#thermostats

[underfloorheatingwarmupaustralia]

Renovating in 2026? Here's Why NZ Homeowners Are Putting Underfloor Heating First

A BuildersCrack survey of 645 NZ homeowners conducted in February 2026 found that nearly 4 in 5 Kiwi homeowners are either planning a renovation or seriously considering one this year, with bathrooms ranking among the top three most planned project types at 31% and an average planned spend of $27,000 per project.

The activity level makes sense. With the national median house price at $775,000 NZD as of May 2026, and markets like Wellington still sitting 27.72% below their October 2021 peak, homeowners are increasingly focused on improving the homes they already own rather than trading up in a market still finding its footing. But here's what's shifting inside those renovation briefs — specifically inside bathroom briefs — and it goes beyond tiles, tapware, and vanities.

Underfloor Heating NZ: From Luxury to Standard Spec

Five years ago, electric underfloor heating came up on roughly one in ten bathroom renovation briefs. Through 2025 and into 2026, it's now featuring on close to a third of premium bathroom jobs — particularly on master bathrooms over 10m² and in homes across Remuera, Epsom, and Auckland's North Shore, where the floor experience has become part of how homeowners specify daily-use comfort.

This is a material shift, not a passing trend. And it's being driven by factors specific to New Zealand's climate and housing stock.

Why NZ Homes Are Particularly Well-Suited to Heated Floors

Auckland winters push ambient humidity to 70–80% and temperatures regularly drop below 10°C. Without adequate floor heating, bathrooms in North Island homes become magnets for moisture build-up and mould — a problem that produces black mould on fresh tiles even after $26,000–$35,000 bathroom renovations, in homes that simply got the heating wrong.

In the South Island and Wellington, the challenge is more straightforwardly thermal: hard frost mornings make tiled bathroom floors punishing without radiant heat beneath the surface. New Zealand has three distinct climate zones, each with its own unique floor heating requirements.

Electric underfloor heating addresses both problems simultaneously. Rather than heating air that rises to the ceiling and leaves floor level cold, radiant heat systems warm the thermal mass of the floor itself, creating an even temperature profile from the ground up — and the operation is completely silent, with no fan hum or thermostat clicking associated with wall-mounted units. For households managing asthma or allergies, the absence of forced air movement is a practical advantage — traditional heaters circulate dust and allergens through the room, whereas radiant heat is static and clean.

What Warmup NZ Installs and How It Works

Warmup NZ has been operating in the New Zealand and Australian market since 1994, and its national distributor network has collectively heated more than 200,000 homes across both countries. The company specialises in electric radiant heating systems designed for installation beneath tiles, wood and laminate, carpet, and polished concrete.

The undertile heating system — the most common choice for bathroom renovations — uses heating wire or mesh that's installed directly before tiling. The undertile element, including its full earth braid and double insulation, measures between 2.2 and 2.4mm thick, adding negligible height to the finished floor. The undertile heaters are 100% water resistant and certified to all appropriate NZ and international safety standards, including for use in wet areas when installed by a qualified specialist. Warmup was also the first company in New Zealand to offer a lifetime warranty on its undertile heating products.

Control runs through a programmable thermostat — most modern systems offer a 7-day schedule, so the floor warms before you get out of bed and turns off automatically once the room reaches temperature. Running costs are more manageable than most homeowners expect: each 1°C the set temperature is lowered during an 8-hour period produces a 2% reduction in running costs — which matters when Auckland electricity is currently running at approximately 41.2 cents per kWh as of May 2026, with Hamilton homeowners paying around 39.8 cents per kWh. A well-insulated, properly scheduled bathroom system typically costs less to run per day than a takeaway coffee.

Warmup also offers undertile heating in easy-to-install DIY kits with comprehensive installation instructions, though all electrical work in New Zealand must be carried out by a licensed electrician under current regulations.

Fitting Underfloor Heating Into Your Renovation Budget

A mid-range bathroom renovation in Auckland currently runs $25,000–$32,000 in 2026, up 5–8% from 2025 due to material and labour inflation, with the national range sitting at $18,000–$26,000. Electric underfloor heating from Warmup NZ can be incorporated into this scope at the planning stage without pushing a standard mid-range project into a higher cost tier — the key is making the decision before tiling begins, not after.

That timing is non-negotiable: heating elements must be embedded within the adhesive layer during the tiling process. They cannot be installed on top of an existing tiled surface. Deciding to add underfloor heating after the tiles are down means pulling them up and starting that phase again, which significantly increases the overall renovation cost. It needs to be on the brief from day one.

For homeowners thinking about long-term value, kitchen and bathroom renovations in NZ are estimated to return 70–85% of their costs at resale — making them among the highest-returning categories for any homeowner not looking to move immediately.

Where to Start

Warmup NZ has 16 distributors operating across the country, from Auckland and Waikato through to Canterbury and the South Island. They can be reached on 0800 WARMUP, and distributors are available to assist with quotes and project design at no obligation.

