Hi We live in Provence in the south of France. With luck we should be starting a new build in 2010. We have a great deal of sunshine throughout the year (300 days plus)with cold winters....sub zero for a couple of months. What advice could you give me re underfloor heating via solar panels, or is this a bad idea and if so what method would you recommend. Thanks in anticipation.

My advice is always throw the insulation to it, then it doesn't matter how you heat or cool it nearly as much. Do you have a lot of south facing area? You might consider simply using properly overhangs and large south facing windows. I don't have much experience with solar hot water heaters, so I'll leave that to someone else. You could always go ahead and run the pipes for them even if you don't install them at first. This would work much better if your house has a lot of thermal mass, such as a concrete floor or a large masonry fireplace to help carry over your daytime heat gains through the night.

Hi Aardvarcus Thanks for your response. We will be building in the Luberon National ark in Provence so there are many rules and regs.........basically the design must be tradional, so no big windows. Insulation is uppermost in my mind so will build hopefully with straw bale and a thick concrete insulated floor slab. The thing is I think that I read soewhere on this forum that u/floor with solar panels not such a good idea, unfortunately cannot find said response and would reall y like to know why this isn't the way to go. Thanks for your time Wilko