Everything You Need to Know: Heated Floors in Bathrooms

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Lyn. I am a customer service rep here at warmly years.

I am joined by the amazing Scott.

Hi, everybody.

Scott is one of our technical experts here at warmly years. And today, we're gonna be going over every thing you need to know about heating floors in bathrooms. If you have any questions on the presentation today, feel free to ask. You could type them in the chat If we don't see them right away, we'll definitely get to them by the end of the recording or the end of the, webinar.

Alright. So there are a lot of benefits of floor heating. Obviously, the warm floors are incredibly nice but one of the really great things about floor heating is that it's very energy efficient. When compared to traditional, you know, forced air heating systems, like a lot of us are to. Floor heating is going to be a lot more energy efficient, and it's also going to usually be a lot more comfortable and a lot more luxurious feeling. Without the, you know, blowing of air and things like that, you're going to reduce allergens, pollen dust in the home. So you're going to have much, better quality air and better quality heat.

These products are really easy to install. If you're already going to be replacing the floor or you're doing a new bill adding floor heating is a really, really great option.

So, Scott, can you kind of tell us a little bit about, you know, why people would want to in the bathroom?

Because tile is cold, and it's very cold to your feet. And tile can also be cold if you don't have heating wire directly under it. So, a lot of people will say, well, I'm just can I just get a a roll of heat and put it right down the middle of this walkway on the screen? I just wanna put it right down the middle of the room.

Will that warm up the entire room? Will that warm up the entire floor and the answer to that is it doesn't? You only get heat where you have the heating wire. So that's why we try to cover as much of the space as we can where because wherever your foot is going to go.

You want electric heat there. If you look at this picture, not only do you want it running right down the middle of this walkway, but you can see there's a cabinet on the side there. You're going to want the heat in the toe kick area too because that's where you stand. If there's a mirror there, you don't wanna have warm heels and cold toes.

You wanna get that right up there under the toe kick. So it's very, very important when you're looking at an installation plan or you're thinking about heating your space that you think about where will my feet hit this floor. And wherever that is, I want heat to be there. Because if you look at the wire, the heat only transfers an inch and a half on each side of the wire.

And that's why most of the time we do spacing at three inches because that gives you a a inch and a half destruction. Inch and a half this direction and it gives you a nice smooth heat across your floor. So if you get the wires too far apart, then you're going to have a cold stripe down the middle because it only travels an inch and a half each direction.

So that's one thing you want to look out for when you're heating the bathroom floors. And you always wanna remember to install your floor sensor because that's the best way to control floor heat is actually put the sensor in your floor. And it's very important if you have a a heated floor, under a carpet in the US or under laminate or under LVT or something like that. You always wanna control it by the floor sensor.

Awesome. Definitely.

So our temp sign floor heating system is definitely our most popular for heating system, especially for heating in bathrooms. It includes a lot of different options that are really ideal for heating underneath tile.

Also, our temp stone products are wet location listed. So again, they're ideal for bathrooms specifically.

So we're going to be going over different options that we have available for temp zone. There are a few different ways that you can install all these products. So we're going to touch on each one and talk about the different installation methods and some pros and cons. We're going to talk about our temp zone cable. That can be installed either using fixing strips or our progesterone membrane. So we're going to get into that in just a moment. We're also going to talk about our tempsone flex roll, our easy mats, and last but not least, are temp zone custom mats.

Yeah. There's a lot of different ways to heat heat tiled floors.

Some of our competitors only have one way to do it. You must buy this and you must buy that.

You always have to buy a membrane, but but for us, you don't. You can save a lot of money and a lot of time by not using a membrane on floors that don't need them. So, not every single floor needs a membrane with cable. And we're going to show you the reasons why.

Definitely. So we're gonna be going over first some of the installation steps for heating bathroom floors before we really get, down to the nitty gritty of the different types of temp zone systems.

So, Scott, can you kind of tell us what are some installation tools still want to have on hand?

Yeah. You're not going to need a snap on tool truck to back up to your house to start putting these fours in. They're very, very simple to install. They don't require specialist tools at all.

All you're going to need to do is go out and buy a digital ohmmeter. And the one picture here is under twenty five dollars at a big box store. You are going to need to get that, and you should get a circuit check when you're purchasing the product. Those are the only two specialized things that you're going to need because you can't do the installation without both of these.

Because you need to you need to test the product before during and after to verify that you had a good installation done. Because if something happens to the product before it arrives on your doorstep, and then you go put it in the floor, but you never test it. And then you go and you wanna turn it on, but it doesn't work.

Something may have happened to it on the way from us to you. And the only way to know that is to use a digital ohmmeter. A digital ohmmeter is not a substitute for a circuit check. They do two different things.

A circuit check only monitors the wire to see if you damage it by creating a short or by cutting it open and creating an open circuit. The digital ohmmeter actually gives you ohms readings that you use to match the label that comes with your product and you see if it's within the the certain specifications And if it isn't, you could say, hey, I need to stop right now. I need to I need to figure out what the problem is, or I need to get another roll or another cable and that's great to know that ahead of time. The last thing you want to do is put the floor completely in and I'll go, oh, it doesn't work.

We should have known that. And yes, you should know that. You want to test it as soon as you get it. So otherwise you're gonna need scissors.

You're gonna need a, maybe a hot glue gun. A lot of people have those, but a hot glue gun is something that you definitely wanna get to. Because that's going to help you install it, but that's about it. Everything else you're you can go to your junk drawer.

If your junk drawer is like mine, mine is about the size of a house. And there's a lot of junk in there, but I could I could literally raise the titanic with the stuff on my junk drawer. So that would be okay. But The only specialized stuff you need are are these things you see here.

Awesome.

So the first step is preparing this You obviously want to make sure that you are going to be installing on a good surface that you're starting out really strong. So, Scott, can you kind of tell us how one would prepare a subfloor?