If there's a bathroom renovation on your list for 2026, get underfloor heating on the checklist before the tiles go down — not after.

[underfloorheatingwarmupaustralia]

Wellington Homes Are Cold, Damp and Draughty — And Kiwis Are Finally Doing Something About It

The Healthy Homes Standards changed the conversation. Radiant floor heating is changing the experience. Here's what's actually happening in Wellington right now.

There's a reason Wellingtonians have a complicated relationship with their homes.

The city is spectacular — harbour views, walkable neighbourhoods, character villas with wooden floorboards and high ceilings that were built when thermal comfort wasn't even a concept architects thought about. And then July arrives. The southerly rolls in off Cook Strait. It's four degrees at 7 AM. And every single morning, the same ritual: layers, heaters, arguments about the heat pump, cold tiles, and a bathroom you'd rather not enter.

Wellington winters are not a surprise. And yet most homes in the region are still heated — if you can call it that — by solutions that were never really designed for the way Wellington weather actually behaves.

That's starting to change. And at Warmup, we're proud to be part of the reason why.

The Problem Is Older Than the Houses

Wellington's housing stock is famously old. Across the inner suburbs — Karori, Kelburn, Island Bay, Brooklyn, Newtown — a large proportion of homes are pre-1970s timber villas.

Beautiful, characterful, and about as thermally efficient as a garden shed.

Cold floors aren't just uncomfortable in these homes. They're a health issue. When floor surfaces stay cold, moisture condenses on them. Condensation leads to dampness. Dampness feeds mould. And mould, as any Wellington renter or homeowner knows, is as much a part of winter here as the wind itself.

The New Zealand government's Healthy Homes Standards — fully enforced across all tenancies by 2025 — were designed to address exactly this. Every rental home in New Zealand must now have a fixed heater capable of maintaining a minimum of 18°C in the main living area. Proper ventilation. Underfloor insulation. Draught stopping.

It's progress. But here's what the standards don't fully capture: the difference between technically warm and genuinely comfortable. A home can pass a Healthy Homes assessment and still have freezing bathroom tiles every morning. A house can have a heat pump in the lounge and a bedroom that never quite loses its winter chill.

That gap — between compliance and real comfort — is exactly where radiant floor heating does its best work.

Why Wellington's Climate Needs a Different Solution

Most heating systems were designed for a generalised cold. Wellington doesn't do generalised cold.

Wellington is the windiest city in the world. Its southerly blasts are legendary, arriving with almost no warning and dropping temperatures by five degrees in the space of an afternoon. Its hills funnel wind into suburbs in ways that make the same street feel like different climate zones at different times of day. Coastal suburbs like Lyall Bay and Seatoun deal with salt-air exposure that degrades outdoor units. Inner-city areas like Te Aro and Mount Victoria deal with dense housing, cold concrete, and poor sun angles.

A standard heat pump placed in a lounge heats the air in the room where it sits. What it doesn't do is warm the floor of a bathroom at the other end of the house. It doesn't stop the cold from rising through the tiles of a kitchen that faces the southerly. It doesn't provide the steady, ambient warmth that a Wellington villa — designed for the 1920s, not the 2020s — desperately needs.

Underfloor heating does.

An electric floor heating system — heating cables or mats installed beneath tiles, timber, or vinyl — heats from the ground up. Warmth radiates evenly across the surface you actually stand on. There are no hot air streams. No cold spots. No part of your home that feels like a different country from the part where the heat pump is working. Just a consistent, low-level warmth that Wellington homes have always needed and rarely had.

"We Didn't Realise What We Were Missing"

One of our Wellington installation partners recently shared a story from a family in Karori — a couple who'd bought a 1950s brick home, done the usual work (heat pump in the lounge, new carpet in the bedrooms), and assumed they'd solved their heating problem.

They hadn't. The bathroom was still ice-cold every morning. The kitchen floor, particularly in the tile zone near the back door where the southerly got in, was unbearable for half the year. And the running costs of leaving the heat pump on all day just to take the edge off were higher than they'd expected.

They called Warmup.

An electric under-tile heating mat went in during a bathroom renovation — the kind of thin, low-profile system that sits directly within the tile adhesive layer and adds almost nothing to floor height. A thermostat controller was programmed to run for ninety minutes before they woke up each morning and another stretch in the evening.

The change, they said, was immediate. Not just physically. Psychologically. Stepping into a warm bathroom on a Wellington winter morning — a bathroom that was actively, reliably warm before you got there, not one you were hoping might have warmed up a little overnight — is a different experience entirely.

"We didn't realise what we were missing," they told the installer. "We thought this was just how Wellington homes were."

That line — I thought this was just how Wellington homes were — is one we hear far too often. It isn't. And it doesn't have to be.

The Thermostat Controller: Small Device, Big Difference

One of the reasons past generations of underfloor heating systems underdelivered was thermostat quality. A basic heating thermostat with no scheduling ability, no floor sensor, and no remote access is a system you're constantly fighting with.

