‘We’ve all grown up with radiators
Entrepreneurs Charles and Josephine Pugh’s lease of a property with “uncomfortable and uncontrollable” underfloor heating (UFH) sparked a move away from the world of bespoke furniture in which they had been investing since the late 1970s.
The couple, who founded British retailer Multiyork in 1978, founded Wunda Group in 2006, at the height of the ‘green house revolution’, when barn conversions and self-build were essential.
The Pughs’ home heating problem centered on the subfloor screed (a flat layer of concrete into which pipes are traditionally placed) where the pipe centers are too far apart. Since there was no control, the response to heating was slow and the ground got very hot. The Pughs thought current systems were “slow and outdated.”
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Monmouthshire-based Wunda now designs and supplies energy-saving UFH systems, appealing to the ‘DIY consumer’ at a time when energy bills are rising. The company employs 90 people and announced sales of more than £10 million this year.
The heating company is also a family affair. It is stated that Charles is the CEO and Josephine is the CFO, their daughter Josephine is the general manager, and their grandson Sam Jump is the head of business development.
The business started in 2008 when Wunda reoriented itself as installers sought kits and components after the self-build market collapsed.
In 2010 their former base near Chepstow was in an old chicken farm shed that had been converted into offices. Pugh was still visiting trade shows and came across an American exhibitor’s corrugated aluminum particleboard panel used as a finishing touch in construction.
They pioneered a version with high-compression polystyrene and put a sample in a chicken coop with a heat pump acting internally to extract thermal energy. The closer proximity of the pipes also meant they could be operated at lower temperatures.
Jump, who was working at the warehouse at the time and led an outreach team that had previously offered membership, recalled: “In the winter everyone was walking around in T-shirts and the response rate was unreal, the heat pump was operating at optimum flow temperature with common performance.”
However, their products were initially met with skepticism by installers who were reluctant to test new products. “Where most people thought of UFH as an annoying system, we now have a system that responds quickly and heats up as quickly as radiators, if not faster.”
The booming DIY industry of renovating homes or building extensions rather than moving has helped boost Wunda’s profits.