Yeah. If you wanna stick something to a subfloor, the subfloor has to be clean. You can't you can't have it a dust bowl. You've gotta get that surface clean, you know, sometimes maybe mop it up or or vacuum it up or whatever you need to do to clean that because the hot glue needs something to stick to You need to be able to adhere that product to the subfloor, and the only way to do it is if your subfloor is clean.

Also, you wanna make sure that there are no nail heads sticking up out of surface because if you have a nail head sticking up out of the surface and you put the cable over it and then you step on it, you're going to smash that. Cable and cause damage so you don't want that to happen. So you're going to want to make sure that you pull all the staples. If there are any staples, in the surface, you wanna pull those all out.

If there's any nails, if there are any nails, you wanna make sure you remove those. And any screws that need to be screwed down, you're also going to want to do that. Also, if you are going to be using self leveling, you need to put a clean it and then put primer down, but what you wanna do is clean it and then seal any holes in the subfloor. Because any holes in the slope floor will cause that self leveling to visit the floor below it, which means your living room could be full of self leveling if you don't prep that floor correctly.

So seal any holes, clean it up and prime it if you're going to be using self leveling.

Definitely.

So one of the, first things I want to do is mark areas where the product is going to go and where it's not going to go. This way, you have a really good idea just by looking at the space kind of what you're going to be working with.

One of the things that we offer here at one of the years that is really, really going to make this a lot easier for you is our smart plans. And we're going to touch on those a little bit more in just a moment. But these are going to actually show you step by step all the installation instructions as well as a layout of the, product in your specific space so that you know exactly where the heat will be going, where it won't be going, and then you can make sure that you are laying it all down properly.

One of the things you also want to make sure that you're doing as you're laying it down is that you are securing either the cable or mesh, whichever system you're utilizing, make sure it's appeared to this up floor well.

Yeah. You you definitely the the the number one thing I talked to to people who are interested in getting floor eating system and they call in and they start asking a zillion question because they want to try to figure out how do I lay this out? How much should I buy? I'm trying to figure out how much I need to buy online.

The the the simple thing is just make a sketch of this of the space and give it to us. We'll do the installation plan for you. The number one thing I see new people full of consternation because they're trying to figure it all out for the first time. As Mia, it's like, I'm trying to build a rocket for the first time and I'm just gonna go on YouTube and look about doing rocketships.

I'm gonna let the rocketship people put that rocketship together for me and I'm gonna worry about other stuff And what you wanna do here is if you've never done one of these floors before, just make a sketch of the area, send it to us with the dimensions on it, and we will figure it all out for you. We'll tell you what size breaker you need. We'll tell you, how many watts it's going to take. We'll tell you how to cut and turn it to make it all fit.

Because you can't go out and buy a giant spool of cable, run it through the floor and then cut it in half and go, I'm done. Okay. You can never ever cut the heating cable. So you really, really want to know what size to put in there and we will figure that out for you.

Don't try to figure it out yourself because the plans don't cost anything. They're free. So we're not even gonna charge you for that plan and we'll probably have it ready for you the next day. It's not like some companies where you send them a plan and then a week and a half later you get the plan completed, you're going to have that plan the next day.

So please don't try to figure it out on your own because there are some things you wanna make sure that you mark down on your plan. You want to mark on your plan if there are any air vents in the floor because we can't heat over an air vent that's in the floor. Also, we don't heat under tubs. We don't heat under toilets.

We don't heat under permanent fixtures. We can heat shower floors because we're going in the in the layer right below the tile, but we don't heat under permanent fixtures. And that's why you look on this on this picture right here. You can see that blue line there.

That blue line is showing where the where the vanity is going to be. So we're not measuring we're we're supplying the measurements of the area that we can heat. So just give us a sketch of the room with the dimensions and then mark on that area. What is going to be like if there's gonna be ambient no heat there.

There's gonna be a tub, no heat there. If you want heat in the shower, let us know. We can do that. So, those are the kind of things that we will figure out for you.

Don't try to figure it all out if this is your first time because there's a laundry list of things that we already know that we'll take care of for you for free. No charge.

Definitely. Yeah. Why work harder when you can work smarter and let us do the work?

So, our floor sensor is going to be one of the really important, aspects of installation.

So, you wanna make sure that you are installing that sensor properly so that can control the floor heating, exactly to the degree. Scott, can you kind of tell us some tips and tricks when installing a floor sensor in the system?

Sure. A number one problem I see with people installing four sensors is they wanna run it out into the middle of the room and you don't need to run it out into the middle of the room. You simply need to get it six or eight inches into an open loop. If you can see this here, this is what we call an open loop.

There's no cable there that your sensor's going over. Same thing here. This is our floating floor system, and it goes between two of the heating wires. So you just put it between the two heating wires because remember, you're getting heat an inch and a half and heat an inch and a half from each side and it's going to heat up that sensor.

If you get that sensor on top of the wire, it'll heat up too fast. And your system will just go on and off, on and off, on and off, on and off, and it'll just keep doing that and it'll never get warm. So make sure that you put it in the right place. Make sure that, you're looking at your room.

Look at the room in the morning during lunch hour and at night or in the afternoon and see where the sun hits the floor. Because where the sun hits the floor is where you don't want the sensor because that sun will usually warm up the floor more than our system will. It'll get it much hotter you don't want a sensor sitting there in the sun because that area is gonna say, oh, this floor is really warm.

The floor isn't really warm. It's warm here the rest of the floor is very cold. So that's why you never put the sensor in a spot where the sun's going to hit it. Always try to keep it out of the sunshine into the heated area.

Also, make sure that you do not put that sensor wire in the same conduit as your non heating leads. Because you have a thermostat on the wall. The thermostat on the wall is attached to the non heating lead, and it runs down the wall, and it runs across the floor to where the heat starts. That wire needs to be in its own conduit, separate from the sensor.