Modern thermostat controllers for radiant floor heating systems are a different thing entirely. A quality smart thermostat learns your schedule, responds to actual floor temperature (not just air temperature), and can be adjusted from your phone when plans change. It lets you pre-warm the bathroom from bed before your alarm goes off. It can be programmed room-by-room, so you're not running heating through the whole house when only the bathroom and kitchen need attention.

For Wellington homeowners who've spent years either over-running heating systems for marginal results, or under-running them and suffering through cold mornings, that level of control is genuinely life-changing. We've heard clients describe a kind of quiet relief — the realisation that they don't have to think about their heating anymore, because it's simply working. Reliably. Silently. Invisibly.

Heated Tiles: The Most Searched, Most Underrated Upgrade in Wellington

If you've been researching home heating improvements in Wellington recently, you'll have noticed that heated tiles and under-tile heating are among the most commonly searched terms for bathroom renovations in the region. And for good reason.

The bathroom is where Wellington's cold is felt most sharply. It's also where a targeted electric underfloor heating system makes its strongest case: the room is small, so the running costs are genuinely low (electric floor heating costs a matter of cents per square metre per hour to operate). The impact is immediate and daily. And unlike a heat pump or wall heater, there are no visible components taking up space — just warm tiles, every morning, exactly when you need them.

For homeowners planning a bathroom renovation in Wellington — particularly those in the older villas of Karori, Kelburn, Brooklyn, Aro Valley, or the Hutt Valley — this is the upgrade that pays back not in energy savings (though those exist) but in quality of daily life. Every.

Single. Morning.

What About Whole-Home Heating?

For new builds and major renovations where full-home radiant floor heating is on the table, hydronic systems — circulating warm water through pipes beneath the floor — are the gold standard in Wellington's climate. Wellington's gas network is unusually well-developed by New Zealand standards, which has historically made hydronic systems connected to gas boilers a popular choice. Air-to-water heat pumps, increasingly efficient and now standard in the most forward-thinking Wellington installations, are the future-proof alternative.

Warmup's range covers both approaches: electric systems for targeted room-by-room comfort, and hydronic-compatible solutions for whole-home installations. The thermostat heating controls work seamlessly across both, giving homeowners the kind of room-byroom precision that a single heat pump simply cannot provide.

Why Warmup, and Why Now

We're not going to pretend there aren't options in the Wellington market. There are.

But when a client calls us in crisis — a thermostat controller that died mid-winter, a system installed by another company three years ago with no local support, a warranty claim that went nowhere — we see the real cost of choosing the wrong system. Not the upfront cost.

The cost of another cold July.

Warmup backs its heating cables and mats with 25-year warranty coverage. Our thermostat controllers carry multi-year guarantees. And when something needs attention, the support is real — not an offshore number that rings out.

For Wellington homeowners, that warranty isn't a nice-to-have. It's the difference between an upgrade you can trust for the next decade and a product you're quietly hoping doesn't let you down.

Wellington's housing deserves better heating. The technology to deliver it exists, it works, and it's more accessible than most people assume.

You don't have to keep starting your mornings on cold floors.Warmup New Zealand supplies electric underfloor heating systems, radiant floor heating, heated tile solutions, and smart thermostat controllers across Wellington, Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt, Porirua, Kāpiti Coast, and beyond. To find out what's right for your home, visit warmup.co.nz.

[underfloorheatingwarmupaustralia]

Your Gas Heater's Days Are Numbered — Here's Why Australians Are Rushing to Heated Floors Instead

The gas ban is real, the bills are rising, and a quiet revolution is warming homes from the ground up. This is what's actually happening on the ground.

Let me paint you a picture.

It's a Tuesday morning in June. Melbourne. Six degrees outside. You drag yourself out of bed, shuffle to the bathroom, and — as you do every single winter morning — brace for the cold tile shock the moment your feet hit the floor.

Now imagine that never happens again.

That's not a sales pitch. That's what thousands of Australian homeowners are discovering right now as they make a switch they probably should have made years ago: ditching their ageing ducted gas heater and moving to a radiant floor heating system with proper thermostat heating controls they can actually trust.

The timing, as it turns out, couldn't be more relevant.

The Gas Era Is Ending — Ready or Not

Here's something a lot of homeowners haven't fully absorbed yet: Australia is actively phasing out residential gas.

Victoria banned new gas connections for most new homes from January 1, 2024. The ACT moved in a similar direction. New South Wales and Queensland are watching the same playbook. From January 2027, new Victorian homes must be all-electric — no exceptions. Other states are following the same trajectory.

This isn't distant policy. It's already reshaping renovation decisions across the country.

What it means practically is that if your ducted gas heater is ageing — and most are, given average system lifespans of 15 to 20 years — replacing it with another gas system is becoming an increasingly short-sighted choice. You'd be investing thousands of dollars in infrastructure that your state government has effectively put a use-by date on.

