When we bought our new house we knew we were taking a gamble with the in-floor heat. The house hadn’t been winterized properly and there was a good chance the heat didn’t work.

Once we moved in we started to open up each zone. We have 7 zones.

1. The basement heat tubes were broken right where they went into the floor. Luckily the basement stays really warm because of the boiler.

2. The garage hasn’t been opened up, but we assume it is also broken.

3. The kitchen/office heat works perfectly.

4. The master bedroom works great.

5. The upstairs bedrooms work.

6. The rooms above the garage work but we need to fix one small leak.

7. The living room/dining room losses water/antifreeze so fast that the pressure bottoms out on our system. This is bad.

Last year we lived without heat in the living room. The room is nearly 500 sq.ft. and is on a slab that gets extremely cold. This caused our heat bills for the rest of the house to skyrocket. This week we started to pull up the laminate floor to see what we are dealing with. Sadly, the laminate is the old style that is glued together so we will need all new floors in here.

Unfortunately we found that the heating system had so many leaks we couldn’t repair it, which leaves us with 2 options.
1. Jackhammer 6 inches of concrete and start over, or
2. Lay a new layer of heating tubes and raise our floors.

We have decided to go with option #2. Our plumber is going to get us the supplies and tools and let us do the labor to save some money. Luckily, we won’t have to raise our doors and the slight step down from the kitchen with be gone.

We have a bit of work ahead of us, but at least we have a plan! We will definitely update once we begin the process. Thanks for reading!