounds:
Every ProWarm circuit is resistance-tested three times in the box, on the floor, and under the finished surface. A cable fault that exists is found before tile ever covers it.
10:15 Insulation boards
ThermaBase XPS boards are bonded and mechanically fixed across the marked area, joints taped. On a ground-floor slab this single layer will roughly halve the system's running cost, which is why we won't quote without it.
11:00 Laying the mats
The satisfying part. The self-adhesive mesh rolls out, turns at the end of each run, and sticks flat. Around the curved shower tray, the installer unclips cable from the mesh and free-forms it this is where the pre-spaced mat design earns its keep. Test two confirms nothing was nicked during laying.
13:30 Floor sensor and cold tails
The thermostat's floor probe goes into a conduit between two cable runs never touching one so it reads true floor temperature. Cold tails are chased back to the thermostat back box, and everything is photographed. You get these photos in your handover pack: a permanent record of exactly where every cable lies, for any future renovation.
14:30 Levelling pour
FloorPrime self-leveller goes over the mats in the bedroom (the bathroom mats will be tiled over directly with flexible adhesive). By 18:30 it will take foot traffic; tiling and flooring can start the next morning.
16:30 Final test and handover
Test three, logged. The thermostat is mounted, wired and commissioned with a gentle first-heat schedule new adhesive and screed should warm up gradually over several days, and the SenseWarm handles that ramp automatically.
The crew leaves you with the test log, cable photographs, warranty registration and a fifteen-minute walkthrough of the controls. Total disruption: one day, one room at a time.
Planning a project and want this level of detail for your own floor plan? Book a free survey and we'll walk the rooms with you.
Written by Rohan Kulkarni
Lead Installation Engineer
Part of the ProWarm India team designing and installing radiant heating across the country since 2012. Meet the team.
