Truflow Screed, Underfloor Heating & the Environment

Thin Screed Concept

When traditional cement screeds are used with underfloor heating they need to be a minimum of 75mm to try to prevent cracking in the floor when the heat is turned on. With this depth of screed, you essentially turn the underfloor heating into storage heating, which takes a long time to heat-up and cool-down and is therefore difficult to control.

Truflow Screed is a pumped thin floor screed system, poured at a minimum of 35mm up to a maximum of 55mm, based on German best practice. As a thin screed system it allows the floor to heat up fast and cool down when needed.

Truflow Screed has a lower thermal mass than traditional concrete screeds and heats quicker. Therefore, it takes less time and energy to get a room to the required temperature. Once the desired temperature is reached, it is far easier to maintain with Truflow Screed. In an era where energy has become expensive, the benefits of using thin floor screeds with underfloor heating are now more important than ever before.

Truflow Screeds thin floor concept is the most advanced floor screed for transferring heat.
It can be used over both water and electric underfloor heating systems and has many advantages over traditional screeds when used with underfloor heating:

• Poured between 35mm and 50mm
• Including the diameter of the underfloor heating pipe
• Thinner screed allows for quicker heat transfer
• Screed fully encapsulates the underfloor heating pipe rather than resting on top of it
• Application process minimises risk of damage to underfloor heating pipes
• Allows for the rapid commissioning of underfloor heating systems
• No control joints in the floor means less thermal bridging than with standard concrete screeds
• Uniform heat distribution
• Underfloor heating can be turned on 7 days after the screed has been poured, speeding up the drying process, to reach 0% moisture content faster than other floor screeds

Energy Efficiency – Building Energy Rating

Materials with a low thermal mass inside a dwelling are favoured in the DEAP Software, which is used to calculate and assess the energy performance of a dwelling, which is in turn used to produce Building Energy Rating (BER) certificates, under new legislation.

The fundamentals of sustainable building and energy efficiency are once the heat is produced within a building envelope, every measure should be taken to retain the heat. So a thin screed, with quick responsiveness in an air-tight, well constructed and insulated dwelling, is always preferable to a thicker screed with slower responsiveness time.