Commercial Installation of Snow Melt System for Heated Driveway

Hello, and welcome to today's video today, we're going to actually be installing snow melting product in the driveway of the Jane Society just outside of Chicago. Today, we're gonna to be taking up part of the old asphalt, then later we will be laying heating cable or heating products on top of what's left. And then later, pay over the top of those. We'll show you what happens in each step. So make sure you stay tuned.

Alright. The first step in installing heat is to actually get the old surface out of the way. So right now, we're skimming off the top layer of this surface to do some more installing a little bit later. So stay tuned.

Alright. So the next step, now that we have the old payment out of the way, to now break what's left with the stone and compact gravel, make sure it's nice and flat to receive the first binder of asphalt. Another thing you have to do when you're ready to put the, heating product down is you have to get the electricity to it too. Right? Behind us, you can see where they're digging trench for the conduit that's going to be carrying the power to the location.

Alright. We're wrapping up our first day, and we have removed all the old asphalt and we have graded the surface, and we are ready for the asphalt truck to arrive first thing tomorrow morning. So stick around.

Alright. We're here at the beginning of day number two, and we're grading out the surface. We're getting ready to tap it down, running rollers over the top of it, getting it ready for the first layer of asphalt.

Alright. Now that we have the surface created and compacted, it's time for the binder coat to go down. We've got one run we've got a few more to go.

Alright. Got our binder coat down. We've laid our first two runs of the cable product down on the binder coat, and now we're using a high boy to drop the fresh asphalt onto the top and then shovel it on by hand. Then later, we'll see the roller come down and compact it.

Alright. You can see now we've covered the cables, but we're still not up to the line of the curve. That's because after we get this layer done, we're then going to come in with the finishing layer and get it to the height of this piece of concrete and that curve.

Alright. We've wrapped up day number two. We have the heating product embedded in this layer of asphalt. All that's left is to get the top layer complete, and then we are all done. And we'll show the electric hook up then.

Alright. So now it's come to the point where we're going to be putting the cold leads into the junction boxes. So they're assembling the junction boxes now, and they'll replacing them in the dirt on the other side of the curb. That way, all these connections can be made in the box and the power from the PowerPoint up closer is going to be run to this box, and that's where the connections are made.

Alright. Now we're ready to talk about the sensor. There's actually two sensors in this particular installation. One is an over temperature sensor, which senses the temperature of the slab or the asphalt pad, and it will go into this assembly and go into a capped end of a rigid metal conduit.

So this will eventually rest right here, and it will rest in between two of the heating wires. Now, we've recessed this because it's also going to house the temperature and snow or precipitation sensor, which is right here. So what they're going to do is they're going to come with the asphalt. They're going to put the asphalt exactly this height, and then get that surface finished.

After that, we'll come in, remove this plastic cap put this sensor into the box, and both sensors will get routed through the conduit over to a junction box.

Okay. We're getting ready for the papers to arrive to do the top coat. So I've done a fish tape here to make sure that when we are ready and after the asphalt has been installed up to this level that I can then go ahead and pull the wires for both sensors out through this conduit. So that's why we're here, and we're just waiting for that asphalt to be done, and then we'll be able to install the sensor.

Alright. It's time to talk about our sensor now that it's in the finished asphalt.

We can see that we have it at the exact height of the asphalt. So let's go ahead and take a look at what's inside here.

Alright. We've used this cap to cover the top of the sensor housing while it was being in installed. And the reason why this is such a good idea is because this is the exact same thickness as the sensor itself. So we are going to have, to make sure once the sensor is in place that we can go ahead and get it leveled using these screw holes that are in the top of the sensor.

The box inside actually moves up and down, and that's what allows you to get it flush with the asphalt surface. So now that we are to install the sensor, we need to tie it to a fish tape. And the fish tape has already been in here. We're going to tie the sensor wire to send it back to the junction box.

So we actually are going to have two sensors in here, one for the asphalt sensor, which is going to tell when the temperature gets below thirty eight degrees or whatever the set point is, and if there's precipitation present. There is also going to be a sensor put in a little further as we've already seen in the video, and it's the over temperature sensor. It's the sensor that will tell the controller when the five gets a certain temperature. And if we want it to shut off like at sixty or fifty or seventy degrees, whatever that number is, that over ten temperature sensor is always talking to the controller.