The smarter conversation, the one more and more Australian homeowners are having right now, is: what do I replace it with?

Why Radiant Floor Heating Is Winning That Conversation

The answer, for a growing number of people, is underfloor heating — specifically electric radiant heat systems paired with smart thermostat controllers.

And the reason isn't just politics or policy. It's physics.

Ducted gas heating works by warming air. That warm air rises — immediately — toward your ceiling, while your feet stay cold and your thermostat keeps cycling. You heat the room from the top down, which is the opposite of how human comfort actually works. Our bodies feel warmest when our feet and lower body are warm. Our heads can handle the cool air.

A radiant floor heating system flips that entirely. The heated floorboards, heated tiles, or mats beneath engineered timber warm the surface you actually stand on. Heat radiates upward, evenly, across the whole room. No cold spots. No hot ceiling. No air being pushed through dusty ducts.

The result is a room that feels warmer at a lower thermostat setting — which means less energy used, and lower bills.

The Smart Thermostat Difference Nobody Talks About Enough

Here's where a lot of homeowners get surprised.

They assume an underfloor heating system is "set and forget" — and with the right heating thermostat, it genuinely is. But the key word there is right.

A quality thermostat controller for your radiant heat system should know your schedule before you do. It should warm your bathroom floor at 6:15 AM so that by 6:30, when you step out of bed, the heated tiles are already at 28°C. It should be adjustable from your phone when you're running late. And when something's off, it should tell you — not make you guess.

Modern smart thermostats for underfloor heating systems do exactly this. They learn. They adapt. And for homeowners who've spent years fighting with basic heating controls or unreliable programmers, the experience of using a genuinely responsive heating thermostat is — frankly — a bit emotional.

We've heard this from client after client. The moment they realise their floor heating system is simply working, quietly, invisibly, exactly as promised, every single morning, something relaxes in them.

That's not a small thing.

"I Wish We'd Done This Five Years Ago"

That line — or some version of it — comes up in conversation with new Warmup clients more often than almost anything else.

Recently, a family in Adelaide who'd replaced an ageing ducted gas system with Warmup electric underfloor heating in their main bathroom and kitchen described the shift this way: the old system was loud, inconsistent, and had started costing them more every winter as gas tariffs climbed. The new underfloor heating system runs on electricity — which their rooftop solar partially covers — and their thermostat controller shows them exactly what it's spending, in real time.

"We went from dreading the winter energy bill," they said, "to actually looking forward to winter."

That's the kind of sentence that makes working in this industry feel worthwhile.

Is Electric Underfloor Heating Actually Affordable to Run?

This is the question that stops most people mid-sentence when they're considering the switch. And it's a fair one.

The honest answer: it depends on the room, the system, and how you use it.

For a standard Australian bathroom — around 4 to 6 square metres — an electric floor warming system beneath heated tiles costs roughly two to five cents per square metre per hour to run. Run it for two hours in the morning and one hour in the evening across a full winter season, and you're looking at a surprisingly modest figure. Many homeowners find it costs less than they were spending on a single portable electric heater — which they're now getting rid of.

For whole-home radiant floor heating in larger properties, hydronic systems paired with a heat pump are the more cost-effective choice at scale. But for room-by-room comfort — bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, under-rug heating in living spaces — electric systems are the clear, practical winner.

And with rooftop solar now in roughly one in three Australian homes, the ability to run your heating thermostat during peak solar generation hours makes the running cost conversation even more compelling.

What to Look for When You Make the Switch

If you're weighing up replacing your ducted gas heating with an underfloor heating system, here are the questions worth asking before you commit:

Warranty: A quality electric underfloor heating system should come with meaningful warranty coverage — not a vague 12-month policy, but multi-year protection on the heating elements themselves. Warmup, for example, backs its cables and mats with 25-year warranty coverage. That's the kind of confidence that only comes from a system built to last.

Thermostat intelligence: Don't settle for a basic timer. A programmable, Wi-Fi enabled thermostat controller that you can manage via app, that shows energy usage in real time, and that can be scheduled room by room — that's the standard worth insisting on.

Floor compatibility: Whether you're laying heated tiles, installing under engineered timber, or exploring under-rug heating for a living area — confirm your system is rated for your specific flooring type. The wrong pairing can affect both performance and warranty.

Installation: For electric systems, a licensed electrician completes the connection. The rest of the installation is often far simpler than people expect — particularly for thin mat systems that sit directly within the tile adhesive layer.

The Bigger Picture

Australia's shift away from gas isn't just a policy story. It's a lifestyle story.

Homeowners who've made the switch to radiant floor heating consistently describe a change that goes beyond degrees Celsius. It's quieter homes. Cleaner air. No allergens being pushed through ducts. No reliance on a gas supply that gets more expensive and more politically complicated every year.

And for those who've paired a radiant heat system with smart heating controls and rooftop solar? The sense of having genuinely future-proofed their home is real and palpable.

