While I’ve been off causing damage to our credit card, Adam has been hard at work installing heated floors in the guest bathroom. The installation didn’t seem too complicated, but most certainly required a lot of planning.

Here’s the gist of how it works:

• You can either buy the floor heating in a mat or cable format. We opted for cable, which allowed us to only wire the walkable (that’s not a word, is it?) areas of the bathroom. You also need to get the thermostat for the heated floors. We bought the cable and thermostat at Home Depot for just over $400 (True Comfort brand, 120-V 33-41 sq ft coverage).

• Wires get installed on top of the plywood, using spacers and a hot glue gun. The wires cannot touch or overlap, so you have to plan the wiring “route” and placement very carefully.

• Once the wires are placed and connected (and tested!), self-leveling cement is poured onto the entire floor, enough to cover the wires.  We thought we’d only need 2 bags of cement, but no.  So we had to go out and buy another 2 bags.  One thing to note – if you pour a second batch of cement within 24hrs of the first layer, it’s all good, but beyond 24hrs, you need to seal the cement first (which is what happened to us).

• I’m totally oversimplifying the process here, so if you decide to do this yourself, please read the instructions very carefully .  We followed this youtube video before and during the install to make sure we  (ahem…I mean Adam) didn’t miss any steps.