Installing TempZone Cable Floor Heating System

Hello. Today we're going to be talking about installing our heating cable system in the basement of this house behind me, so come on in, and we'll get started.

Now that we've adhered the CeraZorb® to the floor, we're going to set up the perimeter of the heating area in this specific room. What I need to do is attach the double-sided tape to the CeraZorb®. Once I put the double-sided tape down, I'm then going to put the cable guide strips down onto them, and that will create our barrier for this wall. Now that we've got the double-sided tape on the CeraZorb®, at this point we're going to pull the red backing off of the double-sided tape. Once we've marked the perimeter of our heated space with our double-sided tape, we're now going to take out our cable fixing strips, which are here in a box, and there are 30 per box.

That coincides perfectly because they are about a foot long, and there is 30 feet of tape in each roll. If you are getting a roll of tape, you should equate that to a box of cable fixing strips. If you look at the cable fixing strip, you can see it's a 1-sided device. If you turn it this way, it doesn't work very well. What you want is the rounded side to be facing the wall or the unheated area. When you're ready to put the strips onto the double-sided tape, it may be easy to assemble as many as you can in advance, because they're a little bit easier to click together while you're standing up than when you're working on the floor. Now that we've got the backing off of the tape, we're going to go ahead and put the strips down onto the double-sided tape.

Taping the Cables in the Heating System

One of these strips is about a foot long. The idea is to do 1 strip at a time even though they're put together because what that'll do is to help you keep it straight. All right, what we have here is our cable on a spool. This cable is a 435-foot cable, and that will fill the entire area here. What we'll do is go ahead and take the plastic wrap off and start setting it out. When you get the cable out of the spool, the first thing you want to do is to test it with a digital ohmmeter. The ohm value is located on the UL label. What we want to do is to make sure that we’re within 5 to 10% of what the value is on the label, so we're going to test this with a digital ohmmeter right now.

Next thing we're going to do is to test between the ground and the red. We should have a 1 or an OL or an OF there. That is telling us that there is no continuity between the ground and this part of the center core wire. We're now going to test the black wire to the ground. This is giving us the same reading on the digital ohmmeter, so it tells that this roll is good to put in. Now we're ready to actually install the cable. If you take a look at the cable here, you can see that this is the heating portion of the cable. This is the splice, and this is the non heating cold lead. This cold lead is actually nonheating. It doesn't get warm at all. This is the heating wire. The splice and the heating wire all have to be buried in thin-set or self-leveling.

Now we can get an idea of where the splice is going to be sitting above the CeraZorb®. At this point we're going to have to cut the CeraZorb® out, and that will allow the splice to go down and be covered by thin-set. Now we notice the way the splice is going to be sitting in the floor, we can then cut around the splice cutting through the CeraZorb®. Then, we're going to pull the CeraZorb® away, so the splice will sit down into the CeraZorb®. One very, very important point is do not cut the wire with the blade. If the blade cuts through the splice or damages the outside of the wire, please give us a call at 800-875-5285, 24/7. Now that we've got the cut out in the CeraZorb® for the splice, I'm going to use some tape just to hold the whole assembly in place, so I can start pulling the cable.

The important thing when you're pulling this cable is to not pull up on it. The strength of the tape is in the shear resistance, which means pulling it directly from the side. If you pull it straight at a low angle, the tape will stay in place, and the strips will stay attached to that tape. Our end cap is stopping in the middle of a run, so we do the same thing that we did for the splice. We're going to mark the location of it, and we're going to cut the spot out where it's going to rest, so now I've used some tape to hold it in place. Now that we have the cable laid out in the way we want it, we are going to take some masking tape, the smaller the better, you don't want it too thick. Right now we have about an inch thick tape here, and we're going to tape the wire down every 2 to 3 feet to hold the wire in position while you're troweling over it or to hold it down if you're going to be covering it with self-leveling.

Measure Ohms by Testing with the Ohmmeter

Now that we have laid the cable out on the floor and secured it to the floor, now is the time to take the next ohm measurement. Once again, we're going to test it just like we did before. We're going to test from core wire to core wire and going to write that number down. Hopefully that number is the same as it was when we took it out of the box, and this one is. Next step is to go from one of the core wires to the ground, and the next thing we're going to do is we're going to do the same test going from black to ground. Before we cover the cables with thin-set, we always want to make sure that we test it with the digital ohmmeter like we've shown you how to do, and now it's time to install the circuit check device. If you take a look at the circuit check device, you can see that this first of all is a 240 volt roll because it says 240 on the sticker. It also says 240 on the UL listing label, and our cables are red and black which signifies 240 volts.

What we're going to do is to line up the black wire with the black wire, the ground with the green, and we're going to put the red into the red terminal. Once we have that ready to go, just turn the unit on, and it's nice and quiet which means the cable is in good condition. Now that we've got the splice buried and all of the heating wire buried under thin-set, we have to get the wire into the wall. What you need to do is to follow your local electrical code to see if it requires the use of conduit in the wall or if it does not. Our local code requires that the high-power wire that sends power from the thermostat to the floor requires the use of conduit. What we've done now is we've got the conduit started; we've attached a fish wire to that conduit. We're going to pull this fish wire up, and it's going to bring the conduit up to the thermostat box.

Buying the Right Thermostat Box

When you're buying your thermostat box, please make sure that you buy a 4 by 4 extra deep box to mount that thermostat in. You'll need a single gang mud ring to attach your thermostat to that 4 by 4 box. Now we have our conduit pulled out of the wall. This will allow us to attach the conduit to the 4 by 4 box when we install it. Now that we can see we have a little bit of extra flexible conduit here, what we're going to do is to cut this off and we're going to attach it here. Then, we're also going to use an approved bushing to put it around the edge because these do get sharp, and we do not want to damage the cable as we pull it up through the conduit. Now what we've done is we've shortened the conduit, and we have the cable sticking out.

Finishing the Floor Heating Installation Job

We've got the fitting here ready to go into the 4 by 4 box. We're then going to take the label and attach it here, so that there's always a label attached, so the customer knows what the length of the cable is, what the ohms are, that sort of thing. Now that we have this installed, we'll go ahead and put the tile down. Then, at that point, we'll test the cables again to make sure that everything is good. If they test good after the tile is down, we're done. Here we are with the finished product. You can see we have a nice, beautiful tile floor installed, and the basement is now finished. What we started with was a bare, concrete slab, insulated that concrete slab with CeraZorb®. We then installed electric heating cable on top of the CeraZorb® and covered it with self-leveling cement.

Then, the tilers came in and got to work and got the tile all put down. Once the tile was installed, the electrician hooked all the cables up to the main electrical system and to the thermostat, and here we are with a finished, beautiful basement. If you have any more questions about installing electric heating cable anywhere in your home, feel free to give us a call at 800-875-5285, or you can check us out 24/7 at www.WarmlyYours.com. Thank you so much for watching.