The cold tile shock of a Melbourne winter morning is optional. It always was. Australians are just finally realising it — and the underfloor heating industry is doing everything it can to keep up.

We're proud to be part of that.Warmup Australia provides electric underfloor heating systems, radiant floor heating solutions, and smart thermostat controllers for homes across Australia. To explore what's right for your home, visit warmup.com.au.

[wouldyourfavepaychildsupport]

Would Thermostats pay Child Support?

Yes

No

Voting ended onJun 30

[underfloorheatingwarmupaustralia]

"We Finally Got It Right": How Aussie Homeowners Are Ditching Old Floor Heating Systems for Warmup — and Never Looking Back

There's a particular kind of frustration that comes with a thermostat that won't listen to you.

You set your underfloor heating system to warm up at 6:30 AM. You wake up at 6:45. The floor is cold. Again.

That was Sarah and Tom Whitfield's reality for nearly three years in their Mornington Peninsula home. They'd invested in a floor heating system from a mid-tier brand during their renovation, lured in by a low upfront price and vague promises about "smart controls." What they got instead was a thermostat controller that dropped Wi-Fi constantly, a support line that rang out, and a warranty claim process that went nowhere — twice.

"We just assumed underfloor heating was overrated," Sarah told one of our installation partners recently. "Turns out, we'd just chosen the wrong system."

When the Wrong Radiant Heat System Costs More Than Money

Stories like the Whitfields' are more common than most homeowners realise. The Australian market for radiant floor heating has expanded rapidly over the past decade, and with that growth has come a flood of budget systems — many with inadequate warranty coverage, poor thermostat heating accuracy, and customer service that evaporates the moment installation is complete.

The problem isn't with underfloor heating itself. Radiant heat systems, when designed properly, are among the most energy-efficient and comfortable heating solutions available. Whether it's electric heated tiles in a bathroom, radiant floor heating beneath engineered timber, or under-rug heating in a living space — the technology, done right, is genuinely transformative.

The problem is the "done right" part.

What Warmup Clients Are Actually Saying

I'll be honest — when I first joined the Warmup Australia team, I expected to spend most of my time talking about product specs. Wattage. Cable spacing. Thermostat compatibility. The technical side of heated floorboards and radiant heat systems.

What I didn't expect was how often I'd be moved by the conversations our team brings back from the field.

A few weeks ago, one of our installers in Brisbane shared a message from a client — a retired couple in Fig Tree Pocket who had previously used a competitor's floor warming system for nearly five years. They'd replaced it with Warmup's 4iE Smart WiFi Thermostat and a new underfloor heating system during a kitchen and bathroom renovation.

The message read, in part: *"We didn't realise what we'd been putting up with until we switched. The old system felt like guesswork. This one just… knows what we want. And for the first time, when we called with a question, someone actually called back."*

That last line stayed with me. Because that's what it comes down to, isn't it? Not just heated tiles or warm floorboards. It's the trust.

The Warranty Difference Nobody Talks About Enough

One of the most consistent threads in every client switch story we hear is warranty — or rather, the lack of meaningful warranty from previous suppliers.

Warmup backs its underfloor floor heating systems with industry-leading coverage: 25 years on heating cables and mats, and multi-year coverage on thermostat controllers. That's not a marketing line. It's the reason a family in Perth reached out to us after their previous heating carpet solution failed mid-winter and their original supplier had simply closed its doors.

When we hear these stories, the team doesn't celebrate a competitor's failure. We celebrate the fact that someone now has a heating system for their floor that they can rely on — and a warranty that actually means something.

Smart Thermostats That Actually Earn the Word "Smart"

Modern radiant floor heating lives and dies by its thermostat heating controls. A heating thermostat that's clunky, inaccurate, or disconnected from your lifestyle doesn't just frustrate — it wastes energy and money.

The Warmup 4iE is the world's best-selling smart thermostat for underfloor heating systems, and the reason comes down to genuine intelligence: it learns your schedule, adapts to your preferences, and can be controlled remotely via app. For a heated floor beneath tiles, timber, or even a heating carpet layer, precision matters — and this delivers it.

For clients upgrading from manual or basic programmable thermostats, the shift is described almost universally as a revelation. One Sydney client who replaced an old under floor radiant heat setup in their Federation-era home put it this way: *"I spent years thinking underfloor heating just wasn't for old houses. Now I genuinely look forward to getting out of bed in winter."*

Why Being Part of This Team Matters to Me

I'm not going to dress this up in corporate language. The reason I find genuine satisfaction in being part of Warmup Australia is simple: the product solves a real problem, and the company stands behind it.

Heated floorboards shouldn't be a luxury that comes with a side of anxiety. Radiant heat systems should work the first time, the hundredth time, and ten years from now. And when something does go wrong — because occasionally something will — there should be a human being who answers the phone and helps you fix it.