If you put the sensor in that conduit, The high voltage will block the signal of the sensor and it won't work. So you need to make sure that they're in two separate conduit plus it's against code to do that. You wanna have that in two separate conduits. Very, very important.

It and also what's just brand new, brand new, everybody is that every single one of our roles, every single one of our spools, whatever is going to come with its own sensor.

So You can install as many sensors as you want. You can have one, two, or three. You can have backups. A lot of people like to have backups because there's a sensor in the thermostat box and attached to a roll. And if your room is huge, it had might have two rolls. Well, there is two sensors plus the one in the box. You can have all those installed, but you can only hook up one of the thermostat sensors to the thermostat.

If you put two sensors on one thermostat thermostat will think it's a hundred and fifty degrees when it isn't, and that will be a problem. So those are the main things. That's everything you need to know about floor sensors to make sure that you have a problem free installation.

Yes. That was comprehensive. Thank you so much, Scott.

So once you've laid out the system and we'll be going over process shortly.

Then you will want to lay out either your thin set or the self leveling concrete, whichever you're using.

Before the tile floor is installed. Scott, I know that you've worked on a lot of these projects where the tile floor is being installed. Can you kind of tell us some tips in tricks when working or or actually putting the flooring down.

If you're looking at this picture and you see this in your house and you're doing this installation yourself and it's your first installation, I can guarantee that you've used a laundry list of expletives up to this point because it's this is the single step method It's very difficult for beginners and some people that are experienced to be able to get this installed to have no lippage on the tile. Doing this all in one step, this is the single step method where they put the system down on the floor of the green mesh, then they put thin set and then they push the tile down into that. It's

very difficult to get those tiles the right height and to make sure that they don't have one up against. That's what lipages. One's really high, one's really low. So if you are doing this for the first time or the the tenth time, you might want to take this product cover it with a quarter of an inch of thinset first.

Come back tomorrow and then put thinset under the tile on the back of the tile and then push the tile down in using these levelers because that will do a couple things.

If you use that two step method, the levellers, you don't have to worry about catching the cable when you put the leveller under there. You can see the leveller right here how it gets kind of close to the heating wire. It's best if you do this over this area that's covered. So if this is the case, if you're doing this green mesh, cover it with a quarter of an inch of cell of of, of thinset or three eights of an inch of self leveling, which is even nicer because that gives you a completely flat floor and then come back the next day and tile over it. So always keep that in mind. Make sure that you follow the instructions on the bag of thinset.

Make sure that you clean the grout lines as you go. Don't come back later with a really sharp knife and clean grout lines out because you can see what's right under that grout line. There's an electric heating cable. And you don't want to get down in there and cut.

Oh, guess what? You know, a month from now when we turn the system on, it's not going to work because somebody cut into that wire. So that's why you have to test with the digital ohmmeter as you go to make sure that you don't have any problems. And it's very, very important that you do that.

So Don't turn the system on until it cures either. The bag of thinset will say we'll cure in fourteen days or cures in twenty eight days or cures in seven days. Whatever that is, that's the amount of time you have to wait before you turn the heat on.

Yes. It is exciting. I totally understand wanting to turn it on right away, but make sure that you're waiting just a little bit longer, and then the patients will pay off.

So we're gonna go over a project where we were heating in a bathroom, and we're gonna show the different temp zone products in that space and how they would be installed. So we're going to be starting out with our temp zone cable. And specifically, we're going to talk about installing Tamsung cable with our fixing strips. Now, our fixing strips, or using fixing cable is a really great way to have a lot of flexibility in the design and the layout of your heat. It's great for rooms that have, you know, odd angles, if there's curve in the wall, something like that. It's going to be very easy to get into those weirder, harder to reach areas than if you were cutting and turning a mat. Scott, can you kinda tell us about the spacing when using fixing strips?

Yeah. The fixing strips, the little knobs are spaced one inch on center. So if you do three knobs, that's three inches. If you do four knobs, it's four inches. So it's a very flexible allows you to do different spacing if you want to. Just keep in mind that a bathroom the small bathroom on the second floor above a heated kitchen with no exterior walls and no windows takes a lot less watts per square foot than a large huge bathroom on a concrete slab with twenty seven windows and three exterior walls and skylights Those two are bathrooms, but they take completely different amounts of of power and watts per square foot. So a second floor bathroom, you may be able to do it four inch spacing using these spacers.

Whereas a a one over and unheated crawl space you'd wanna use three inch spacing. But three inch spacing is as close as you can get. So you don't wanna go any closer than that. Also, I this is like the age old way to install product.

Right? It started with cable and and strips. Try to stay away from those metal strips because metal those metal strips are stamped. And when you stamp metal, they get really sharp.

And the last thing I wanna do is take my cable, put a sharp edge over it and then turn it and turn it again with a really sharp edge. These are plastic. They're not going to cut your wire. So this is a much safer installation using these plastic, spacers than they are the metal spaces.

I try to stay away from them wherever possible. But this is a great way. It's a great budget. You don't need a membrane here.

If your floor is in really good shape, and you've got good spacing on your floor joists. You don't need an anti fracture membrane. You can use just the cable and the strips and save yourself hundreds of dollars.

Definitely.

So the project overview for this specific project with fixing strips, the total area of this bathroom that we're looking at today was one hundred twenty three square feet. So when you're heating with the strips, we got to about ninety four square feet of heated area.

So the breakers, you're looking at just one fifteen amp breaker. It's about eleven and almost twelve amps, and you're looking at just about five cents an hour to run. So we're going to be comparing the project overview for each of our different types today so that you can actually see the different types of heating systems and how much, you know, coverage they'll give you what the operating cost will look like and the differences between those.

