Leak-free and energy-saving
Safety firstFirst of all, it is important to understand that it is not worth saving on those things that, firstly, affect safety, and secondly, in the event of a breakdown, they can entail much higher costs. This category includes a system of protection against water leakage. Often, when buying an apartment, with ready-made plumbing or carrying out repairs in an old house, people have no idea how well the plumbing work has been done. Moreover, even if you carried out these works on your own or together with your construction team, there is always a risk of leaks.
A flood protection system will prevent much more damage in case of flooding. At a minimum, it will help to quickly eliminate the accident and not spoil the interior of your bathroom, but as a maximum, it will save the repair of nearby rooms and not flood the neighbors from below.
How does the system work? In places where water can get in the first place (under the sink, toilet bowl, bathroom), leakage sensors are installed. Ball valves are mounted on pipes. When water hits the sensor, a signal is sent to the module, after which the water supply is automatically shut off in a few seconds. The notification will also be sent to your smartphone, after which you will be able to respond to the current situation as quickly as possible.
If you or your upstairs neighbors have ever had leaking pipes, you know how much trouble this can cause. To eliminate the consequences of a leak, you will have to spend not only time and money, but also nerves. The cost of your repair and apartment below is disproportionately higher than the cost of equipment and installation of a leakage protection system. It can be bought from 16 thousand rubles, and if it works even once, the savings on forced repairs and worries are obvious. Especially if you live on a high floor in an apartment building.
Also, with a leakage protection system, you can save a lot if the apartment has two risers in different bathrooms (now this is exactly the case in most new apartments). You can install leak protection system taps in the lobby at the water distribution point - you only need two taps, not four. This will save more than 10 thousand rubles.
Another product that is still not worth saving on if you want to install it is underfloor heating. Compared to the cost of a full-fledged repair, the underfloor heating system will be inexpensive, and the pleasure and comfort from it are many times greater. If you buy the cheapest underfloor heating system, then in a couple of years it may fail or work intermittently, and it is already too expensive to change the entire system, since this will have to dismantle the entire floor again and change the electrics.
There is an opinion that cheap underfloor heating is much worse than expensive ones. Actually this is not true. Let's take a look at the main differences between them.
The main difference between expensive models is the use of materials that are more difficult to process, which make it possible to achieve greater thermal resistance of the cable. Simply put, expensive underfloor heating allows you to heat the cable to a higher temperature. This allows you to get a large heating output per square meter of area. This, of course, is good, but quite often it is simply redundant.
To solve most of the problems of heating indoors in apartment buildings, any warm floors are sufficient. With proper installation, all interior spaces, namely bathrooms, kitchens, corridors, living rooms, can be heated with warm floors with a power of 130-150 W / m2. The temperature recommended by SanPiN is perfectly achieved with their help. When using a floor covering in the form of a laminate or quartz vinyl tile, heating over 28 degrees is not allowed at all.
Indeed, there are situations when the use of a more expensive, and therefore more powerful floor is not only justified, but simply necessary. This is the heating of the premises of the first floors, balconies and loggias or the use of underfloor heating as the main source of heat in non-residential premises. Then your option is an expensive powerful cable with maximum temperature resistance.
If there is a need to save money, you can use not mats (a cable laid out on a grid), but a separate cable. Its price does not include the price of the mesh and laying work. Consequently, in terms of a square meter of power, its cost will be lower.
How to choose a thermostat
In the case of a warm floor, you can save on a thermostat by buying a programmable one instead of a cheap mechanical one - at the current price of electricity, it will pay off in less than a year, which is 2-3 thousand rubles.
When choosing a thermostat, it is necessary to pay attention not so much to its price as to its functionality. It may happen that the difference in the price of the thermostat will be more than offset by the convenience of its use and savings on electricity costs already in the first heating season.
The simplest adjustment devices allow you to only roughly set the temperature that will be maintained. It often happens that it is redundant. While more expensive models will allow you to set the temperature to the nearest degree. This will allow not to overheat the floor covering, if there is such a task, and it is always optimal to warm up the floor.
The most expensive wi-fi controlled thermostats help make it easier to set up program modes, allow you to monitor electricity consumption, but they do not save compared to other programmable thermostats.
In addition, we can say that all engineering systems that may require repair or replacement: electrical, heating, ventilation, etc., must be installed so that they have free access to tools. It is best to consider several options, choose the best among them, adapt it to personal conditions. Finding the best solution takes time, but it will pay off in the long run in ease of use and safety.