The stories I hear from our team aren't marketing wins. They're people who are genuinely warmer, genuinely more comfortable, and genuinely relieved that they made the switch.

That's the kind of work worth showing up for.

[underfloorheatingwarmupaustralia]

Underfloor Heating for Australian Apartments: What You Need to Know Before You Renovate

Apartment bathroom renovations are one of the most common installation scenarios for underfloor heating in Australia — and one of the most misunderstood. If you own an apartment in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, or any other capital city and you are planning a bathroom renovation, here is what actually applies to your situation.

The short answer on body corporate approval

The question most apartment owners ask first: do I need body corporate permission to install underfloor heating?

In most cases, no — provided you are using an undertile heating system (not a hydronic or water-based system, which would require penetrating the slab), the installation is done within your lot, and you are using a licensed electrician for all electrical connections.

The body corporate's jurisdiction typically covers structural elements, common property, and anything that affects the building's shared systems — plumbing stacks, electrical risers, fire services. An undertile heating mat that sits beneath your bathroom tiles and connects to your apartment's electrical supply through the wall is no more a body corporate matter than replacing your hot water system.

That said, strata schemes vary and the specific provisions of your owners corporation rules should be checked before you begin. In virtually all cases, a licensed electrician's sign-off on the installation is all the documentation you need.

The floor build-up question

Apartment renovations have one constraint that freestanding homes do not: floor height. There is usually a maximum total floor build-up allowed above the original concrete slab — particularly at doorways, where a height difference between rooms creates a trip hazard and may not comply with your strata scheme's requirements for maintaining accessibility.

Undertile heating mats add approximately 3mm to the floor build-up — less than a thick tile adhesive bed. For most apartment bathrooms, this is within tolerance and requires no structural accommodation.

If you are changing tile format — for example, moving from small mosaic tiles to large-format 600x600mm or 900x900mm tiles — the tile adhesive depth may change more than the heating mat does. The total build-up calculation should include the heating mat, tile adhesive, and tile thickness compared to what was previously installed.

A Warmup technical team member or the specifying tiler can confirm the total build-up for your specific tile and system choice before work begins.

The weight question

Concrete slabs in Australian apartment buildings are designed to carry significant dead loads — heavy furniture, full bookshelves, people. A tile floor is already a substantial dead load. A tile floor with an undertile heating mat beneath it adds negligible weight — the heating mat itself is extremely lightweight.

This is not a structural concern in a concrete apartment building. If you are in a heritage building with timber floors, the conversation is different — but the buildings that present weight constraints rarely have tiles in the bathroom to begin with.

What thermostat to use

Apartment bathrooms in Australian cities — particularly in the compact bathroom designs common in apartments built in the 2000s and 2010s — benefit greatly from the DUAL thermostat that manages both the floor heating and a heated towel rail from a single wall unit. Wall space in a compact bathroom is often limited, and replacing two controllers with one keeps the wall looking clean.

The thermostat must be mounted outside the wet area zones as defined by AS/NZS 3000. In a small apartment bathroom, this typically means placing it near the door or on the wall opposite the shower — a licensed electrician will confirm the correct location.

Smart WiFi thermostats are particularly useful in apartments where the occupant may be in and out of the city for work, travelling frequently, or managing the property as an investment. Remote control and scheduling via phone means the system can be turned off entirely when the apartment is empty and set to warm the floor for a scheduled arrival.

Renting your apartment

Underfloor heating adds measurable appeal to a rental property. In Hobart, Canberra, and Melbourne's inner suburbs — where rental competition is high and bathroom quality is a genuine differentiation factor — warm bathroom floors command consistent positive feedback from tenants and can support rental premiums in the right markets.

Warmup's smart thermostat remote access allows a landlord or property manager to monitor the system remotely without access to the tenant's phone. The system can be scheduled to sensible defaults at the start of a tenancy with the tenant given full control to adjust through their own downloaded app.

The bottom line for apartment owners

Undertile heating in an apartment bathroom is a routine installation in Australia. It requires a licensed electrician, a thermostat with a floor sensor, and confirmation that your strata rules do not contain unusual restrictions on internal renovations. In the overwhelming majority of Australian apartments, none of these present any obstacle.

The cost — typically $750 to $1,200 all in for a standard apartment bathroom — is modest relative to what a full bathroom renovation costs and significant relative to what it improves. A bathroom that feels genuinely comfortable at 6am in July is a different thing from one that does not, and in Hobart, Canberra, and Melbourne that difference is experienced every single morning for five or six months of the year.

If you are renovating an apartment bathroom and not including underfloor heating, it is worth asking yourself why not — because the reasons most people give do not actually apply.

[underfloorheatingwarmupaustralia]

Finally Got Underfloor Heating Solutions — Here's What My Family Would Say You Before YOU Buy

Underfloor heating solutions changed how our family experiences winter at home — and after living with the system for a full year, there are things worth sharing that most buying guides won't tell you. This isn't a sponsored review or a technical spec sheet. It's the real story of how one Australian family researched, compared, installed, and ultimately fell in love with radiant floor heating — and which brand earned their trust when it counted.