Yeah. When people think about doing their bathroom, I'm gonna heat every square inch of this bathroom. And you're not going to heat every square inch of this bathroom. You're usually gonna heat around eighty, eighty five percent of the bathroom because of things like a bathtub.

A toilet, spaces around the walls.

A shower. You can go in the shower. You can heat the shower if you wanted to.

But that's the area of a of a bathroom. You're gonna heat about eighty five percent of it, eighty percent. It just depends on that particular space. And you can see what's great about here's that smart plan we're telling you about.

Right? In this smart plan, it tells you what the amperage is. It tells you what the total wattage is. It tells you all this information, cost per hour.

It's all listed there at the bottom. It tells you what product you're going to install and what spacing you're going to use. That's all been figured out from the drawing that you gave us. So if you look here, the the important things on a smart plan, we're gonna talk about them here and then we'll kind of gloss over them later.

But you're go always gonna look for a t because that's where your thermostat is. You're always going to want to look for a triangle because that's where the cable starts, and you're always going to look for a square. That's where the cable ends. Also on the plan what you're going to be looking for, is the halfway mark for the cable and that's going to be a red dot because on the cable, it's a white dot because the cable's red.

So we put a white dot on the cable And that way, if you're getting and you can see that your white dots over here, then it tells you you've got the spacing too tight. If your white spot is all the way over here, it tells you to use four inch spacing or five inch spacing instead of three. So that's what you want to look out for. This gives you an idea instead of getting into the end and go, oh, boy, I've got seventy five extra feet of cable.

What do I do? You can tell halfway through whether you're on target or not. And you can say, oh, I've used too much. I need to oh, I've I did two inch phasing instead of three.

I need to make sure that I get that all even down. And the last thing we wanna talk about we show, the sensor going in here, going between two of the wires and these green numbers. The numbers that are in green are the distance from the wall.

So you have to put you have to start the cable at the right spot. You can't just because assume, okay, I'm gonna start at a foot in the wall, you know, in in from the wall because then you're gonna have way too much cable. We're going to tell you exactly how far the cable should be from the wall, how far the fixing strip will be from the bathtub, How far the fixing strip is from the doorway? All these green numbers are the amount of distance from the wall that these are going to be installed. If you get them too close to the wall, you'll run out of cable. If you get them too far away from the wall, you'll have too much cable.

Absolutely.

And then we always like to show a cross section so you can really picture the different steps. You can lay this directly on a wood sub floor. So you can just put down your fixing strips and you'll attach those to the subfloor.

The Tim's own cable, then obviously will be run-in there. And then you'll use your latex or polymer modified thinset and install your tile over the top.

Yeah. And if you're gonna be using self leveling instead, you're going to put a a piece of masking tape every two feet across these because that's going to keep it down and keep it from floating to the soft to the top of self leveling. No matter whether it's just a loose cable or if it's the mesh and the cable together, it's always going to want to float. So that's where you have to make sure it stays down on the subfloor very well. That's why you need a clean subfloor.

Alright. So, Scott, can you kind of tell us about attaching those fixing strips to the floor? How that how that works?

Yeah. You can use, screws, like shown here. You can use nails. You can use double sided tape. You can use staples staple gun can can be used because the staple can go through that plastic.

And that will be exactly what you need to put that down.

Awesome.

So moving on to our TEMestone cable with our predeso membrane, So this is a really common way to use temp zone cable or to use heating cable in general. It's going to generally make the project a little bit faster to install.

And it also is going to add a lot of extra support to tile floors. So, Scott, can you kind of tell us where a progessial membrane would come in when you would want to use, a membrane.

When your subfloor is a little bouncy because that's what's it's isolating the tile from the subfloor. So if the subfloor deviates, if you step on it, if it creaks or anything like that, what happens is the the membranes here and the tile sits on top of it whatever happens underneath, the tile still is okay because it's it's on top of the membrane. So that's what you're doing That's when you do need a membrane. Not every single floor needs a membrane, but when you need one, this stuff is is very good.

And What's also good about this is you can change your spacing as you go because what you what we are showing here is we have spacing every three spaces. Then What you can do is you can also go three inch or you can go three space, two space, three space, two space, three space, two space, etcetera to help use up cable, or you can add an extra space to to to use up less cable. But this is an area where people walk all the time. So we put it.

It's about fifteen watts per square foot here.

Two three two three two three two that can help you use that space that cable up if you have to.

So that's where we're seeing the two different spacing on this spacings on this floor. When you're putting these membranes down, please make sure you can see that there's one piece here, a second piece here, and a third piece over here. You need to make sure that the knobs line up. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to get the cable from one section into the other section.

So those knobs on the top have to line up and go into that area. But that you just push the cable down in the in the between the knobs and holds it down and, then you've got your installation.

And one other thing about Pradeso is that it is also, able to be waterproofed. So if you're looking at you know, waterproofing that subfloor, if you're doing a wet room, something like that, or if that's just kind of an extra concern for you, then adding Prudesso is a really great option.

Yeah. All you need to do is buy our pro band, which comes on a roll, and you adhere that, after you get the cable in, you adhere it to these themes, scenes, and that will make your, bathroom waterproof.

Which is always a good thing. So the project overview for cable with Pradeso. So you can see again it was a total area of one hundred and twenty three square feet, and we heated about one hundred and seven square feet with this, with this application.

And again, the cost per hour is four cents. So it's not very expensive. It is a very efficient system. It's cheap to run. And it is going to give you, it's going to be a very easy system to install as well.

And then the smart plan for Temestone with predecio looks a little bit different. You can kind of see that highlighted blue area, is the actual progeso itself. Prudecio does add a height difference to the floor. That's one thing to mention.

So it does need to go under the entirety of the floor in that space. It's not like cable where you would just be putting or cable with fixing strips. Where you're really only putting them down where you want the heat. The Prudessa will need to be it throughout the room, and then you'll run the cable where the heat will be going.

