Pipe cover for Harlow's new builds and extensions
However good the pipework, a heated floor is let down by poor screed around it. The screed spreads the heat from the pipes across the floor, and it has to fully surround them, with no air gaps.
How deep the screed must be above them depends on which material you choose. With liquid, 25mm over the pipes is the minimum, so the floor typically totals 45 to 50mm. The traditional mix wants around 45mm above them, making for a deeper floor. On a new build at Newhall or Church Langley, the depths are set on the drawings and we pour to them.
Gilston, where permission for 10,000 homes was granted in 2025, will bring more new build floors of this kind to the Harlow and Gilston Garden Town.
Extensions to the town's post-war houses are different. In an extension to a post-war Harlow house, the warm new floor must come out flush with the rooms already there, so insulation, pipe cover and screed all share whatever height is left. Retrofitting heating into an original ground floor is harder still, because the old slab usually has to come out to make room. Tell us the finished floor height when you ask for a price.
A pumped liquid screed around heating pipes flows into every gap and can be thinner. With sand and cement, it comes down to how well the screed is compacted round them. Either way, the base must be right, and our insulation and membranes service supplies and fits the layers under the pipes.
Commissioning heating in a new Harlow floor
A new heated floor must not be dried by turning the heating up full. Warm it gradually instead, lifting the temperature in small steps, so the screed neither cracks nor lifts along its edges.
When that can start depends on the screed. Calcium sulphate normally allows commissioning to start around 7 days after pouring. Sand and cement is slower, needing three weeks, so 21 days, as the minimum. The precise warm-up plan comes from your heating engineer or from whoever made the screed, and you get written guidance from us when we finish.
This affects the whole programme. On a Harlow extension, the flooring cannot go down until the heating has been run and the screed has dried to the flooring maker's limit, so allow for it when booking the kitchen fitter and tiler. Timescales are covered in drying times for new screed.
Tiles, LVT and engineered wood each need a certain flatness, and the screed is laid to whatever your chosen covering asks for. Heated floor going in at Bishop's Stortford as well? See our Bishop's Stortford heated screed page.
Underfloor Heating Screed prices in Harlow
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 Harlow
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 Harlow
On the map, Harlow sits east-north-east of Slough, about 35.8 miles from our base in a straight line (postcodes including CM20, CM18, CM17 and CM19), next to Sawbridgeworth (3.8 miles), Hoddesdon (4.7 miles), Epping (4.9 miles) and Ware (6.4 miles).
More on underfloor heating screed, part of our screeding services.