The Moment It Became a Priority

It started with a freezing July morning in Sydney. The kids refused to get out of bed because the bathroom tiles were, in their words, "like ice." Fair point. Between a wall-mounted heater that took twenty minutes to warm the room and tiles cold enough to make morning routines genuinely unpleasant, something had to change.

The conversation quickly moved from "we should look into this" to proper research mode. What followed was about three weeks of comparing brands, reading forums, getting quotes, and eventually making a decision that the whole family has since endorsed enthusiastically.

The Research Phase: So Many Brands, So Much Confusion

Searching for floor heating Australia online opens a door to an almost overwhelming number of options. Warmup Australia, Cold Buster, Thermogroup, Hotwire, Warmtech, Comfort Heat, Devex — the list goes on. Every brand has a website telling you they're the best option. None of them make it particularly easy to understand what actually differentiates them.

The approach that eventually worked was breaking the decision down into four questions:

What floor types does it work with? (Their bathroom has large-format tiles, their living area has engineered timber.)

Can running costs be controlled intelligently? (Energy bills already felt high enough.)

What happens if something goes wrong in five or ten years?

Who installs it, and are they easy to find?

Those four questions eliminated several brands almost immediately and brought Warmup Australia into clear focus.

Why Warmup Australia Kept Coming to the Top

The Smart Thermostat Changed Everything

One thing that wasn't anticipated going into this process: how much the thermostat would matter. Warmup Australia's smart thermostat range — particularly the 4iE WiFi Thermostat — genuinely impressed during the research phase and has exceeded expectations in daily use.

The ability to set heating schedules means the bathroom floor is already warm when the alarm goes off. The kids step out of bed onto warm tiles. Nobody complains. The morning routine runs smoother. It sounds like a small thing. It isn't.

The app also shows energy consumption in real time, which matters more than expected. Being able to see exactly what the electric underfloor heating costs to run each day — and adjust schedules accordingly — has kept the system from becoming an expensive habit. In practice, running costs have been very manageable.

The Warranty Made the Decision Easier

Warmup Australia offers a 25-year warranty on their heating elements. For a product that gets embedded in a floor and covered in tiles, that kind of long-term backing isn't just reassuring — it's a statement about confidence in the product's quality. No other brand reviewed during the research phase offered anything close to that level of commitment.

It reframed the pricing conversation entirely. Yes, Warmup Australia costs more upfront than Cold Buster or a budget alternative. But a 25-year warranty on the heating element means the system should outlast the tiles above it. That's genuinely long-term value.

The Installer Network Made the Process Easy

Searching for underfloor heating near me led to finding a Warmup Australia certified installer fairly quickly. The installer was familiar with the product range, knew exactly how to handle the underfloor heating installation under large-format tiles, and walked through the process clearly before starting work.

For anyone in Sydney or other major Australian cities, finding a qualified installer through Warmup's network is straightforward. The process from first call to completed installation was smooth, professional, and finished on schedule.

What Was Installed — and How It Performs

Two rooms were done in the first phase: the main bathroom (approximately 9 sqm) and the ensuite (approximately 5 sqm). A third room — the home's main living area — was added six months later after seeing how well the first two performed.

Bathroom (9 sqm): Dual-conductor cable under large-format tiles. Scheduled to warm up from 6:00am on weekday mornings. Consistently reaches target temperature before the first family member is up.

Ensuite (5 sqm): Heated mat system under tiles. Used more casually, run on demand rather than a strict schedule.

Living Area (approx. 22 sqm): Warmup Australia's foil system under engineered timber. This was the most discussed decision — electric in-floor heat under timber requires careful product selection. Warmup's foil system is specifically designed for this application. After one full winter, it's performing exactly as described.

The Costs — Being Honest About the Numbers

Underfloor heating installation cost for their project broke down roughly as follows:

Bathroom (9 sqm): ~$1,100 including labour and thermostat

Ensuite (5 sqm): ~$650 including labour and thermostat

Living area (22 sqm): ~$2,200 including labour and smart thermostat

These are real-world figures from a Sydney installation in 2024. Costs will vary by location, electrician rates, and the specific Warmup Australia products chosen.

Running costs have added an estimated $20–$40 per month to the electricity bill across winter months, with smart scheduling keeping usage tight. That's considered genuinely reasonable for the comfort delivered.

What Would Be Done Differently?

Do it earlier. The only real regret is not committing to radiant floor heating sooner. The research phase felt intimidating, but in hindsight, Warmup Australia's support team and the installer made the whole process accessible.

Start with more rooms. There was a temptation to start small and see how it went. After the first installation, it was clear that expanding was the right call. Having done all three rooms in one project would have saved some coordination time.