And once again, on the drawing, t in a circle, triangle, square, the runs here, you can see her going next each side of the toilet. You don't really need that. But to make this cable fit very well, see what we do is we don't cut the cable to a specific size for you. What we do is we do to the the design with the cable that's closest.

We have a bunch of different sizes and we send you out the size that's the closest. That's why you can't just cut it and go, okay. I've used enough. I'm gonna cut this off and I'm gonna use and and throw the rest away. You can't do that. That's why this design is so important so we get you the right amount You don't have too little and you don't have too much. When you're doing the installation, it's always better to have a little too little than it is to have a little too much.

Absolutely. So, Scott, can you kinda walk us through the cross section here with, Prdeso?

Yeah. Prdeso depends on what your subfloor is. It tells the installation manual will tell you what type of of thinset to use. Either modified or unmodified, rapid set, any of that thing.

That's in the installation manual. So it depends on what your subfloor is. That'll tell you what goes there. With a wood subfloor like this, it's it's modified thinset.

Then you put the, the thinset down on the floor. You push the membrane down in it. You run the cable back and forth. You put thinset over the top and lay your lay your, your, your tile on top.

When you're doing the install, it's very important that if you're only going to get let's say it's right at the end of the day. You start at four thirty in the morning, you end at one in the afternoon. So at twelve thirty, you go, you know what? I've got enough time that I'm going to do this much today, this part over here.

The idea with this product you don't cover the entire floor with thin set and come back tomorrow. You only put thin set under the areas that you're going to put tile on right now. You're going to work your way across. You thin set, push the tile down into it, thin set, push the tile down into it.

You're not thin setting the whole thing. That's one when we first started selling this years ago, people were used to using the, the the the cable on the mesh And what you do there is you lay it all out, then you cover it completely up within sitting. You come back tomorrow and you do the second step. You don't do that with this one.

You get it down, get the cables in, and then only do enough for the for the tiles that you're using.

Very important to do that.

Absolutely.

And speaking about the cables on the mesh, we're looking now at our Temestone Flex roles So this is definitely our most popular product. It's a really quick and easy installation.

The cable is pre spaced. You don't have to worry about running it back forth. You don't have to worry about spacing. It's going to make that installation super easy and super simple.

The flex rolls come in either one and a half or three foot widths. And again, using a smart plan or having a smart plan designed for you by us is going to tell you exactly which size cable or role you'll be needing.

So with this project, with the flex roll, we covered about ninety square feet. Again, we're looking at about five an hour. So as you can see, they're all going to give you similar results in terms of operating costs in terms of heated area. It really will often come down to how you want to do the installation, as well as some other things like, you know, if the subfloor is, you know, well built, things like that.

Right? And people say, well, how, I don't wanna spend this much each day. Well, then all you have to do is just, instead of eight hours, you go to seven hours.

Or eight hours down to six hours. That's how you can affect. You can set the temperature lower, and you can also cut down the number of hours that you're using it. Remember, your the idea here is to only heat the space when you're in it.

There's no reason for this. Like, if this is a bathroom, it doesn't need to be on. If you're if or work all day, the it doesn't have to be on all day. And you don't want it on at night because no one's going to be in there at night, wanting, you know, stepping out of the shower usually. So the idea is to use it only when it's needed, and that's what's going to save you money.

Absolutely.

So this is the smart plan showing our tempso and flex roll. And I think some people get a little scared looking at this with all the arrows. So can you kind of walk through what we're looking at here because I think it really is a lot simpler than it might look at first glance.

Yeah. You're gonna need a tape measure here. Tape measure is gonna be your best friend and a pair of scissors because here's our t, here's our triangle, and here's our square.

Here is the distance that we're going to run the mesh out. We're gonna run the mesh out three feet.

We're then going to cut it. We're going to turn it. Flip it around. Cable side down.

Always cable side down as much as you can. Then we're going to run it two feet nine inches. Then we're going to turn it. Run it two nine two nine two nine.

We're just simply rolling it out. And laying it on the floor. We're not adhering it to the subfloor yet. We're only doing cuts and turns, making sure that all of our runs are going to fit.

Because the last thing you wanna do is you get here and go, oh, boy, I'm a foot short. I need to come up with a foot. Now I've gotta undo all the hot glue or undo all the staples that I put through the mesh. You never ever staple the cable.

And you have to go back, lift it all up and kind of move it around and put it back down. Just don't do that yet. Make sure it all fits, make sure everything is where it needs to be. Then you can start hot gluing it to the subfloor.

Absolutely.

And this is another cross section.

Again, very simple. Lay the temp stone on the subfloor, and then you'll put that thinset and the tile over the top.

Exactly. There's our sensor. Sensor goes in between the heated cable, six or eight inches in. That's all you need to do.

If this were going to be covered with self leveling, then you'd wanna make sure the temps zone flex roll is installed very well. And you wanna make sure it's adhered to the subfloor. We don't use the tape. To adhere it to the floor.

The tape is simply to hold the cable onto the mesh. If you take it off, the cable will just fall out on the floor in a loose bile. You don't wanna do that. So leave that tape alone.

It won't affect the bond. And then you can put thin set and tile over the top of that.

Absolutely. So looking at the actual installation, we have kind of talked about it briefly during the smart plan. Or while looking at the smart plan, you're gonna really want to follow that. Like you said, Scott, use that tape measure. It is your best friend as closely as possible. Possible.

So, can you kind of tell us some installation tips or tricks?

I'm sure you have quite a few with your experience hot glue is is going to be the best way to do it.

