How to insulate the floor in a private house

A necessary condition for maintaining a comfortable and cozy atmosphere in a country house is to warm the floor in it; Moreover, this question is of particular importance if there are small children in the family.

In this article we want to acquaint you with how to warm the floor in a private house, depending on the design of the building itself, as well as on the type of the subfloor.

In the most general case, the choice of the method of warming the floor in a house depends on such important factors as:

• the presence or absence of the basement (basement);
• the number of floors in the house;
• the type of material from which the walls of the building are made (wooden, brick or frame type).

House with a basement

In the event that it is planned to equip a basement in a house under construction, it will be better to start the work on floor warming from the basement, which is responsible for most of the heat losses in the whole building.

To this end, the inner and outer walls of the finished foundation are insulated along its entire height up to the basement base. Materials with low thermal conductivity values ​​(extruded polystyrene foam, for example) are best suited for such finishing.

The thickness of the insulation plates is selected taking into account the characteristics of the soil (in particular, the depth of its freezing for the area).

Floor insulation in an old house with a basement can be organized as follows:

• First of all, the old wooden floor is disassembled, which allows you to organize free access to the sex lags.
• Then “cranial” bars are nailed to these lags, on which a continuous reel of boards is mounted below.
• A waterproof film or glassine layer used as waterproofing is placed on top of the reel.
• Plates of the selected insulation material (mineral wool or foam) are placed on top of the waterproofing layer.
• At the next stage of the work, the insulated material is closed with a vapor barrier film, which can be used as “Izospan-B”, for example.
• And in conclusion, a rough floor made of edged boards, OSB boards (DSP) is laid on top of the vapor barrier. A small gap is left between the wall and the floor, which provides ventilation of the underfloor space and subsequently closed with a floor plinth.

To make out in the process, we recommend to look at the relevant photos.

Floor on the ground

In the absence of a basement in the house, warming the floor with your own hands involves the preparation of the so-called puff pie, which plays the role of the foundation, on which insulation plates are subsequently laid. The bottom layer of such a cake is a well-pressed mixture of earth and crushed stone of medium fractions, providing the necessary density of the prepared soil.

After thorough compaction of this mixture, carried out with the help of a special tamper, you can proceed to the preparation of a layer of cement screed made from certain grades of concrete (for this purpose concrete B-7.5 - B-10 is usually used). After the screed has dried, a plastic film is applied to it, which is used as a vapor barrier on the ground cake.

Slabs of the chosen type of insulation are placed on top of the vapor barrier, after which a waterproofing layer is first laid, and then a screed is made, over which a clean floor covering will be installed later.

In this case, such common materials as mineral wool or ordinary foam, characterized by reliability and relatively low price, are most often used as insulation.

Frame house

When preparing the floor in a frame house when choosing a heater, both the thermal insulation characteristics of the material used and its weight should be taken into account. For arranging a layer of insulation in the previously considered “puff cake”, it is recommended to use a fairly light material (penoplex or expanded clay, for example).

The basis for the placement of insulation boards in this case may be a mixture of sawdust and clay with polyethylene film laid on top of it (vapor barrier). A penoplex is laid on the bed prepared in this way between the lags; it is covered from above with a layer of waterproofing material and then laid with a finished floor. Just as in the case of a house with a basement, special attention should be paid to the ventilation of the puff cake and possible temperature distortions of the material used.

That is why even in this case a small gap is left between the walls and the floor, which is subsequently closed with a decorative plinth. To protect against the destruction of wooden parts of the floor (lag and "cranial" bars, in particular), their surfaces are treated with a special anti-fungal drug. Detailed video will help to deal with all the above procedures.

A photo

Video

This video shows how to insulate the floor of a frame floor with mineral wool:

See how to warm the floor from the basement to get rid of the dampness and coldness in the house: