How to install TempZone Flex over Cork Underlayment

Hello, I'm Scott from WarmlyYours, and today we're going to be installing electric radiant heat on a concrete slab here you can see some of the tools that we'll be using. So what we're going to do is we're putting the cork over the concrete slab with thinset, the rolls out onto the floor. And then we'll be covering those rolls with thinset and tile. Now that we've got the cork all laid out on the floor, now it's time for us to get the first piece put in. What we've done here is I've taken out our layout and I've marked the location of each one that was here, because what I'm going to do is I'm going to need to pull this back and I'm going to need to get thinset in here. And then we need to use the 1/8 inch V notch trowel to put the thinset in here. Then once we get the cork set into that, we then lift it up to see if we have good coverage. And if we have good coverage, we'll put it back down and get the roller and roll that spot down, and this area will be finished. So let's go ahead and get some thinset. When you receive your order, inside the box There will be a few different things You'll want to look for, one of them is your installation plan. Also, another thing will be the install manual. It will all be in one plastic bag. The rolls will be in the box. Also in the box. You'll be getting your circuit check devices that you need to use when you're installing the product, also will be the thermostats and any other controls that you order. But it's very, very important that you check what's in the box, verify that's what the items are on your packing list, and also verify that those are the items listed on your installation plan. What I've done now is located the plan for this room. And the first thing I did is I measured the room each direction to make sure that the measurements in the room match the measurements in the drawing. Once I verify that, and that I have the correct rolls that are going to be going on the floor, I then take the areas on the drawing. And I transpose them onto the cork flooring. As soon as you get the rolls out of the box, make sure that every roll is tested with an ohmmeter to verify that it is a good working shape. It's very, very costly to get that roll replaced. So what you do is as soon as you take the roll out of the box, test across the Red and the black wire and see if it matches within 15% of the ohms value on the UL label, you're going to attach the red probe from your ohmmeter to the red wire, the black one to the black wire. And you should see an ohm resistance reading on your ohmmeter. This is within 15% for this roll.

So we are ready to install. OK, according to our plan, we will do a 14 foot, 6 inch run of this heating roll and we will go ahead and do our first cut and turn. So what I've done is I've made the markings on the floor of where the roll actually starts. And then we will just roll it out, stretch it out, verify we have a 14 foot, 6 inch run. And we're ready for our first cut. And turn. Now on the plane, you'll see measurements given 14 feet, 12 feet, 11 feet, whatever that is, that is actual footage of the green mesh. So this one is required, a panel that we've made, 14 feet, six inches in length. So what I've done here is I'll make a mark. I made my measurement and my mark is right here. So at this point, we will take our scissors and cut the mesh, once again. Never, ever cut the wire. And we'll do it right on the mark that I've made on the floor. Now, when I get to the end of the loop, that's where I'm very careful to separate the loop from the mesh. Making sure, my scissors go over it. And now we've separated this area. This is now 14 feet, six inches for this length. We take the roll and flip it over. And we're ready to do our next panel, which is going to be 7 feet, three inches. Our plan calls for a 7 foot 3 inch run, so what I've done is I've made a magic marker mark of where the run is. And at this point, this is where we're ready to make our cut and turn. 

 Now, one thing we haven't talked about on the plan is in some of the plans, you'll see us a number inside of a circle. That number means that you have to remove that amount of green mesh from the product and take the heating cable off of the mesh. And what we will do then is we will have to free form with the heating cable that we remove from the mesh. Free forming is done when you have to do strange turns or you have to work around posts or doorways, that sort of thing. So we will have a free form area right here after I get done with this cut. Now it's asked us for six inches of wire, so that is going to be, here's our six. And here is the next mark, we need to make. That will then allow us to take the heating cable off of the green reinforcing mesh, and this is very easy to do. We'll save this for later, because we can use that. Then we do our turn. So now what we've done is we've made our cut and turn and now we have to do our free form wire area. This area is indicated on the plan. All right, now we're ready to do our free form wire to hold it in place with a glue gun. So what we suggest here, the easiest way is just to use a glue gun, get the glue down on the floor on the cork, push the wire down into the glue, take some cold water and put some cold water over the top. If you'd like to protect your wire a little bit more, you could take some cuts of excess mesh that you have. Use that to cover the wire. And then you can either glue it down or you can staple the mesh, never, ever staple the wire. And if you notice, I don't staple right next to the wire either. Now we have our heating rolls down on the floor. Now it's time to get the cold lead back to where the thermostat is. If we take a look at the end of the roll, we will see that the blue wire here is heating wire. And we also see the black wire, Here, is the cold lead. This area will heat up all the way to here, after this point. This wire does not heat up. That's why we call it cold lead. So what we need to do is we need to get the power from the thermostat to the end of this roll. All right. Now we can see that we've routed our cold lead along the perimeter of the room. And so it can go up into the conduit, up to the thermostat. Once we have the wire coming out of the thermostat box, we then want to attach our circuit check device to the wires, take the circuit check out of the box. 