The the best way to put hot glue down is just to put the gun underneath it. Push it down into it and then use like a a a metal chisel. Those really wide metal chisels, like a two inch wide metal chisel, which you're not gonna be chiseling into it. All you're doing is you're just gonna be pushing it like a brush, pushing the the glue or the product down, the mesh down into the glue because you don't have to worry about burning your hands.

Don't ask me how I know about burning my hands using hot glue because if you don't do it that way, you're gonna go, I'm gonna push it down and go, whoa, that's really, really hot, and you're gonna have burns all over the place. But what you do is you use that two inch wide or inch and a half wide chisel, and you just use it like a brush and you push the product down into it. And it's going to you just hold it there for a couple seconds. It'll grab, and that's going to be your best way to do it.

You can also staple through the mesh. But as soon as you say that people go, I'm gonna staple over the cable. Because if you staple over the cable, you're going to be replacing the whole thing. Because that staple is going to damage the cable.

Never ever staple the cable. Never ever staple the the lead that runs from the wall over to it either because you'll damage it. Hot glue is the way to go.

Alright. And we had touched on this a few times already today talking about the one step versus the two step installation method. Can you kind of tell us one you think is best if there is a best option?

Yeah. If you've done less than a hundred of these floors, do the two step. And I'm not talking about Texas two step. You don't wanna be dancing over the cable by any means, but you want to do this two step method, which means lay it out on the pro lay it out on the floor and hear it to the subfloor and either cover it with three eights of an inch of self leveling or half inch of self leveling and then come back the next day and tile over the top of it.

Because that gives you a perfectly flat floor. Or you can use thin set, and then that'll allow you to use those, those levelers that you see there. And that'll make it much easier. So you don't have to worry about it getting a leveler stuck underneath the cable and then pulling up on it and then catching the cable between the leveler and the tile.

So always watch out for that. The two step is the easiest way to do it for beginners and even experienced people.

Absolutely. And always always take the easy route if you if you can.

Yeah. We're you're simply putting the product down and putting the thinset down over the top of it or putting this or pouring the self leveling over the top of it.

So next, we're talking about our Tempstone Easy Mats. And as you can see, they look incredibly similar to our flex rolls They're essentially the same product. They're just smaller.

So temps on easy mats are really designed for what we call spot heating. And this is going to give you targeted heat in specific areas of your room. So people will like to put this down in, you know, right in front of a bathtub, right in front of a shower, in front of a vanity, something like that, maybe somewhere that you're standing often, and you just don't want the cold floor in that specific area.

I think we had said earlier, it is kind of a common misconception that you can just lay out, you know, a heating role in the middle of the room and it will spread out. And since it only does go about an inch and a half past the wire, that's not really going to be the case. So, easy match spot heating are really great for areas where you know you're only going to have heat in that area, and you're going to have a floor in the rest of the space. This is good for, smaller heating spaces. If you have, like I have a very tiny bathroom, I could probably fit one tiny flexural in there, and it would cover almost all of the floor. So if you're heating a small area, if you're looking for, just heating, you know, a targeted spot, or if you're looking to keep the electrical use lower or you're doing this yourself and you just want something super easy, super simple, that's where the easy mats come into play.

Yeah. Your bathroom would be perfect for a tiny dancer doing the two step.

Yes.

Method.

The thing is with this, you have to keep in mind if you use a spot heating where you stand is going to be warm and when you step into the unheated area, it will be bone jarringly cold. You'll you'll literally go from eighty five degrees or whatever you have it set to from eighty five to sixty five or from eighty five to sixty literally in the span of three or four inches. It can be eighty five here and over here it could be sixty. It makes a big difference.

So that's where people sometimes don't get it. They don't realize it's like I've stepped over there. It's going to be cold. And another thing you wanna do is if you're doing more than two areas, you don't wanna do more than two areas because each one of these has a lead that has to run up to the back of the thermostat, and it's okay to make two connections at the back of the thermostat.

But now if you add a third, if you add a fourth, if The last thing you wanna do is install six or seven of these Easy mats because you don't wanna do that because you can't get the leads up to the back of the thermostat and then have seven or eight mats attaching to the back, just get the single roll. And that way, you only have one connection and it goes back and forth across the floor. You only have one connection. If you if you have two, that's okay.

If you find yourself using three easy mats or more, get the single spool of cable or get the single role because you are going to have a lot of trouble making all those connections in the back of the thermostat. Then you have to get junction boxes, then you have to supply your own wiring to get wire from the thermostat to the it's a big mess.

So It goes from being an easy mat to a difficult mat.

Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

So as you can see, if you were to, we're gonna show you the option of using an easy mat in space. We definitely would not recommend it, for an area this size like we said. But if you were to do an easy match system, You'd be looking at about seventy eight square feet of heated area, and that'll bring that cost down to about two cents per hour. So there is quite a bit less coverage with these easy mats as well.

And you can see that for this room, we would need to use about four mats. You're going to have some very cold spots right in front of the door. Maybe in between the toilet and the door to the water closet. So you want to make sure that, you know, you're aware of what areas covered and not covered with Easymat.

If you have a space this size, just reach out to us. We'll help you figure out the, the other options that'll be a lot better for you.

Yeah. You've got four connections here, which are gonna it's gonna be a a pain in the backside. You don't wanna do this install. So that's why the easy magic you said, an easy mat turns into a non easy installation.

And it is, because it is essentially the same as our flex roles just much smaller. Same type of installation. You'll lay it on the subfloor. You'll put the mat down. You can secure it to the subfloor. And then you'll put down your modified thinset or if you're using self leveling, that's where that would go, and then your tile.

So like we said, this is considered a very easy installation all you would need to do is unroll those easy mats and lay them out in the space where you want the heat to be. So it's going to be relatively simple if you are looking to heat that small area. Again, if you need more than two easy mats to cover a space, definitely switch to the flex rolls.

