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In San Clemente, Calif., Joanne Reiter uses air conditioning all year. But her bathroom floor is toasty: She had electric cables installed under new ceramic tiles. "The dog loves it," she says. "You've never seen an animal sprawl on the floor like she does."
More homeowners want bathroom floors of tile, marble or polished limestone -- but nobody wants to step out of a hot shower onto a cold floor. The increasingly common solution is underfloor electric heating.
Demand for ceramic tile and marble bathroom flooring has been growing for about 10 years, as a wider variety of materials hit the market and people put more equity into their homes, says Vince Butler, a Clifton, Va., contractor and vice chairman of the remodelers council of the National Association of Home Builders in Washington. But unlike throw rugs or bath mats, stone and ceramic tile conduct heat rapidly. The result: When your bare feet land on the marble, heat actually flows out through your skin, and your feet feel colder than if you were standing on a bath mat that is the same temperature as the stone. Underfloor electric heating has its downsides: There's no way to put it down without destroying your floor, so it's possible only in new construction or a renovation. And if it fails, there's no way to fix it without ripping up your floor yet again. But nearly six million square feet of electric radiant heating systems were sold last year, up from two million in 2003, according to the Radiant Panel Association, an industry group based in Loveland, Colo. Manufacturers and homeowners say it usually costs about 10 cents to 15 cents a day to keep a small floor warm. There are three types of underfloor electric heating for small spaces like bathrooms. The first uses cables on a spool that can be laid out in a tight serpentine pattern to avoid cold spots, but can be tricky to space evenly. Because the cables aren't protected when they're being installed, they can be damaged. To avoid problems, test them with an Ohm meter before covering them up. Enough cables made by Easy Heat to heat a typical 50-square-foot bathroom run about $480 (www.warmtiles.com), including a thermostat that can be set to warm up the floor before your morning shower. The second type features cables encased in mats, which are simpler to install than the cables on a spool except in irregular corners. Mats from WarmlyYours cost about $400 for a 50-square-foot room, also including a programmable thermostat (www.warmlyyours.com). The third relies on heat-conducting film; one self-regulating type, which can hover at about 80 degrees without a thermostat, is made by Electro Plastics. Enough film for a 50-square-foot room also costs about $400 (www.warmfloor.com).
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