1988 corner house SpeeTherm15

In what type of home did you install your heating system?
A corner house in a typical 1990s neighbourhood, built in 1988.

How many people are in your household?
Four (two adults, two teenagers) and two cats.

How did you come across WARP Systems?
Through the municipal energy coach of Katwijk, who gave us a brochure after an interesting and informative conversation.

Why did you choose a low-temperature hydronic heating and cooling system?
We were looking for underfloor heating that wouldn’t be cast into concrete.
Our reasons were threefold:
1. We wanted a system you can regulate like a radiator-based central-heating setup—lower it at night and adjust it on demand. With traditional concrete-embedded underfloor heating, you can’t do that; it runs at a constant, slow-to-adjust temperature. At today’s high energy prices, that’s expensive and unsustainable.
2. Traditional underfloor heating works as a heat buffer: you warm the concrete layer and the buffer heats the house. We’ve heard from many experienced users that this isn’t comfortable. In the Netherlands temperatures vary significantly day to day. If it’s warm outside, you still have a warm concrete buffer releasing heat. It doubles the heat indoors. In short, it’s hard to regulate.
3. We want to prepare for the future with a low-temperature system that can both heat and cool, so if we install a heat pump or alternative later, we’re ready.

Do you think sustainability is important? Why or why not?
Sustainability is extremely important. We share our planet with many people and must protect it for our children and grandchildren. Climate change is evident, earthquakes, droughts, floods, fires, etc. We must do our part by being more sustainable!

Do you have specific sustainability goals for the future?
Unfortunately our budget is limited, but we’d love solar panels, a heat pump to optimize our WARP system, a hydrobag, new window frames and glazing, and roof insulation.

What convinced you to choose self-installation?
We’re both handy and our children are too, so we turned this renovation house into a family project. We stripped everything back to the concrete and rebuilt it ourselves. We wanted to show our children that nothing is impossible and that teamwork achieves great results. Your system-choice test, clear website, manuals and informative videos convinced us to tackle it ourselves. Thank you, it was great fun!

How did you experience the installation overall?
Thanks to the well-designed layout plan (many thanks again!!), clear manual and videos, everything went smoothly. Even our daughter independently cut frames and laid the pipe. Some tools we already had; others we improvised, like the pipe-rolling tool.

Which aspects were easier than expected?
Cutting the aluminum profiles was quick and easy. Placing the pipes into the profiles was simple once you rolled them neatly in the right direction. Installing the Heat-Foil was also very easy and quick.

Which aspects required extra effort?
1. Avoiding dents in the EPS and aluminum panels when walking or kneeling was a constant challenge. We eventually used wooden walk-boards and large cushions under our knees. That helped but was more laborious than expected.
2. Routing the pipe-profile into the EPS panels took much longer than expected. We often had to wait for the tool to cool before continuing.
3. In some areas too many pipe bends converged, and the upward spring force lifted both the pipe and the panel. We solved this by weighting those spots with heavy objects, which we removed when laying the final floor.

Did you use the installation tools and instruction videos? If so, how helpful were they?
We used tools we already owned or borrowed. We watched the videos repeatedly, and they were a huge help in executing the installation expertly ourselves!