We get asked all the time “can you do a better price I can buy it from here for ex amount of £’s” – well our reply is usually go and buy it, were not in the market to be the cheapest supplier. But what we will say is “you get what you pay for”.
We was recently asked to install another manufactures products by a customer the other day, not wanting to turn work down we said “ok I’ll come and take a look”, when I arrived and had a look i noticed who the manufacture was and had a little chuckle to myself. Its not until you see what else is on the market that you can appreciate what the difference in quality is, these cable mats that this customer had came wrapped in cling film, had a hand written label on them detailing the wattage and resistance of the cable, no CE or any approval symbol of any type printed on it, the earth protection was a single strand wire running through the centre of the cable, very much like normal twin and earth wiring in domestic property’s, and the cables were only spaced apart by three lines of thin tape, it looked like it had multi strand heating core with a plastic outer sheathing.
A good quality cable mat is almost the opposite of the above, most good quality mats, come supplied on a cardboard tube to protect the shape, it will have a proper sticker on the wrapping to indicate the product code, serial number manufacturing batch number, and most likely a bar code, this means that in a very rare event of that cable being faulty it can be traced and so can the rest of that batch, most cables have the resistance and wattage printed onto the cable, most of them have a tinned copper earth braid that wraps around the heating elements all the way through the cable, this is the best method because should anything pierce the cable, it will have to penetrate the earth braid first and therefore any electric will not escape and electrocute you, as appose the above cable were it would be possible to pierce the cable and hit the live heating core without catching the earth wire running through the centre, good cable mats also use double sided tape to hold the heating wire on to a nylon mesh to make the installation a lot easier, a lot of underfloor heating mats use Teflon as the insulation, this is what is used in aircraft wiring making it one of the most reliable forms of insulation.
After reading the above you have to ask yourself is cheap underfloor heating worth it, I certainly wouldn’t install a cheap mat just because I might be saving £20, what’s the point! You will only end up doing the job twice – which in the long run will cost you more.
