Adding heated floors to Calne houses
Underfloor heating in an existing house is a floor rebuild. The old ground floor usually comes out so that insulation can go beneath the pipes, and the new floor still has to finish level with the door thresholds. Every millimetre of the build-up counts.
The screed depth over the pipes is fixed by what the screed must do: carry load and spread heat evenly. Over the loops, pumped screed needs a covering of 25mm minimum, so expect the full depth to come to 45 to 50mm or so. A traditional mix wants something like 45mm over them, and so takes more height. In a retrofit where height is tight, a liquid screed laid over the pipes often fits where a traditional one would not, and it fills around the pipes with no air pockets.
Order of work matters. Membrane and insulation first, then edge strip, then the pipes, laid and pressure tested by your heating installer. The pipework itself is not part of our job. What we do is check the boards and polythene before any screed goes in, and if they are not yet bought, we can provide them as part of our insulation and membranes supply.
Older stone cottages near the centre are a special case. Some may need a breathable floor build-up, which affects whether and how heating can be added, so the building should be assessed before a retrofit is planned. Depths for every build-up are set out in how thick a screed should be.
Calne extensions and the first warm-up
New rooms are simpler. A single storey extension can be designed around heating from the start, with insulation and screed depths chosen together so the new floor meets the old. Newer homes are part of the same picture: 11% of Calne's homes were built since 2015, and on a new plot the heated floor is planned from the slab up.
Plenty of heated floors come to grief the first time they are switched on. Anhydrite will normally accept heat from roughly 7 days old. A traditional floor has to wait no less than 21 days. Keep the water cool at first, nudge it up by a small step every day, hold it at the top, and then let it come back down. Turning the heating straight up can crack the screed and cause tiles to fail later. Keep a simple log of the temperatures and dates, because the floor layer and the flooring maker may ask to see it.
Warming helps drying but is not a test of it. Check moisture before tiles, LVT or engineered wood go down, as each has its own limit. For heated floors a few miles away, see underfloor heating screed in Melksham.
Underfloor Heating Screed prices in Calne
Liquid screed over underfloor heating: £20 to £35 per m² supplied and laid (trade2base, June 2026), so £700 to £1,230 for 35 m². trade2base gives these figures excluding VAT. See our floor screeding cost guide or screed calculator.
Who lays your underfloor heating screed in Calne
K & B Screeding’s own team, led by director Donatas Bardisevicius. Founded 2019, company 12298780.
See what customers say in our Google reviews and on our testimonials page.
Underfloor Heating Screed from Slough to Calne
On the map, Calne sits west of Slough, about 59 miles from our base in a straight line (postcodes including SN11), next to Chippenham (4.9 miles), Devizes (6 miles), Melksham (7.3 miles) and Corsham (7.8 miles).
More on underfloor heating screed, part of our screeding services.
