How to Pair Electric Floor Heating with Luxury Vinyl Tile

Hello Thank you so much for joining us for today's webinar. My name is Lynn. I'm a customer service rep here at WarmlyYours and today I am joined by my co-host. I'm Scott. Thanks for joining us today, everybody. Yeah, we're super excited today to talk about pairing electric floor heating with luxury vinyl tile. I know it's a very popular topic, so we have a lot to go over today. If you have any questions, feel free to ask either in the sidebar chat or at the bottom of the screen. If we don't get to them right away, we'll definitely address them by the end of the presentation. Yeah, grab your popcorn and your soda pop and you'll be ready to go. I think, yeah, we're pretty entertaining. I think that's fair. So today's webinar, like I said, we're going to talk about for heating what systems we recommend for going underneath vinyl and some overviews of our floor heating products. We're also going to go over a project example that used our timezone flex role. We'll show you that installation process. And then we're also going to talk a little bit about the actual project cost. So it is becoming very popular. It's going to give you the look of a lot of other more expensive flooring types without the cost, so it's a very cost effective way to update the spaces in your home. It's also very durable. It's very scuff stain and scratch resistance. So if you have kids or you know, pets, anything like that, it's going to hold up very well over time. Often can be anywhere from 20 to 25 years that it'll be in your home. So it's very sustainable as well. And when you're going to have something that you're putting in for a couple of decades, it's always nice to have that little bit of extra comfort added to it. So you have that for a long time to come. Yeah, they add that extra, that extra bit of comfort and we get a lot of questions ahead of time, so we thank everybody for asking and sending those questions in questions in when you get your invitations. Chuck right away off the bat, wanted to know what's the point of heating a well insulated LVP floor? Well, the answer to that Chuck is do you want a floor that's warm or you just want a floor that isn't cold because there's a big difference there. So you are literally talking about a Florida that isn't cold may be 68 or 70 degrees, where if you want to warm it up, you can get it up to 80 or 80 one, whatever the maximum temperature allowed by the law is. So you're looking at, you know, anywhere between 10 to 20 degrees difference. So that's up for the individual to choose. Do you a floor that feels not cold or do you want to feel a floor that's warm? And I think the most of the people here would are watching today because they want to warm that space up, especially in a basement. So, you know, that's where you want to. To do that with LVP, yeah, absolutely. It makes it really nice and extra comfortable. So the we have a few different types of floor heating available here at WarmlyYours. So when you're shopping for an electric floor heating product for underneath, you want to look for something that is able to be embedded. So that would be our temps own products, either our flex rolls or our loose cable that can be kind of strung back and forth across the floor. So you want to make sure that you're steering clear of our environment flex rolls. Those are designed more for floating floors. So you're looking for something like I said, that can be embedded in self leveling, and we're kind of going to go over a little bit more in depth to why that is. Yeah and the thing is, it's all based on the recommendations of the vinyl Plank manufacturer when you see the word vinyl in the title or in the label of what this product is. That's what makes it different from laminate or what makes it different from engineered wood because it has vinyl in it. We're going to get into why vinyl is such a big deal. A little bit later, you'll see why, but there's a reason why we don't suggest using floating installations with the LVP, and it primarily is because of the warranty restrictions placed on heating by the manufacturer of the LVP. So that's what you need to do is when you're interested in shopping for this kind of LVP, you're going to be wanting to ask specific questions of the manufacturer. What is the maximum temperature allowed? Because some companies will say 85. Some will say 82. Some will say 81. Whatever that number is, you have to keep the temperature below that to comply with their warranty. Also, another thing they'll say is whether the heat needs to be embedded or not. Embedded means that it's covered with self leveling with electricity. So that's one thing you need to look for. You need to look for the word embedded. You also need to look in the Installation Instructions and the warranty coverage to see if there is a distance from the heater to the actual live specified. A lot of instructions that we see for let's say the heat must be separated from the light by a half an inch, which means they're looking for an embedded product and usually, it'll say, embedded in the instruction manual. Also, they have flatness requirements when it comes to installing the floor. They will say that this floor must be installed with a flatness requirement of this amount per 10 feet, or this amount per six feet. If you use a product like environ, which isn't flat, it has wires running through it, then that's probably not going to couple along with your flatness requirement. So we didn't just make this stuff up and say, hey, let's present this. There are reasons why we're saying this is because we've looked a lot of installation manuals. We can't see every installation manual there is. We can't keep track of every installation manual when it comes to all the products that we sell. But what we can do is we can tell you, here are the things you need to look for in your particular product that you're interested in. And you'll also want to know what the r value of the LVT Plank is because you'll see a lot of Velvet planks with pre attached pads, and that is going to ask that's going to answer what? What question is that going to answer, lynn? We have a question. It was from, oh, I need to find my question was, Oh no. 7 from Mark mark, said Ken. Our product be installed under LV t with attached padding. And first of all, attach padding depends on what kind it is. But the overall rule is the r value of the LVT should have an r value of 1 or less. That's what you're looking for. The thicker the padding is, the more insulating it usually is. So if you get a really thick pad, you start to Mount up. You start to ramp up to our value. That's what you're looking for is an rvalue of one or less. So that's one that's another question you're going to want to ask your manufacturer because that's. What you're going to want to find out? Yeah, absolutely. I