Your floor heating will cost $240 a month. Or $601. You find out in July.
Two quotes can look the same – pipe, a heat pump, a manifold, a price – and one costs more than twice as much to run, every winter, for the life of the house. What decides it is fixed before the slab is poured. This page shows you how to make sure yours is the one that's cheap to run.
$240 and $601 a month through winter are modelled estimates for a 200 m² Perth home. Enter your floor area to see your own two numbers – free, no site visit.
Building a new home? This page is for you.
Existing home → Heat pump, hot water or pool → Architect → Builder →What decides your running cost – and how to check yours.
No reading required: the whole idea of this page in one short video, with sound or without.
Warm water in the floor. The whole room gently warm.
- How it works. A heat pump warms water, and the water runs through pipes buried in the floor. The whole floor becomes one large, gentle radiator. Hydronic just means warm water moving heat through your home.
- Why it feels different. Aircon blows warm air that rises to the ceiling while the lower part of the room stays cold. Floor heating warms the room from the floor up – where you are.
- What you notice. Even, quiet warmth. No blown air, no noise, nothing on the walls.
- What decides the bill. Not the pipe. The engineering around it – which is what the rest of this page is about.
The pipe is the cheap part. Your bill is decided by what the quote doesn't show.
A standard quote covers the physical steps – laying the pipe, connecting the manifold, fitting a heat pump, pressure-testing. What it usually leaves out is the engineering around them: how much heat each room really loses, whether the slab sends that heat up into the room or down into the ground, and where the heat pump can breathe.
You can't see any of that in the quote, or in the finished floor. On the first cold evening both systems feel warm. The difference arrives slowly, in the bill.
| Built cheap | Built right | |
|---|---|---|
| What gets calculated | Little. Pipe laid to fill the floor. | Heat load room by room, system sized to what the house really needs. |
| Under the slab | Often no insulation – in the worst builds, up to 70% of the heat goes down and sideways. | Insulated screed – the heat goes up, into the room. |
| Cold edges and paths | Ignored – these thermal bridges can double or triple the bill. | Found and broken before the pour. |
| Heat pump | Wherever it fits, often boxed in – up to 50% of its efficiency lost. | Sited where it can breathe, planned in early. |
| Running cost | ~$601 a month. Sometimes dearer than the aircon you're leaving. | ~$240 a month. The reason you wanted floor heating. |
| If it underperforms | Your problem. The pipe's in the concrete. | Fixed at the installer's cost, under The Comfort Guarantee. |
| Years later | Rip up the floor or live with it. | Serviced and rebalanced without ever breaking the slab. |
Words on this page. Screed: the layer the heating pipes are buried in, poured over the main slab and under your floor finish. Thermal bridge: a spot where the warm slab touches something cold – the ground, a slab edge, a path – and leaks heat. Heat load: how much heat each room loses on a cold night – the number everything is sized from.
Nobody rips out a floor. They switch it off.
Two families sign near-identical quotes in the same year. The first turns the floor on in May and forgets about it until spring. The second runs it every day of the first winter, weekends of the second, mornings only after that. Some time in August the switch stays off.
A floor heating system that was designed wrong can't be repaired – the pipe is in the concrete and the mistakes are in the structure. So the aircon goes back on, the one they built the house to escape, and they tell their friends for years that floor heating is a money pit.
A tens-of-thousands-of-dollars system, switched off. The most expensive heater nobody uses.
The two families are composites of the calls we take every winter; the figures are our model, not their bills.
Every one of those mistakes is made on paper, before the pour. So you can check for them.
Tick what it includes in writing. The Quote Comparison Decoder shows what's missing and what each gap typically costs a home your size.
Decode my quote →The Slab Pour Deadline Checker shows which heating decisions must be locked in before the concrete goes down – and which are running out of time.
Check my deadlines →The Thermal Risk Scan checks your answers against the seven known failure points: floor type, insulation under the slab, cold edges, heat pump position and more.
Scan my build for risks →Each takes about two minutes. Free, no site visit, no sales call.
Engineered right the first time. Because there is no second time.
A system that runs at the low number isn't luck. It is four jobs done in order – and the running cost holds only if the same people who do the calculation also answer for the install.
- Your heat load, room by room.Worked out from your plans before anything is drawn: how much heat each room loses on a cold July night.
- A design built around it.Slab and screed, insulation, cold edges, pipe loops, heat pump position, controls – The 37-Point Design, 37 checks before a pipe is laid. Phil Pacak signs off every final design.