And at this point, if we look at the back of the circuit check, we can see that there is a red, a green and a black wire. We take the red wire from the heating system, put it in the red. We take the black from the heating system, put it in the black terminal, and then the braided ground. We take and put into the green spot here on the back of the circuit check. Before you put any thinset down on the rolls that are out on the floor, always remember to install your thermostat sensor. If your system utilizes a thermostat. Before you install a thermostat sensor, always make sure the thermostat sensor is good. And to do that, you will need an ohmmeter again. And the ohmmeter. What you need to do is set it to the 20k range, which is 20,000. If you set it to the 20k range, it'll give you the proper operating range for the system. So what we do is we take the end of the sensor. We attach one probe on to one end. And the other probe on to the other end. And here, we can see that we're getting 12,000 ohms, and that's a good reading, anywhere between eight to 20,000 ohms is a good reading. If you have over 20,000 ohms, you might have a problem. You might want to replace your thermostat sensor. If you have under 8,000 ohms, you will probably want to replace your sensor. Now is the time to find out if your sensor is working correctly or not before it gets buried under thinset and tile. Now that we've tested the sensor to make sure it's good, we need to get it put into the mesh between two of the wires. You don't need to run it into the middle of the floor. All you need to do is get at least a six inches or so into the mesh and you need to make sure it goes through an open loop. Never, ever put the sensor wire over heating wire, never do this. The sensor wire should always go between two runs of cable and through the open loop at least six inches into the mesh. OK, now that we have the rolls put down on the floor, we can go ahead and do our second ohm test. This test is just as important as the first test when you take the rolls out of the box, because the last thing we want to do is put thinset over a roll that might have been damaged while we were installing it. So what we do is we do our second test. We verify that the ohms are good, which they are they're within 10% to 15% of the value stated on the sticker. And we are ready to go ahead and put thinset over these rolls. 

Now we have all the rolls down on the floor, what we're going to show this at this point is how to do a one step install. If you're an experienced tiler, you probably find this to be OK much, much faster. The advantage of doing one step is that it goes faster. However, if you're not really, really experienced at putting tile down, we suggest a 2-step because for beginning tilers, sometimes it's difficult to get the tiles, So they're all the same height. And you don't have high spots and low spots. But if you are an experienced Tiler and you've done that before, you probably have no problem doing it this way. So what I'm going to do, Is use a 3/8 inch notch trowel. We're using an 18 inch tile here, so we have to make sure we have good coverage. Being very careful as we go over the heating cable. So we don't damage it, we've installed our safety circuit checks. To make sure we've tested them, know they're working. This is why it's so important to put the cable facing Downward as much as you can as you put your thinset down. We're ready for a spacer and we'll go and put the next tile in. All right. We're ready to put down our second tile after we made sure we had good adhesion to our first. When you put the second tile down, you're going to naturally have some thinset that comes up in the gap between the two tiles. It's very, very important to get those gaps cleared because the last thing you want to do is come in later with a knife and cut through that because you'll cut through the wire. So you clear the grout lines, while the thinset is still wet. Now, once we have our gaps correct. And our tile height correct, it's a good idea to grab a toothbrush because this is the time where you're going to want to clear out the grout joints before the stuff hardens. OK, so that's how you do the one step installation. Now, this is a 2-step installation, so we're ready.

Once the skim coat has dried, we can go ahead and start installing our tile. This is the method that we suggest for any beginners who've never tiled before, or if you've only tiled a little bit, but you're facing a large installation like this, this is the easiest way to do that. Now that we have our skim coat over the top of the heating rolls, we can go ahead and install our tile. Now we're using a 3/8 inch notch trowel to go ahead and put the thinset down to adhere the tile. Now that we have the tile installed, it's very, very important to get the thinset out of the grout lines. You do not want to do the grout lines later when you're doing electric radiant heat under tile. It's very important that you do not use a blade to clean out the gaps between the tile. Here is where you want to get it clean while it's still wet.