think a big thing. You'll hear us say today a lot is talk to your manufacturer. It just varies so much depending on I mean, I've even seen it vary depending on color for the manufacturer. So it really is important to be chatting with them and kind of, you know, in communication throughout the project. In the early, early days of elvie, LV usually wasn't as stable. I go to a lot of floor shows and I talked to a lot of the tech guys and they'll say whether their floor can be heated or not. And you know, you'll get into conversations with other people and they'll go, well, those guys don't want you to do this, and those guys don't want you to do that. So it's all that kind of stuff that goes on and shows. But a lot of them say, you know, they love it isn't quite as stable, chemically wise when you start changing thicknesses and changing colors, just like you said. So that's why it's always, always have to ask the manufacturer, hey, you know, is this going to be good with radiant heat? Absolutely so we have a really good cross section here. It's going to really give you a good idea kind of what you're looking at for your installation process. So if you're installing on a concrete slab or concrete slab floor, which is what they did for the project example, we're going to be going over today. First, you want to put down an insulating underlayment. We offer a product called Setzer. It's a synthetic cork that you'll thinset down to the slab. And then from there you would lay out your timezone embedded in that self leveling and then lay out your light. Yeah so a lot of people watching today may not be going over cement. Some people, I think somebody asked the question about a cottage setting that doesn't have a basement. Well, if this were on a, you know, on a wood subfloor because, you know, that's just the way it is with some floors. If it's a wood subfloor, you would obviously from this drawing, delete the concrete subfloor and you would delete the serizawa because Sarasota really isn't needed over a wood subfloor. Sarah's orb is there to isolate the wire from the slab because if you put the wire directly on the slab, the slab is going to pull the heat down and try to heat the slab before it releases the heat going upwards. So that's why you never, ever install electric heating cable directly on top of a slab. That's why the psarras orb is there. Then another question somebody will ask is why don't you use caulk there instead of sarazen? What's the difference between Sarah's orb and caulk? Well, Sarah's orb has twice the r value of caulk the same thickness, and it also is a synthetic product, which means if it's in a basement and it gets wet down there every once in a while, caulk is a natural substance that mold can eat. Whereas Sarah's orb is a synthetic product that does not provide dinner for the mold. So it's very, very important that you keep that in mind. So it's not something you want to do. And also the other reason why we found I found this out about 15 years ago when I first started here. Someone had used caulk and poured self leveling over it, and the caulk just went room like that because caulk expands when it gets wet. Sarah's orb doesn't. So that's why we're saying Sarah's orb in here. If this were an installation over wood, we would have thinset covering the no, we wouldn't. We wouldn't have been set at all. So we would just simply be putting the temps on flex roll on the wood subfloor and then attaching it very, very well and then covering it with a 1 2 inch of self leveling cement that will give you the flat floor so you don't need the concrete here. You don't need the thinset and you don't need to absorb if you're doing a installation over wood. Yes awesome. So, Scott, this is definitely in your wheelhouse. Can you tell us a little bit more about why we are embedding this product versus using a floating floor just going directly over it? Well, you can see that the LVT is getting sad as each picture from top to bottom. It just gets a little more sad at frowns a little bit more over time. And what that is this is a perfect illustration of drape LV. Ht has drape. Drape means it starts to conform to what's under it. So if you took a look at our I'm going to go back. I know some people don't like it when I go back and forth, but I just want to make sure that people see this environ flex role here. You can actually see the wires going back and forth, and you wouldn't want to set the light directly on that because after a while, you can picture that white block in the middle as being the wire and the light would conform to the wire over time, so you'd see all these waves in the floor. That's another reason why you use self leveling because it's going to give you a flat floor that you are not going to see waves and undulations in the flooring. So that's the difference between laminate and LVT. Whether the LV is stone core or whether it is all these other. Polymer records or any of these other cause when you see the word laminate, not laminate, when you see the word vinyl, you need to worry about this frown and turn that frown upside down because that frown is because of drape. So that's one thing, and that's why it's the root of most of our installation requirements besides the instructions from the manufacturer. So check your flatness requirement, make sure that you comply with that and watch out for the drape of the light. Awesome So when looking at an lit or an LVP and kind of picking out which product you're going to use, you want to find one that has no or very minimal backing. And I we kind of addressed this earlier, but a little bit more in depth. One of the things to be looking for is that the entire assembled Plank has an r value of less than 1. And when talking to that four manufacturer, just making sure that their product is compatible with in floor radiant heat and asking them, like we said earlier, about the maximum temperature and that set back temperature right the set back temperature for people that aren't familiar with that on a programmable thermostat, the set back temperature is a temperature that you would set it to like in the middle of the night when no one's on it or in the middle of the day when everybody's at work. So there's no need to heat a floor normally with tile when there's nobody there, so you can drop the temperature to 68 or 70, whatever you want it to be. But some of these manufacturers of this product say you are only allowed to deviate from here's the max temperature. This max temperature maybe 80 two, you're only allowed to deviate two to three degrees per day with this product, which means you're going to be going from 82 down to 79. It's really not worth doing all that programming for three degrees. You just set it to the maximum temperature or a degree less and let it run. So that's what a set back temperature is. You want to ask the manufacturer if they allow set back temperatures. And if they do, what's the limit? Is it 10 degrees? Is it 3 degrees? Is it 15? They don't care. That's what you need to find out, because if they say there's no set back temperature that'll determine the thermostat that you're going to purchase, we're going to talk about that in a little bit. So hopefully that answers that question. And we also need to talk to a question from Richard when he asks, will we need to install a barrier between the mesh and the light? And the barrier is the self leveling? It's not. It's letting the heat through. It's just providing that half inch required barrier. Distance wise, you never want to put anything with our value between the heat and the floor where your feet hit because it doesn't make any sense. If if you're going to this expense and trouble to buy a floor to warm it up. The last thing you want to do is put a blanket over it or something that's going to block the heat from going to where your feet are, so you need to keep that in mind. So hopefully that will answer your question about that, Richard. So very, very good question. So that's one of the things you want to look at when it comes to these light planks. Watch out for the r value. That's very, very important. Awesome and then kind of in that same vein, looking at the temperature limit for LV t, you want to make sure that you are setting that maximum temperature on the thermostat correctly. One of our settings that's very popular is laminate. It maxes it out at 82 degrees. That's a pretty common maximum temperature. Or again, you can use custom and set that custom maximum temperature yourself. Now, the only way to limit your floor temperature is to put a thermostat sensor in the floor. So you need. If you're not interested in buying a WarmlyYours thermostat, you need to make sure you find one that or you need to protect the floor with PSI protection, which is done with our thermostats. So you get that when you buy one of our thermostats, you get the GFC built in and you also need to get one that has a sensor that you can put in the floor if you look at a lot of low voltage thermostats. I'm going to say brand x, which is really, really popular out there. It's round. There are a couple of round thermostats out there and they have leaves on the front and everything like that. Those thermostats normally don't have a floor sensor input, so if you're interested in using a different thermostat than what we sell, you need to make sure you provide GFCI protection to the floor. And you also need to find a thermostat that has a thermostat input for a sensor. So you need to be able to put a sensor in the floor if you're going to comply with the warranty requirements of the max temperature set by the manufacturer of the LVP. So you can't just buy a thermostat because it looks cool, you need to buy one that looks cool. And it has a four sensor input. Very, very important when it comes to this product, and we're always happy to help. If you are looking at a potential thermostat and you're not sure if it would work, just give us a call and we can definitely walk you through it. So our project example used timezone flex roll on concrete slab floor like that cross section we showed earlier and this was done in a bedroom office that was in a basement in Toronto. So the first thing you're going to do when you're kind of planning a project like this or the first thing we recommend doing is reaching out to us for a smart plan, it's going to look something like this. You can just send in a drawing with the dimensions of the area that you want to heat, and we will send something that looks like this back and it's actually going to show you which products we recommend. You know what size flex roll. And then we're also going to show you exactly where to cut and turn it and the exact coverage that you're going to get. And then one thing to point out is that the perimeter of the room is generally not heated. It doesn't usually need to be or not usually standing with your feet directly up against the wall. So that's just one way of many that we can kind of work with you on the smart plan on, you know, making sure that you're getting the coverage you want and the layout that you want. You can always play around with those that perimeter as well. So you really need to when you're doing these installations, it's the more information you can get, the better. That's why we bother doing these webinars is because we want you to make an informed decision as to what brand of product you buy and make sure you buy the right stuff. If you notice here, you can see on this drawing. It says please verify dimensions. And that means once you get the drawing back from us, please make sure that the dimensions have not changed, especially if it's a new construction job where it's, oh, we decided to put a closet over there. Well, if you put a closet over there now, all of a sudden the available square footage on the floor has been reduced and usually been reduced by a lot, which means the product that we are quoting you is probably not going to fit. So if your dimensions change and you add things to the room, when you add things, you are removing available floor space to heat. So the product you are suspect is probably going to be too big. The thing with this electric product is you can never cut it. You cannot cut the heating wire, so you can't just buy a gigantic spool of this stuff and just go, I'm going to use as much and I'm going to cut it off and then we'll be good. You can't do that. You need to make sure that you get the correct size. And remember when you're doing an installation like this, a little too little is better than a little too much because you can always can always kind of rearrange if you have a little too little to put it, where people are for sure going to walk and kind of take it out of areas where people don't walk, which means pull it away from the walls a little bit. But if you have too much product in the room, there's nowhere for it to go. So that's why it's so important to verify the dimensions of this product. Also, when you give us a plan, make sure you mark where the thermostat location is, so we know where to start the product. So that's where that t is in a circle over here. That's where the thermostat is. That's where the product starts. And the triangle on the role itself is the start and the square is the end. So notice how the triangle is always located as close to the t as possible, the non heating leads are 15 feet long. So if you need to move it over here, it usually isn't that big a deal. But you have to remember 15 foot long cable, but is usually five feet up the wall and hanging out some. So it really needs to be within about 10 feet of where the product triangle is on the product itself as opposed to the tee. So you really, really need to watch out for that. So it's very, very important to get us the correct dimensions and also think about what you're trying to do with this product. Are you using it for sole source of heating, which means there is no air vents in this room? This is the only thing supplying the heat. Well, if this is proposed to be the only thing supplying the heat, you need to do a heat loss calculation. And that heat loss calculation is on our website and you can find out if your available square footage is going to generate enough BTUs to heat the air in that particular space. So when you're thinking about sole source of heating in a room, there's also one other little quirk you want to think about when, especially when it comes to what people are always asking is I want to make a three season room, so I want to make a three season room on the back of my house. What product should I use in that three season room to make sure I get some good heat in there? Well, if you were asking me, I would use a product that has no temperature limit, which means a product like tile, because if you have to run tile at 100 degrees, that's fine. It's not going to do anything to the tile. The last thing you want to use in a three season room like that is something that's limited, and that would be this product under LVT because it can only get to 82 or 83 or whatever it is, so it can only get up to 82 degrees. That may not be enough warmth to make that space warm, whereas a tile that you can set to 100 or 99 or whatever it will get to will generate more heat will pass more heat into the room. So you want to think about sole source of heating. And if it is, you try to maximize the heat in that space by using a product that does. And have a temperature limit. What are some products that have temperature limits? Carpet, LVP, laminate stuff like that you want to watch out for? So that is going to be I want sole source of heating, do a heat loss calculation and also choose a product like tile that's going to allow you to heat that space a little bit better. I don't want to go off on that tangent, but those are the questions we get all the time. So it seems like it may be a good idea to share that here while we're talking about plans and filling the space and that sort of thing. It's good information to have. Absolutely so looking at this project overview, like we said, they use the time zone flex role. The total area of the space of the room was 164 square feet in the area that the heated. Obviously we saw that perimeter, you know, that non heated perimeter and things like that. So they actually heated about 129 square feet of that space. The wattage was 1,935 watts, 8.1 amps than it used dedicated 15 amp 240 volt breaker non GFC. We kind of talked about that earlier, so just make sure that you are looking at those power requirements and utilizing the correct breakers for your size project and the operating costs for this was about 8 centimeters an hour. So like we said, this was a home office. They're probably running at about eight hours a day, so you're looking at about $0.67 a day to heat that space. So very important that you do not have a GFI breaker. It needs to be the regular, old fashioned breaker once again because the GFI protection is in the thermostat. Also, by pulling the heat away from the walls where you really don't need it, you're saving upfront costs of purchasing. Purchasing it, you can see we heated about 35 less square feet by doing that, so it's going to cost you a smaller amount you buy. The size is 35 square feet smaller. And then when it comes to running it instead of heating 164 square feet, you're heating 120 nine, so it's going to cost you less to operate. Also, so that's why we go to trouble with these things and try to explain why we do what we do because it's going to measure a good heat output and not give you stuff that you don't need. So that's what's so important when you're making a big decision like this on how you're going to do it. Yeah, absolutely. So you want to make sure that you are testing your system since this is going to be going underneath something permanent, like self level and concrete. You want to make sure that you are putting in a working system before you cover it with that concrete. So we always recommend testing at every stage of that installation, testing it before, during and after every step that you take and utilizing two different products. So can you tell us, Scott, what we're looking at here, the difference and the difference between the O meter and the circuit check? Well, the digital o meter is not an optional item. You need to get one of these before you install the floor. I'm old enough to remember when digital meters cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars, they now cost 20. So there is no reason to use the analog meters with the needles on the front. Needles on the front are great when it comes to stereo amplifiers because it looks really cool when you're listening to the music, but they are not good when it comes to testing floor heating. So this digital o meter under $20 at any big box store and you want to make sure that you get the ones that lets you choose different ohms ratings inside on the front with the knob on the front or a dial, you want to be able to choose 200 and you also want to be able to choose 20 k, and those are the two especially important ones. The 20k reading is done for your thermostat sensor because you test your sensor to before you put it in the self leveling cement and you're going to test your product in 90% of our product tested to 200 range. So the problem is the reason why we go to all this trouble. To say that is because self ranging meters, if it sees your sensor, probably isn't going to see your floor or if it sees your floor heat, it's not going to automatically reset to see your sensor. So the more you spend on a self ranging meter, the more harm you're doing yourself. So it's kind of inverse like to what you would normally think of. I'm going to go get a good meter. OK, the best meter to get four floor heating is a cheap one, not a 500 meter. You want to be able to select those numbers on the front using the dial, so you're going to test it the day you get it. So when you get the product delivered, make sure you test it. Make sure that it's good before you, even before you go to do your installation. Because if you test it the day of the install and you find out something happen to it between us and you, then you're saying, OK, hold on, everybody quit mixing that cement. We need to get a replacement unit because it's got, you know, somebody dropped it somewhere or 10,000 pound weight or an anvil fell on it, you know, so you need to make sure that it's not damaged ahead of time, so you're going to test it before then you're going to lay the product out. You're going to test it again to make sure that it's everything's good before you pour the self leveling and then you're going to test it after the self leveling and the flooring is installed. But in between those times, you're going to be attaching the circuit check because what it is a siren that tells you if you create a short or if you cut the wire and create an open, which means you have no circuit or you have a short circuit. It's always testing that because if you're putting all this stuff down on the floor, you can't sit and hold the meter on the whole time, right? Because you've got to go work over on the other side of the room. So what the circuit check does is it keeps track of that while you're doing other things. So if you're over there and all of a sudden you drop an anvil on the wire and the thing goes wrong, you know, it starts screaming at you. Whatever you just did cause the problem. You need to find out what that is and give us a call and then you need to test it with the O meter. So that's how the two, the two parts actually work together at separate times. You use one here, use one there. So the instructions that come with the product will tell you exactly when to do both and the little label that's on your heating product. There's it's three usually three labels two or three, and one is always located within 3 inches of the end of the Cold lead. And it'll tell you what the ohms are. That number should match within 5% or 10% of the number that you're getting with your meter. So that's how these two are used. That's how they are required. And that's how you're going to have a good installation by just following these simple instructions when it comes to testing. Awesome yeah, that's really good information to have, I think it's always helpful to know specifically why you're doing those 2 because we're not just telling you to test, because we like making your life harder. We like telling you to test so that ideally your life is easier in the long run. I've got a great idea. Let's go out and make him by a meter that they don't really need. We're not like that. We're not going to sell you one either, let's say, since we're not selling it and we're not making you like, go to Walmart just for the fun of it. Right? so unless you're like me and then you just kind of wander stores for no reason. So the installation process for this is going to be, again, very similar to the cross section that we showed earlier. So we're going to walk you through it, starting with the subfloor preparation. You want to make sure that your floor is level. Obviously, the more level, the better. And Scott can kind of elaborate on specifically why or maybe even the dangers of not leveling it first. Well, let me just give you a story of one of the first six months or so I worked here long, long ago. Somebody called and they had just done a big installation of this, of this product in a really old house from the fifties, and they called up and said, I can't understand this. The center of my room is cold, but the outer edges are really hot. Well, you know, I don't have a set of eyes. I can't see where they're standing. I don't have X-ray vision, so I can't see, oh, I can see that you're standing in an 1800s '60s. I don't know that until they tell us what exactly is going on. And I'm thinking, why would the center. Be cold? But the outer edges be warm? Well, that's because the room in the center is about two inches or three inches lower in the center. Because of age, it has turned into a Bowl. And the thing is, the further away the wire gets from the flooring surface, the Colder it is, the less it heats because it's further away. You want the top of your flooring to be within an inch to an inch and a half of the wire. That's why we specify half inch of self. Leveling the thickness of your product is going to put you right in that sweet spot. So the center of this room was about two inches, 2 and 1/2 inches deep, and the outer edges were 3/8 of an inch deep. So the outer edges were nice and warm. The center was cold, and that's what happened. That's why you youself level. You get the spot level first and then you start working because that keeps the wire the same distance from the top of your flooring all the way across the room. So very, very important. I'm glad you brought that up. Awesome So looking at then the underlayment as the next step. So first, we recommend dry fitting that or making sure that you'll be able to get the entire floor covered with it and you're going to know where you're putting what down. And then you can just spread that thinset on the concrete slab and you'll lay out the Sarah's orb using a weighted roller to really help that stairs or adhere to the thinset. Make sure that it is going to be, you know, on there really good. And then we do recommend lifting up the stairs. Rub a little bit to check for the adhesion of the things that just to make sure that it is down properly and everything is looking good before moving on. Yeah, make sure you use modified thinset to do this modified since that is the job is the product you want for the job? Absolutely so the Tamsen flex roll stage, this is the fun stage actually laying out the heat according to that smart plan. So you will lay it out with the cable side down. You want the mesh facing up, ideally just to give that cable a little bit of extra protection. You know that way it doesn't. I don't know how much that mesh helps, but it definitely is better than just laying the cable up and kind of out for the elements. So you'll cut that mesh between the loops to turn the mat. Make sure that you are cutting the mesh and not the cable, and I think you will hear us say that a lot here. You never, ever want to cut the actual heating cable itself. You want to cut that green mesh and you want to cut in between, know, an open loop so you're not anywhere near the actual heating cable itself. And then from there, once you've laid it out, according to that smart plan, you'll attach it to the subfloor and make sure that you are attaching it really well. So it doesn't float up in that self. Leveling itself leveling is incredibly dense, so anything that is in it tends to float to the surface, at least in part. And eventually you'll start seeing some bumps and ridges on this surface. That's supposed to be super smooth. So make sure that you are adhering this really well. Using usually hot glue guns work really well. We've seen people do staple guns, making sure that you are sampling the mesh only and nowhere near the actual cable itself, or double sided tape can also be used. Yeah, the most important thing is to when you're laying this product out is to make sure it's wire side down because that way. When you attach the mesh very well to the sub floor, that's going to hold the wires down because everything is going to try to float so that you're going to watch out for that. And if some of it does float, make sure that you just don't have somebody come in