A lot of the newer houses here went up with wet underfloor on the ground floor as standard. The pipe is usually fine. What is often wrong is the control: one thermostat in the hall running the whole manifold, so the south-facing kitchen with the bifolds and the north-facing snug are heated as if they were the same room. Splitting that into real zones — a loop and a stat per room — costs a fraction of a new system and changes how the house feels.
Where we are fitting new, it is normally an extension, and an extension is the best possible underfloor job. You have the depth for a proper screeded system: insulation down, pipe clipped to it, 65 to 75mm of screed over the top. Full thermal mass, best output, lowest flow temperature. There is no reason to use a low-profile overlay when you are pouring a new floor anyway.
The real prize here is the heat pump pairing. Underfloor runs at about 35 degrees, and 35 is where an air source heat pump is at its most efficient. Given how much of Hale Barns already has the floor loops in and the plot space for an outdoor unit, this is genuinely the best place in Trafford to put the two together — the expensive half of the job is already under the floor.
