EPS - Sufficiently insulating?

[spocks_beard]

Hello

Thoughts on the upcoming bathroom renovation:

We currently have a crawl space and a concrete slab in the bathroom that is uninsulated.
I thought to make it easy for myself by keeping the slab but applying 50mm EPS cement, replacing the drains, and then floating or embedding heating coils/pipes.

The question is whether this provides sufficient insulation downwards or if I will be wasting energy?

The alternative is to break up the entire slab and rebuild it with wood or concrete. But that feels like an unnecessarily large job.

Grateful for opinions.

 

[spocks_beard]

No one who knows?

 

[Faidros]

In this thread, the insulation capability of EPS-cement was discussed:

http://www.byggahus.se/forum/byggma...frigolitcement-eps-till-oisolerad-platta.html

 

[Mats]

I have the impression that you should have at least 10-15 cm of insulation under floor heating, and it seems as if you should count double if you lay EPS, so unfortunately that would be 20-30 cm of EPS.

 

[spocks_beard]

Hmm, then using eps as a shortcut is not a good idea.

There might be an opportunity to attach ground boards of insulation from underneath on the existing slab.
But that remains to be seen, I'll cut an opening in the hallway floor first so
there's no need to crawl from the other end of the house first.

We'll see then

 

[synpunkter]

EPS has approximately the same insulation value as 50% of regular foam, with the difference that you avoid thermal bridges with EPS (no joints between sheets, etc.). In any case, 5 cm of EPS is equivalent to about 2.5 cm of foam. It's not much, possibly better than nothing though.