and go. There's some spots over there. I can see their little bumps you grind them down? Well, those little bumps are the heating wire that's floated to the top. And as soon as you start grinding heating wire, you're in big trouble because you're creating a bad spot. So you don't ask me why we're bringing this up because we get calls all the time from people who, oh, you know what? I forgot to attach it to the subfloor, and now it's all up here. The only cure for that is to then float another layer. So we're just trying to save you that misery of, you know, grinding the wire away or doing other things that aren't associated with making sure that it's held down very, very well. Hot glue is the best for that. Absolutely so, Scott, a lot about our sensors and specifically, you know why they are so important. Can you tell us about the stage of the installation? Well, yeah, the art installation manual has a great. It has a picture just like this about how to put the sensor in. And just yesterday I got a call from somebody who said or an email. I took very, very good care and I made sure that I got that sensor out into the middle of the floor so I could sense the temperature, know I'm going right and then you don't want the sensor out in the middle of the floor. You want the sensor six inches into the edge, and that's a perfect place for it. As long as it's not where the sun hits and it's not under a plant or something that's going to trap heat. So you need to watch out where, where? Find out where the sun is going to be hitting this room and make sure the sensor isn't there because that spot will be warmed by the sun. That floor will be really warm, so that sensor will say, oh, this is really warm, I don't need to turn anything on. Meanwhile, the floor on the other side of the room is 50 degrees, so you need to watch out for that. So it's very important where you put the sensor and you don't need the sensor in the center of the room. You just need to get it somewhere where it's not getting hit by the sun 6 to 8 inches into an open loop. You see the blue wire there. That's the wire that is attached to the mesh. You do not want to run it over the wire. You want to run it in the open loop. And that's what an open loop looks like. When you're doing this installation, please make sure that you don't go, hey, I've got the thermostat sensor box. I'll just save that later for the electrician. No, no, no. You need to open that sensor, that thermostat box up because that's where the sensor is, and you need to give it to the person who is laying the product down on the floor so they can put the sensor in just like this. Also, you need to make sure that the sensor wire never goes up the same conduit as the non heating leads that's against the National Electric code, probably against your local code. And it's also going to make the sensor not work at all. So it needs to be in its own conduit. Or if conduit isn't required for low voltage wires in your locality, then it can just run up the open space in the wall, but it cannot go in the same conduit. We're going to show you a picture of that here a little bit, so that's why we bring this up so we don't deal with and people say, well, why I want to put this in the sense. I want to put this sensor in the same conduit as a non heating leads. I'm going to do that. Then all we can do is say, when those wires are energized, you're going to get induction from those high voltage wires. And it's going to obliterate the signal coming from the sensor. So that's why you don't do it. And this is what's going to happen. So always watch out for that. And we have a good diagram coming up here of that. So looking at the self leveling concrete stage at this point, you should have been testing your system. We always recommend testing it before actually beginning pouring that concrete as well. And then making sure again before pouring that you have secured these really, really well to that subfloor. And then you can begin that self leveling for you're looking for at least 3/8 of an inch to about a 1 2 inch layer of self leveling. That tends to be, I think, the most common recommended and is definitely what we recommend for our product specifically. I know some flooring manufacturers do require a little bit more or they say you could even do a little bit less, but we would always recommend at least 3/4 of an inch to a half inch. Yeah, I've done a bunch of jobs like this, and the thing you want to make sure is that for the small jobs, you can probably do the self leveling yourself or with a buddy. But if you're doing a room that's like 120 square feet or 200 square feet, you are definitely going to need a couple other people to do the self leveling. You're going to be pouring the self leveling on the floor, making sure that it's the right thickness, that sort of stuff using not using self leveling tools. OK you don't want to use spikes. We just had a guy a couple of weeks ago that where spikes because he always wears spikes when he does self leveling. Well, he had never done. For any job and you can't wear spikes when you're walking over electric flooring and cable, that floor was damaged severely by the spikes, damaging the wire so you can't use spikes and you can't use the floats that have the metal pins that you can use for height adjustment. You can't use those metal pins as you'd rake back and forth. You need to use a rubber squeegee to do this work over the top. So that's where you're going to be busy doing that. You're going to have somebody that's running the self, leveling back and forth, and you're going to have somebody mixing the self leveling for you on these large jobs. So that's what you're going to need to plan to do. So if you're going to be doing a large job, it's going to be on a couple of buddies or maybe three buddies. If it's just you, then you might be able to in a 20 or 30 square foot job. You can probably do that yourself. Anything more than that. You need to make sure that you have some help. So those are just the kind of things we strongly suggest that if you've never done self leveling before to watch a couple of videos online because we know you can become an expert on anything by watching YouTube videos until you find out that the 10,000 hours of practice really is better than a YouTube video. But anyway, so you want to watch out for that kind of stuff? Don't use the common self leveling tools when it comes to work over working over electric heat. And then moving on to the installation of the look at actually the flooring itself, which is kind of the fun part, so you want to make sure that self leveling has dried and that it complies with the moisture level requirements from the flooring manufacturers. So again, this is another reason why you want to be in contact with your flooring manufacturer asking these questions. And then we also recommend following all the