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There are two problems with underfloor heating that need some consideration. The heating itself is not the issue, as it were, but:

- Rooms heated in this way can easily dry out in the winter, since the only quick way to cooling such a room if need be is to open the window. This lets out the warm air in the room and brings in dry and cold air. When I lived in an apartment with underfloor heating I often used this method when the weather changed, for cooling the apartment before the night, etc. My piano didn't like it.

- When leaving the apartment for extended periods (for holidays, professional travel, etc.) I always found it difficult to adjust temperature in a good way.

So I guess it can work, but you need some care in getting it right, especially with room humidity.

Thank you both Rick and maurus for your help and advice.

Rick, I was hoping to put a thick rug or something under the piano anyway as the room at the moment is covered with wood flooring and is quite bare of furniture (and curtains until the new ones arrive). Therefore, I assume the sound will be bouncing all over the place if I don't put some kind of rug underneath the piano.



I haven't bought a piano yet. But I'm definitely onto it all. I'm hoping to go and see and try out the C3X I mentioned in my original post next weekend. I'll see what else the dealer has in as well at the time that might interest me. Apart from that, I plan on taking a trip down to Chris Venables as well as I feel that could be highly beneficial.

I'd think that it would be a greater issue with an upright, since one end of the sound board is significantly closer to the heat source. You have the good fortune to be getting a grand, so the board is parallel to the floor and removed by the length of the legs.

We have floor heating in our showroom and never had an issue. In fact they are a blessing. Floor rugs may or may not be important to use but unless cranked up to full blast, modern floor heatings are just fine.

As laminates or wood floors are commonly used, area rugs etc may be of some benefit but this having more to do more with tone and acoustics.

If going to Chris Venebales,let us know how the piano are made under his own name. Wouldn't be surprised if are pretty nice.

Norbert

No doubt about that - a showroom is something quite different from a living apartment. I guess if you have a good temperature and humidity control in a dedicated room a floor heating will do very fine for musical instruments indeed. I know one building with a separate, climate controlled music room which also uses a floor heating very efficiently. (Even if the Steinway in that room is no longer in its best shape.)

[quote=Norbert}

If going to Chris Venebales,let us know how the piano are made under his own name. Wouldn't be surprised if are pretty nice.

Norbert

[/quote]

I'd be so interested to hear a Cunningham side by side with a Venables and or any of the other variants based on Hailun contract built corpora.

Kurt



Kurt

That's all quite promising to hear. Hopefully the piano will be okay in the room with underfloor heating. Even in the winter we tend not really to crack the underfloor heating in that room up because we have a log burning stove - fear not! That's quite a distance from where the piano will sit!

If I go down to Chris Venables, I'll definitely try out his Venables & Son pianos. I agree with Norbert - I too, wouldn't be surprised if they were set up well and played pretty nice. From what I've read, he spends a lot of time prepping pianos to their optimum, so the Venables & Son pianos are probably quite nice to play. Anyway, we shall see!

UPDATE: For those of you interested in my search and in particular the C3X I've seen, I have some news.

The dealer said he would email me when the piano arrived (was meant to be on Thursday) but alas, I heard nothing. So I gave them a call this morning to see what was going on. Turns out they've had a problem acquiring the piano.

They were meant to be selling it on behalf of a client, but said client is now thinking he wants to sell the piano privately and has a potential buyer lined up apparently. However, I believe the chap on the phone said something about them already having a contract with the client that they would sell it on his behalf.

Basically, they're not sure what's going on and they're not even sure that they're going to be able to get the piano. It'll be sad because the C3X is a fantastic piano and at that price, there's not going to be another one on the market soon...