Let's take a look in the water closet. You can see a big cold area here in the doorway. You can also see a lead that is not long enough to get over to the thermostat, which is over here. So you have to run the third you have to run this lead to a junction box in your wall, then your electrician has to supply you, electrical wiring to get from this junction box over to the thermostat. This is not a good installation. It's it's there it's not a wise way to install this. So I I love this picture because it shows us the cold spots, and it shows us how hard it is to get that, connection over there.

Definitely.

And last but not least, we have our temp zone custom mats. So custom mats are exactly what they sound like. They are completely customized to your project. We generally, don't recommend these as much for a few reasons they're made to order. So the timeline involved is a lot longer than are ready to go to have some products.

And then you're also not going to have any kind of wiggle room. If any design changes happen, if any layout changes happen, maybe the tub ends up being two inches wider than you thought, you're going to run into some problems. So the custom map is a great option. It is going to make the installation incredibly fast designed for your space, you enroll it, and you're good to go. However, like we said, there are also some concerns with custom apps as well.

Yeah. It's a fundamentally different way to install too, which we're we're going to show you in the cross section.

So with a custom mat in this room, we covered about ninety three square feet. So you can even see with the custom mat, you're not getting especially more, heated area or any like that. It's just going to be a little bit of a quicker installation.

So you're looking at about four cents an hour if you were using the custom mats we'll be showing you.

And also we we show you the power requirements. A lot of times an electrician hears, oh, we're gonna put floor heating in the bathroom. I have to hurry. I've gotta put two forty volt circuit I need to put two forty. Hey, can you give me a two forty breaker? I need a two forty.

You don't need two forty in a bathroom.

Only if it's over a hundred and twenty square feet. So if you send us a a drawing of your space and it's under a hundred and twenty square feet, we're going to design it in one twenty. And the reason why we're going to do it in one twenty is because one twenty and two forty are just as efficient two forty is not hotter than one twenty. It doesn't heat up any faster than one twenty, but two forty uses two spots in your breaker panel. One twenty only uses one. Oh, I got a bunch of balloons there. I don't know where that is going.

That's a new thing on Zoom.

And as far as I'm aware, you can't turn it off. I've tried.

Okay.

And there seems to be no real explanation in my as far as I've seen, I can sometimes, like, I'll smile and it'll make frowny faces.

So Congratulations.

I don't know if that does oh, okay. That didn't work. So I'm gonna be looking for the the the phrase here, the faith.

Yeah. There's there's some trigger word.

But, anyway, that's why we use one twenty nine times out of ten. It allows you to use one control and and the minimum space of breaker. If you are, doing between a hundred and twenty and two hundred and forty square feet of heating That's where you'd use a two forty volt supply.

Because that will allow you to heat up to because the thermostats can only handle fifteen amps. And that's what it is. Fifteen amps and one twenty is about a hundred and twenty square feet. It makes it really easy to remember.

And it's same for two forty. So two forty, hundred, two hundred and forty square feet can be done in two forty up to fifteen amps. So the idea here is to try to keep it on one control using the smallest breaker possible and you never ever use a GFCI breaker. You always use a regular breaker because the GFCI protection is in the thermostat.

Alright. And so for this room, you would be using probably two custom mats as shown here. Again, you can see that there really is not much wiggle room. Again, if there's an inch or two of difference at any point, you're going to run into some problems. So it does make it very easy to install. It also can make it very difficult to install should anything come up.

Can I see anybody out there raise your hand, theoretically or or non visually?

So we can see if you've had dimensions change from the time that you quoted it to the time it was made.

Virtually, I was virtually was the word I was looking for.

It happens all the time. And if you design this bathtub to be a certain size and then the homeowner goes, you know what? I wanna make it bigger. Let's make it bigger.

Well, as soon as you make it bigger, this mat's not going to fit anymore. And you can't cut and turn it. It's not designed to be cut and turned. You lay it out on the floor.

So that's the problem with these is that you have zero wiggle room, like you said. And that's what happens in the real world. Dimensions change and all of a sudden, where do I put this?

Can't cut it. Yeah.

Yeah. Cut MS can be, can be a really good option. I've seen them used a few times, and they are really great. I've also seen them used and then people into problems like that. So definitely talk to us if that's something you're interested in, and we can help you figure out if a custom adds a good option for your for your job.

This is going to take two connections at the back of the thermostat too because you've got a mat that connects here and a mat that connects here. So you actually have two separate mats running to the back of your thermostat. So just keep that in mind. You're going to two connections here instead of one.

And the difference of installing it right here.

Yes. Can you walk us through what that looks like?

This means you put it down on the you put the the on the subfloor you put thinset down on the subfloor first, and then you push this product down into it because this gray randomly, random mesh. It's not sewn. It's not spun. It it it's, it's randomly placed But thinset can't get through it.

So what you want is you need to put thinset down, push this down with a with a grout float or something pushing it down into the system, then you have to put thinset on top to set the tile on. So it it installs fundamentally different. So please keep that in mind. So you can't lay it on the floor and then cover with inset because then you'll be able to lift it right up off the floor.

And you can see here.

You can see here where yeah.

Yeah. The thin set is down on the floor. We're pushing the mesh down into the thinset right here. That's what that flat, grout float or a rubber float is is doing now. Pushing it down into the thinset.

Awesome. Alright. So I think we had a few questions that had been sent in earlier. Correct?

Yes.

Using heated floors under a membrane.

Some people wanna buy a waterproof membrane.

And it usually those waterproof membranes are are have zero r value, which means that heat can go through it. The main thing to remember with our product is I can't really tell you how to install somebody else's membrane because they have their own rules But I can tell you that our heating wire needs to be embedded in modified thinset. So you're going to be putting that that product in modified thinset, and then you're putting the, the zero r value membrane over the top of it. You need to follow the instructions for that membrane manufacturer because they may want it to be unmodified on the bottom of it and modified on top. Or unmodified and unmodified or modified. They're the ones that have those rules about what goes where. Our rule is you get our four installed and we want the heat to be within an inch to an inch and a half of the top of the surface.