acclimation requirements for that specific flooring and following all installation directions. So once you have properly installed that light, we know it's exciting and you really want to feel the warmth, but make sure that you are waiting to power up the system until that self leveling has actually cured, not just dried but actually cured. So you'll want to hold on to the packaging to check those care times and make sure you're waiting the proper amount of time. Yeah and also one thing we almost forgot to mention is when you're doing self leveling, you need to look on the self leveling bag and see if a primer is required, because if a primer is required, you need to use it. And the best time to put the primer down is to put it on the Sarah's orb in this case. So you have the sarraj's orb down. You then use the primer over the top of it, and then you would put the heating cable down. So people ask, well, should I put the primer down first and then the heating cable on top of it or the heating cable down? And then the primer over the top of that, you should put the primer down before you put the heating cable on top. Because remember, you don't have to really worry about any damage to that primer from the electric heat because that wire is going to be surrounded by self leveling. So you're not really going to have a really hot spot to worry about anything getting damaged. So you need to make sure that you use the primer that is required on the bag. Also, people go, Oh yeah, just like you said, Lynn, this is going to be great. I'm going to turn it on now. Don't turn it on until it's cured because you can damage the actual construction or the makeup of the self leveling by heating it too fast. So that's one thing you really, really want to watch out for. Yes, for sure. And then this is the drawing. I think that you were referencing Scott. Can you kind show us the conduits and everything like that? Yeah, you have the one conduit delivering power to this thermostat and then you have the wires coming up. One of the conduits to that 2 by 4 box single gang box. And then the other conduit, if it's required by your local code, is for the low voltage sensor wire. So that's how that setup is done. So very, very important that you can do that if you have a bunch of mats that or a bunch of rolls that you're going to be connecting together, what you can do is you can put a junction box down here at the bottom of the wall and run those multiple mats to that junction box and then make a connection with one wire going from here to here, as opposed to trying to get three or four wires up that conduit and try to make multiple connections behind the thermostat. So if you have more than one mat, you can usually get two connections done in the back of a thermostat in a normal box. If you have more than two products, you need to make sure that you get yourself a junction box there at the bottom so you can make your multiple connections there and hook it up to a piece of rollbacks and run the rollbacks up to the thermostat with your connections there. So you need to watch out for that. So that's how you want to do that connection. Also remember, the thermostats can only handle 15 amps. That's all they can switch, which is about 120 square feet when it comes to 120 volt product, or it's about 240 square feet when it comes to 2,4 D volt product, so it makes it easy to remember at 15 watts per square foot. That's a good guideline. So if your floor is over 120 square feet, you are probably not going to be able to attach that to one thermostat. So please keep that in mind. thermostat can only switch 15 amps at a time. This is definitely a good point, and if you are unsure if your project is 15 amps or more, you know, obviously we should be. You'll probably know if you've gotten a smart plan from us, we'll show you which you know, we'll tell if you really need to get like a power module or something like that. But if you're unsure, just reach out and we can definitely help you figure it out. And then looking at the actual thermostat itself again, making sure that you are aware and setting the temperature limit, I know I kind of feel like we've beat that horse, but I'd like to make sure that we're all aware of the temperature limits. There's no point in damaging your nice new floor just because you weren't aware of something small like that. So you can, depending on which thermostat you get, the temperature limit setting is going to be a little bit. You know, it's different depending on each thermostat, but each one is pretty simple. We usually recommend going with our InspirED touch thermostat for the majority of projects. But Scott, like you had said earlier, if there's something that you really are going to set it and forget it and you don't need to be changing that temperature or programming it any way. The intrust is a really good one for that. It's just going to be basically on off and let you control the temperature of the floor. Yeah, it's and it's kind of similar to doing hardwood. I did a really big heated hardwood floor here locally a few years ago, and that hardwood floor has kind of like the same rules when it comes to at a maximum temperature. It is also not allowed to have a setback. So what that homeowner does because a setback is not allowed, it has to be kept within two or three degrees each day is at the beginning of the heating season. If the floor is starting at 66 degrees, they set the thermostat for 69. Then the next day they set it for 72. Then the next day after that, they set it for 75 and they go up 3 degrees every day until they get to the maximum temperature, which for therefore I think was 82. And then it stays that way forever until the end of the heating season. And then they go from 82 to 70 nine, then wait. And the next day they go 79 to 76 and then the next day, so on and so on. So always keeping within the three degree rule. And I've been over to that house just recently in the middle of the winter during heating season. There's no gapping going there. There's no problems with the floor whatsoever because the floor during the winter is at one temperature the whole time. So it's actually subjected to less temperature fluctuation in the winter when the heat's there, because the heater keeps it the same temperature all the time as opposed to the summer when the room is 80 degrees, or if the room is 75 degrees or whatever. There's more contraction and expansion in the summer with humidity and all the other stuff that goes on then happens in the winter. So that's one thing you really, really want to look out for, and it's kind of funny. The most expensive floors require the least expensive thermostat, and that is the intrust. That's the set it and forget it. No setback. You set it and it will keep that temperature forever until you change it again. So that's what you really, really want to do. And