Alright. We have used our fish tank. We have gotten our cable out of our junction box. You notice there are two junction boxes here, one for the high voltage, one for the low voltage, You never run low voltage in the same box as high voltage.

So we're going to continue to pull the cable out until we get the sensor ready to set. Okay. We have two sensors One's the over temperature sensor and one is the pavement sensor. The over temperature sensor is going in a piece of conduit and it's going to be out here between two of the heating wires.

I'm going to go ahead and put that in there right now.

Alright. So these threaded set screws actually go over the adjustment screws. These adjustments screws allow the box to be brought up or set down to make sure you have a flat surface. So these set screws are going to allow you to get contact with these height adjusting screws.

But right now, we're gonna go ahead and get this put and make sure that it's flush. Alright. Now what I've gotta do is I've gotta put some grease in here for the air in has been risen up to make it flush. So I'm gonna fill that with grease, then I'm also going to go around the perimeter and fill that with grease. I'm also going to put grease the screw holes, all that to keep the water from getting in.

Also, this product, you knead it like the dough, and you fill the space with this, and that helps keep the water out also.

Alright. The mechanical part has been completed got the sensor installed. We've got the, over temperature sensor installed. We have the heating mats installed, and the driveway is completely redone. We'll be talking about the electrical hookups later, so stick around.

Now we can see where the power comes from and where it needs to get to. So when you're doing the wiring for this situation, need to make sure that you figure the distance from this spot to the spot where the power is coming in. You'll need to figure your voltage drop there. So you gotta figure from there to here, this is where we're going to make our high power connection, and also where our low voltage connections are.

So you see we have two box We have two individual conduits going back to that hut. One for low voltage, one for high voltage. So we're going to make our extension wire connection here. So the wire from the center actually lands in this box.

We're going to supply the wire to get from that hut over to here. Make sure you follow the instructions on what size wire to use at what distance. Also, make sure you remember to do your voltage drop cow calations for the high voltage wire feed.

Here we can see our breaker panels for this job and this is a very large installation. There are thirty five breakers installed. And if you take a quick, look at them, you see that they are GFE breakers or your local name maybe GFPE ground fault equipment protection or ground fault protection for equipment. However, you want to word it. They're thirty milliamp trip. They're a special circuit breaker and any snow melting job that is being done outdoors will require this type of circuit breaker.

Okay. Here we can see the control panel. The control panel is going to be wired up. It's what turns the entire system on or off.

We are going to be wiring the low voltage connections here into the top. So we have in this installation, we a over temperature sensor, which is installed into the asphalt, and it's going to be going in here. We also have an aerial sensor up stairs above here, which is, made to, see what the temperature is. And also if it's raining or snowing or not, and so that wire is coming through this conduit down here.

And then we will also have another wire coming from the paper sensor, which is installed out in the pavement, and it will be connecting in here also. So all of your connections here at the top will be your low voltage connections, and all of your high power or line voltage connections will be done in here. Now this controller is simply going to be turning on the relay panels, which are over here. So this doesn't have to switch very much electricity at all.

All it's doing is it is taking a signal from the sensors, which comes in here, and then it's turning on or off a one twenty feed over to the relay panels, and that will turn them all on at the same time. And when it turns off the one twenty volts, it'll turn them all off at the same time. So that's what your controller does here. We have different ways of setting the high temperature limit, which is the temperature where the system turn off automatically.

And also we have the hold on timer, which is keeps the system on after it stops snowing.

It keeps it on for a certain number of hours. And on this one, it's either from zero to ten. And if we look here, we can always put these knobs about halfway. That's always a place to start.

You may need to do them a little longer. You may need to do them a little shorter, but it's always a good idea to start with the controls right here in the middle. Okay. Here we can see the relay panels.

It's a wall of relay panels, and there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight relay panels here. A, a pair of relays for each one of those products out installed in the driveway. So each one of these is a twelve relay. The controller, Ashley sends a one twenty volt signal to each one these.

They're all wired together. And when the controller turns them on, they will all come on. And when the controller turns them off, they will all turn off. And that's simply done by a one twenty volt connection that comes into each one of these relay panels.

When the relay panel is fed, one hundred and twenty volts, every single one of these relays will turn on. So that's how the relays are told to switch on, and that's how they are told to switch off.

That wraps up our installation, and this roadway can now stay snow and ice free. For more information, visit us at w w w dot warmly yours dot com. Thanks for watching.