ᐅ Full Basement for Hobby and Office – Underfloor Heating, Electric Radiator, or Infrared Heating?

Hello everyone,

What would you do?

I'm currently planning a house with an 88 sqm (947 sq ft) full basement, 2.60 m (8.5 ft) high in the shell stage.

4 rooms
- Hobby room (approx. 30 sqm / 323 sq ft) – will be a home cinema
- Utility room (approx. 12 sqm / 129 sq ft)
- Laundry/housekeeping room (approx. 13 sqm / 140 sq ft)
- Office (approx. 20 sqm / 215 sq ft)
- Storage (approx. 13 sqm / 140 sq ft)

The sizes might vary slightly depending on needs, but the hobby room fits as planned.

Now the question is, how to heat it?

- Underfloor heating – the offer is around 13,500 euros
- Electric radiators – offer about 400 euros each x 3 = 1,200 euros
- Infrared heating – no offer yet, but presumably similar cost to electric radiators (?)

My thoughts:
- The hobby room will likely only be used for a relatively few hours – maybe 10 hours per week maximum.
- The office is planned for occasional work – so not a full home office, especially since I still have space upstairs at the moment… it could also become a gym or something in the future, so rather multifunctional. Definitely not a permanent living space.

So I’m thinking of going with proper underfloor heating – but for that money you can do a lot of electric heating 😉 I don’t know much about this, but isn’t underfloor heating so slow that you’d have to keep it running almost constantly in the basement for just a few hours of use per week? You wouldn’t just decide to watch a film and have it warm immediately, right?

I’m leaning toward the infrared solution. What do you think?

What are your plans for the rest of the house?

Otherwise, any area in the rooms above that you don’t heat in the basement will require more heating, as the basement is within the thermal envelope.

Personally, I would go with underfloor heating. However, I don’t understand why 13,500 is being quoted for the basement. It should actually be cheaper if it’s done as part of an already planned underfloor heating system.

With a rough construction height of 2.60 m (8 ft 6 in), will you still have enough ceiling height for the living space? That would probably only leave around 2.40 m (7 ft 10 in).

Ah, sorry..

The plan is to install underfloor heating, house standard KFW40+.

The costs include the heating system itself, an additional increase for a thicker screed, a hydraulic separator, and the extension of the ventilation system to the basement rooms.

A room height of 2.40 meters (7 ft 10 in) is completely sufficient for me.

SaschaL schrieb:

The costs include the actual heating system, an additional increase including a thicker screed, a hydraulic separator, and the extension of the house ventilation system to the basement rooms.

Then the prices are not comparable anyway, especially if one even includes the ventilation system.

I would also go for underfloor heating.

Preheating for two days to use the home theater slows down spontaneous enjoyment. That’s why we placed the home theater in the open-plan living area. For the rest of the house, we use underfloor heating, which gives you all the options (summer bedroom, hobby room, guest room, gym, etc.).

At a raw construction height of 265 cm (8 ft 8 in) in the basement, we decided against underfloor heating but opted for controlled mechanical ventilation. I will equip one room with infrared panel heaters.

According to the architect, it’s not just the (minor) additional cost of installation; the basement floor also needs to be finished differently (screed etc. instead of trowel-finished concrete).

I’ll stay in this thread for now—maybe I’ll change my mind after all.