What you put in between those is up to you. But you don't want an r value between the heating wire and the top of the tile. So modified thin set you figure your the the company that you bought the membrane from is gonna tell you how to do that, and then you're gonna set set the the tile on top.

Awesome.

Next question. Question number two. I keep looking for the balloons and stuff, but I don't see them.

When remodeling a bathroom and installing under floor heating, should we keep the existing forced air vent in the floor or close it up and only rely on the radiant heat?

Well, what should somebody do if they're thinking about using only radiant heat, Lynn?

One of the first things you'd want to do is fill out a heat loss calculation sheet. So we actually offer a heat loss calculation form that you can fill out on our website or you can reach out to us. We can send it to you directly. And that's going to ask for a lot of information that's really going to give us a good picture of if this can be your primary heat source.

We're going to ask for things like the insulation in the walls. We're gonna ask for how many exterior walls are in the space? How many exterior windows, doors, ceiling height? Lots of things like that that can affect how much, heat or how many BTUs are needed to really fill a space with the warmth that you're looking for.

Oftentimes we see I'd say probably more than half the time at least this can be a primary heating source. But again, it really will depend on where you're at how much heat you'll need in that space. If you're living in Anchorage or if you're living in Fort Myers, it's going to be a little bit different. So you want to make sure that you fill out that form and we could tell you specifically based on your answers what you'd want to do or how you'd proceed with that if you want this to be your primary heating source or if you'll want a secondary source as well?

You never want to, eliminate your possibilities So I would never ever back baby into a corner because you know how that goes. You don't wanna get rid of that air vent because it's going to give you the option of, you know, what? Let's just run the la furnace for the summertime or what or whatever. Never eliminate options.

Right? You always wanna keep yourself as many options as possible. So I would suggest that you do keep the forced air vent just in case you need it. Maybe you're Maybe the amount of BTUs generated by our system is good enough for ninety percent of the days, but there's ten ten percent of the days where you need more BTUs to warm the space.

Well, if you keep your air vent, you can turn your air vent on, and they're voila, you have your extra BTUs. But if you seal it up, there goes that option. Right? So I would never eliminate options.

Never back they'd be into a corner. So next thing, how to installing on plywood for a mud floor from John?

Danger will Robinson. Danger will Robinson because the thing is we our product is not designed per se to be put in a mud floor. Right. Our product is, ul listed. And tested in a thin bed application. It says right on the UL label for a thin bed application thin bed application is thin set or self leveling, not two or three inches of mud. Because when you are trying to heat, there's a big difference between trying to heat two or three inches of mud or an inch of thinset and tile.

Big big difference. We do get calls from people that do mud jobs where the cable is two or three inches below the floor and the customer's complaining that it doesn't get warm enough. You have to have that cable within an inch to an inch and a half of the top of the tile. So it's very, very important that you do that. So, technically, our product is designed for floors that don't use mud. If you are going to use a mud floor you're going to need to make sure that cable stays within an inch and a half of the top of the tile or whatever you're walking on. So hopefully that answers that question.

Absolutely. I'm not seeing any other questions. If we do get some more or if you anything comes up while we're doing a little bit of this housekeeping, feel free to type it chat. Again, we'd be happy to answer any further questions.

We would love for you to join our next webinar. It will be on Thursday, March fourteenth, again, at one o'clock central time. It's gonna be how to keep almost any wood floor. So please join us for that if you're interested in putting a wood floor in to a or putting a heated floor into a wood floor.

I can see everybody right now. They're gonna be on spring break and they're going to go. Alright. We're going to be in Florida, but we need to make sure we take our lap because I wanna watch this thing on March fourteenth.

And if you miss it, we can always email it to you, or you can find it on our website.

If you don't feel like watching on the beach, but Oh, but they're going to want to do that.

Yeah.

We're lots of fun, I think.

Yeah. Reading heat right from the direct source.

So, you can also join us for our daily training we do these at least once a day. They're often hosted by me, often hosted by Scott, right here on Zoom. Usually they're very short, ten, fifteen minutes, if that, and you can pop in, ask some questions, learn a little bit more about our products, and we'd be happy to see you there.

For February, we are offering twenty five percent off of select towel warmers. Be sure to check out the website so you can see which models are on sale. This is definitely a great time to buy a telewarmer when it is February and it's freezing.

February made me shiver, just like the song says.

I don't know where how you pull these out sometimes.

American pie, baby. It's American pie.

I know every word do American pie. So, we would love to hear your feedback as well. We're gonna send out an email once this is done. Let us know if you have any comments.

If you have any suggestions, if you have any topics, you'd like us to cover. We'd love to hear it. We also love compliments who tell us how pretty we are, how funny we are. We'll take it.

And of course, you can always reach out. We'd love to chat with you. If you have an upcoming project, if you're, wanting to learn just more about our products, reach out, you can call us on the phone. All of our customer service and sales team members are super friendly, really ready to help answer all your questions and get your flooring started.

You can also email us. This is our website. We have lots of information on that site. And it is a treasure trove of floor heating info.

So be sure to check us out there.

One thing I forgot to say is if you're sending us an installation of drawing a drawing plan, please show any air vents that you do have on the floor so we can design around them. And any posts that are there for support because we can't we have to heat around them too. I'm glad I remember that. Otherwise, I'd have had a lot of remorse at the end of this, not mentioning that.

Fair enough. Yeah. That's definitely easy to overlook. So that's definitely a good thing to remember when you're making your drawings.

And that is all we have today. Thank you so much for joining us. This was a great webinar. We are so happy you are here as always, until next time, stay warm.

And be radiant. Thanks, everybody.