the key with the interest is it has a floor sensor. You need to make sure that you get that floor sensor installed. Absolutely for all of them, make sure that we're getting that floor sensor installed. So looking at the finished project, I think it looks awesome. It's a beautiful floor. It's a beautiful room itself and that's going to be nice and comfortable, especially with it being in a basement. I basements are often hard to heat. It's hard to push warm air down below the surface. So having air that's going to heat, that's going to be rising itself and heating that room itself. It's a nice way to make that a little bit more comfortable. Yeah, we had a question from Joe. He asked, how well does it stand up to roller traffic from an office chair? And there's an office chair right here in this picture? That is a question you'd have to ask your manufacturer because all we are. We're just supplying heat. I don't know how well their product stands up to rollers. They should be able to answer that. They may have even done a Robinson test, which a Robinson test is kind of like one of these chairs only instead of it going back and forth, it just goes around, around, around and around, and it does it thousands and thousands of times, and it'll tell you what kind of Robinson test result that particular flooring has. So we can't answer that question, but at least give you an idea that you should ask the manufacturer if they have a Robinson test and if it's Robinson tested, is it commercial? Is it light commercial? Is it home, whatever that is, and they will give you an idea whether it can stand up to rollers on the chair or not. So very, very good question. Thank you for asking that, Joe. Yes, thank you. That's something you never really think about until it's too late and you've gotten your floor damaged. So the project cost for this total came out to 2,549 MSRP. So again, they use that 240 volt flex roll, the Wi-Fi thermostat circuit check and Sarah's orb. All right. Awesome, so that's all we have. Are there any questions or anything did we go over all of our previously asked questions? Scott, those are all the questions that we had submitted ahead of time. Awesome So while we kind of finish up, we have some housekeeping things to go over. If you think of any questions, feel free to continue asking them. We are more than happy to continue chatting. So our next webinar actually is talking about wood floors, so that'll be on Thursday, June 9th again at 1:00 PM right here on Chromecast. So feel free to join us for that. And we also have daily trainings, so these are again here on crowd cast. Generally, we have at least once a day, sometimes twice a day, often hosted by me or Scott. So they're just usually short five 10 minute trainings about whatever topic de Jour is. And if you are interested in something in particular, you can always hop in and we're happy to talk about really any topic. It doesn't even necessarily need to be the presentation for the day. Yeah, we do these on Facebook, too. Oh, that's great. Yes, thank you. So the monthly promotion for May is 20% off of our lava radiant heating panels. These are basically the new age, the new fancy radiant heating. What's the what's the word space heaters? That's it. A lot safer, a lot more comfortable, warm, natural feeling heat. So if you're interested in our radiant heat panels, feel free to check those out. Yeah, like 10 years ago, I was at a friend of mine house and I asked her, I said, do you have beautiful tile floor in a three season room? I go, do you have heat under? Here they go. You can heat tile. I go, yeah, that's what we do. We we actually heat tile. Well, what? What can I do? Because I don't have, I can't, you know, I don't want to lift my tile up and do it over again. So then we go, you know, we should probably sell products like this for people that didn't know that floor heating was available. And these are great for people that Miss the boat that didn't realize that we had for heating or in rooms where they need a little bit of extra btus, maybe a bathroom, you know, that doesn't have an air vent or something. So those are great products for people that have missed the boat when it comes to floor heat or just need a little more oomph in that room to get it nice and warm? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, there's a lot of people that are, you know, not interested in tearing up their floor, so it's a good option there. So we'll be sending you an email shortly after this asking about your experience today during the webinar. We would love to hear your comments and suggestions. We want to make sure that we are, you know, we're doing these for you. So if there's a topic in particular you want to learn more about or there's something that you'd like us to do differently or that you really liked that we did today. Let us know so we can make sure to tailor these for you. And of course, we've said that many times we are here. If you have questions, we do offer 24-7 technical support, of which Scott is a large parts and we are more than happy to answer questions and make sure that you feel confident with your product and going into your installation job. So give us a call, shoot us an email and of course, our website has a ton of information. It's a treasure trove of anything you could want to know about heat essentially, so feel free to check that out as well. Lots and lots of videos, lots of videos. And one thing to keep in mind is we kind of made a joke about YouTube videos. How everybody comes an expert. After you watch a couple, the videos that you watch are never a substitute for the installation manual. So whenever you're doing one of these jobs. And you go, man, I'm wondering, what should I do here or what should I do there, even if you're not buying the product? All I need to do is let us know and we'll send you the installation manual or you can find it on our website. We'll be glad to send it to you because that will answer all you know, it's the source of information about the product. So if you look at that and it's not war and peace either, I mean, I had to read one piece in high school. It was like 600 or 800 and 900 pages or whatever it was because I grew up in Indiana and the guy that wrote war and peace is from Indiana general Lew Wallace, I think or is that ulysses? I can't ever remember because I faked reading both of them. So I hope my teacher is not watching. I don't think either of those are it. I have no idea. So I think Lew Wallace was he was from Indiana and he I can't remember just knocking on that time, that tangent. So thank you so much for joining us. Obviously, we always have a ton of fun doing these, and we love having all your questions and knowing that you're getting some information out of this. So until next time, we hope that you will stay warm and be radiant. Thanks, everybody. Bye thank you.