- Installed to that design – by the same team.Our own crews lay the pipe to the numbers, not near enough to them. Nothing gets lost between a designer and a subcontractor.
- Balanced, tuned and guaranteed.Every loop balanced, the controls set to your slab's measured warm-up time, and the result covered by The Comfort Guarantee.
On in May. Forgotten until spring.
Warm every winter, for as long as you own the home – guaranteed on every part we control.
- Warm, and it stays warm. Every room reaches and holds the temperature we designed it for, through Perth's coldest mornings. If it doesn't, we fix it at our cost.
- Warm without a wrecked floor later. The system can be serviced and rebalanced for decades without a jackhammer touching your slab.
- Warm because the design was right – and if it wasn't, that's on us. If the system underperforms because of our engineering, we correct it at our cost, build consequences included.
- You'll know the running cost before you decide. We model it and show you the number up front, and hold to that model under the conditions we state. We never promise a dollar figure – but we do guarantee the design that keeps it low.
This is a guarantee only the engineer who designed the system can make. No design, no guarantee.
On top of it: a 5-year workmanship warranty on every installation, plus the manufacturers' warranties on the components. Who does the work →
Perth families who've had it running for years.
"It is the best money I have ever spent!! My 'house' has become a 'home' through winter... Radiant heat is amazing. All visitors comment on my home's warmth – I cannot recommend Phil and Euroheat highly enough."
"We are very pleased to fully endorse Phil at Euroheat Australia. Design, construction and installation: done with the highest quality and efficiency. The heating system has been very effective, comfortable, economical and definitely well worth the cost."
"We think the heating system is one of the very best things we did when renovating our house... It was absolutely worth every cent. We have referred friends who were delighted – they often thank us for the recommendation, especially in winter."
A real example · name changedWhat skipping the design cost one Perth owner. George, a builder, was halfway through a riverside home when he fired the heating contractor he'd hired fourteen months earlier – an association member who used all the right words. There was no real design, just coloured lines on a PDF. The bore-field was 41% undersized, and there were seven heat pumps where one or two were needed. Salvaging it added $90,000 to a $429,000 contract, and some of the efficiency loss can never be fixed.
Three steps from here to a warm floor.
Run the calculator →
Start my Roadmap →
What the Roadmap gives you
$1,450 – 100% credited to your build.
- Your home's heat load, room by roomWhat each room needs on the coldest Perth nights the system is designed for – calculated from your plans, not estimated from floor area.
- What your build needs, in writingHeat pump sized and sited, slab and screed detail, cold edges identified – the 37 checks applied to your home. Construction drawings come with the build contract.
- Your running cost, modelled and shownNot a promise – an honest model at current rates, so you know what you're getting into before the slab is poured.
- Your investment range and a held build slotSo your builder can plan around it, and your place in our queue is kept while the rest of the build moves.
Before you go any further.
What does floor heating cost to install?
It depends on the floor area, how the floor is built, the heat pump and the controls – so we don't quote a price per square metre off a website. The Comfort Guarantee Roadmap gives you your investment range from your actual plans, and the $1,450 comes off your build in full.
What will it cost to run?
For a 200 m² Perth home, about $240 a month through winter when it's designed and built right, and about $601 when it isn't – modelled estimates at the current Synergy A1 tariff, not promises. See your own two numbers →
Is it better than reverse-cycle aircon?
It feels different. Aircon heats the air, which rises to the ceiling. Floor heating warms you from the floor up, with no blown air and no noise. Built right, it is comfortable to run all winter; built wrong, it can cost more to run than the aircon – which is why the design matters more than the brand of pipe.
Can I have it in the home I already live in?
Usually not the practical way: it means lifting the floors and laying a new screed, which is worth it in a major renovation and rarely otherwise. For most existing homes, European radiators give the same quiet, even, warm-water heat – from the walls instead of the floor. Heating an existing home →
When do I need to decide?
Before your slab is poured. Once the concrete is down, the insulation, the pipe layout and the cold edges are fixed for the life of the house. The earlier the design is done, the more of it you can still choose. Check your pour-date deadlines →
What if it doesn't keep us warm?
Under The Comfort Guarantee, every room reaches and holds the temperature we designed it for, through Perth's coldest mornings – or we fix it at our cost. Read the guarantee →
More answers: Questions answered → Videos →
You can still choose which of the two houses you get.
Everything that decides your running cost is still on paper. The Comfort Guarantee Roadmap puts your home on the right side of the gap before the slab is poured – and the $1,450 is 100% credited to your build.
Not ready yet? Get the free guide to the 5 floor heating mistakes →