The Bottom Line: A Personal Recommendation

For any Australian family weighing up underfloor heating solutions — particularly for bathrooms, kitchens, or living areas — the experience points clearly toward Warmup Australia as the brand most worth choosing.

The product quality is evident from day one. The smart thermostat makes the system genuinely liveable and cost-effective. The 25-year warranty means this isn't a decision that needs to be revisited. And the installer experience — professional, knowledgeable, efficient — reflects well on how Warmup Australia supports the people selling and installing their systems.

Cold Buster and Thermogroup serve real markets, and they're not bad products. But for a family making a meaningful investment in floor heating Australia-wide, the difference in quality, technology, and long-term support is noticeable enough to justify choosing the better option.

Warm floors. Every morning. Worth every cent.

[underfloorheatingwarmupaustralia]

Underfloor Heating vs Ducted Heating in Australia: The Real Cost Comparison

This comparison comes up constantly and is almost always framed incorrectly. Ducted heating and underfloor heating are not competing solutions to the same problem — they are solving different problems, and understanding that changes which one you need.

What ducted heating actually does

Ducted gas or electric heating pushes warm air through ceiling or floor vents into multiple rooms simultaneously. It is whole-home heating — the intent is to bring every room to a liveable temperature quickly.

Done well, it works. Australian homes built since the 1990s with a ducted gas system can go from overnight temperatures to comfortable living temperatures in 20 to 30 minutes on a cold Melbourne morning.

The problem is what happens after the air heats up. Warm air rises. In a standard Australian home with 2.4-metre ceilings, the warmest air is at ceiling height and the coolest air is at floor level — exactly where you and your family spend your time. A thermostat set to 20 degrees and mounted on a wall at 1.2 metres reads 20 degrees while your ankles are sitting in 16-degree air and your floor tiles are at 12 degrees.

Ducted heating is also expensive. A gas ducted system costs $4,000 to $8,000 installed and has annual servicing costs. Electric ducted systems cost more to run than gas equivalents at current electricity tariffs. Ongoing maintenance — filter cleaning, duct inspection, compressor servicing — adds cost that most homeowners underestimate.

What underfloor heating does differently

Radiant floor heating warms the floor surface directly. Heat radiates upward from the floor — which is how radiant heat actually travels — and the temperature gradient in the room is inverted compared to a ducted system. The floor is warm, the air near the floor is warm, and comfort is achieved at a lower air temperature than conventional heating systems require.

This is not a theoretical benefit. Studies from European heating markets — where underfloor heating has been the standard residential specification for 30 years — consistently show that radiant floor heating achieves equivalent perceived warmth at air temperatures 2 to 3 degrees lower than convective heating. Lower air temperature means lower energy use.

Electric radiant floor heating systems also have no ductwork to lose heat through. Ducted systems in Australian homes commonly lose 20 to 30 percent of their heat output through duct leakage and conduction before the warm air reaches the room. An underfloor heating system delivers its heat directly to the surface with no losses in transit.

The real cost comparison

For a four-bedroom home in Melbourne, a ducted gas heating system costs approximately $5,000 to $8,000 installed. Annual gas bills for heating: $600 to $1,200 depending on usage. Annual servicing: $150 to $300. Over 15 years — the typical lifespan before major maintenance or replacement — total cost: $14,000 to $26,000.

For the same home with inslab electric underfloor heating installed during construction: $4,000 to $8,000 installed. Annual electricity running cost for a scheduled system: $200 to $500 depending on floor area and tariff. No annual servicing required. 25-year product guarantee. Over 15 years: $7,000 to $15,000 total.

The numbers overlap at the high end of underfloor and the low end of ducted. But the underfloor system has a 25-year guarantee with minimal ongoing maintenance. The ducted system will likely need compressor replacement, duct cleaning, and potentially full system replacement within that period.

Where ducted heating still wins

Whole-home air conditioning — systems that heat in winter and cool in summer — cannot be replicated by underfloor heating. If you want a single system that manages both heating and cooling, a ducted reverse-cycle system with good zoning remains the most practical solution for most Australian homes.

Underfloor heating solves the floor temperature problem. It does not solve the summer cooling problem. In Queensland, Western Australia, and coastal New South Wales, the cooling load typically dominates the air conditioning conversation. In those climates, the most practical outcome is often a ducted reverse-cycle system for cooling plus targeted underfloor heating for the wet areas where the cold-floor problem is most acute in winter.

What the combination looks like in practice

The most comfortable and cost-effective outcome for most Australian homes in cold-climate cities is not an either/or decision. It is:

Inslab heating (in a new build) or undertile heating (in renovations) for bathrooms, laundry, and kitchen — the rooms with tile floors where the cold-floor problem is felt most acutely. A smart thermostat for each zone.

A reverse-cycle split system in the main living area for cooling in summer and supplementary heating on the coldest days when you want the whole room warm quickly.

The underfloor heating handles the floor temperature problem that the ducted or split system never really solves. The air conditioning handles cooling and emergency heating loads. Each system does what it is best at.