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The regulation for this was followed and approved by the chimney sweep.
I also wondered whether it is allowed to install wooden baseboards around the fireplace. Apparently, that is not a problem either.

For our panoramic fireplace, we haven’t had any protection on our wooden floor for 2 years, and so far we haven’t had a single burn mark. I’m not familiar with any sparks flying; maybe it depends on the type of wood? During the inspection, we only had to confirm that a protective layer would be installed later, but after that, no one asked again. The chimney sweep who comes for cleaning doesn’t seem to mind.

kati1337 schrieb:

A supply temperature of 35° is planned.
I didn’t think it looked uneven on site. The photo was taken with a phone camera through a window, from one side of an entire 11m (36 feet) long room. So I don’t think it’s fully representative.
I can’t say whether they are spaced too far apart, I’m not the heating installer. But I have thermostats on the wall where I can adjust the temperature, and I know what the builder assured me. Honestly, I can’t imagine that with almost 400 houses per year, nearly all with underfloor heating, they would work with a subcontractor who does a poor job, and then no homeowners would complain.

I’d like to pick this up briefly again. Not because I want to claim something was done wrong or anything like that. Whether you follow advice or tips is your choice, but maybe some people reading this are still in the planning phase and would appreciate thinking about these things in advance.

1. Don’t be mistaken about "thermostats on the wall." You can’t just turn the temperature higher here. Your heating system is set to certain temperatures and delivers a fixed heat output. The "thermostat on the wall" is the room temperature control. It ensures that once the temperature you set is reached, it shuts down the underfloor heating in that room. In most cases that makes little sense, but that’s another topic.

2. The heating installer will do it right.
Many people think this, but the internet is full of users having problems. Why is that? You can debate it, but in my opinion a major part of it is that heating installers are not refrigeration specialists (a heat pump is basically a refrigerator working in reverse) — they are the “I-make-fire” type. They work with gas burners and oil boilers. They are used to high temperatures and don’t always know how to handle lower temperatures. That’s why high supply temperatures and buffer tanks are often seen as necessary or even useful. But heat pumps work differently. They perform best at low supply temperatures. Most heating installers rely heavily on the specifications and planning from manufacturers — who naturally have no problem selling bigger heat pump models or large buffer tanks. The result? A standard design with a 35°C (95°F) supply temperature that, in my view, is outdated. Then either the installer installs an oversized buffer as a safety margin and you get comfortably warm, but the electricity meter runs fast, or you hear complaints from the family that it’s too cold in the bathroom and you have to manually increase the heating.

In the best case, none of this applies, but you can’t rely on it. Especially when heating with a heat pump, I wouldn’t rely solely on a good name or reputation.

3. They will do it right.

In my opinion, this is the most dangerous phrase when building a house. You should actively check what kind of home is being delivered to you. Either you educate yourself about many topics, at least enough to ask some “dumb questions,” or if you don’t want to do that (which is totally fine), then you should definitely have someone to take care of it for you — an architect, expert, etc.
Reputation aside, no company has everything under control all the time. It may not be intentional, but so many things can go wrong and be botched on a building site. The worst part is that many of these issues cannot be fixed afterwards — not without disproportionate effort.

Everyone can take their own approach to building a house, and no one has to follow recommendations from this forum, but many of them are not unfounded.
And of course, you can’t become a civil engineer and supervise everything down to the smallest detail — which I strongly advise against — but what I do discourage is the attitude “I have a building company with a good reputation, so it will be fine.”

Sorry, this actually isn’t directly related to the house photos, but it came up from one of the pictures shared here and I wanted to offer it as a sincere recommendation.

The intention is welcome, and I appreciate the input, but I have already mentioned several times that this is not a standard design with a 35°C (95°F) supply temperature. I have also attached the relevant contractual documents.

Aside from that, in the worst case, we will suffer efficiency loss, not insufficient heating, since our system can also handle higher supply temperatures. I could only criticize it if it wasn’t sufficiently warm with a 35°C (95°F) supply temperature, as we pay the contractors specifically to design it accordingly.

Würfel* schrieb:

We haven’t had any protection on our hardwood floor under our panoramic fireplace for two years and haven’t had a single burn mark so far. I’m not familiar with sparks flying around—maybe it depends on the type of wood? During the inspection, we only had to confirm that a protective barrier would be installed, and nobody ever followed up after that. The chimney sweep who comes for cleaning doesn’t seem to care.

That’s how I originally wanted to do it as well. But unfortunately, our chimney sweep doesn’t agree with that.

Then we were really lucky after all