Installation Tips for Pavers with Snow Melt Systems

We all live in. Here we are. Hello, and thank you for joining us today for our monthly webinar entitled installation tips for pavers with our snow melting systems. My name is Kerilyn. I'm a national accounts manager at WarmlyYours. And joining me here today, my colleague, a member of our WarmlyYours tech support team or as we like to call it, the Merlot army. Say hello, Scott. Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask by pressing the Ask a Question button at the bottom of the screen or simply type in the sidebar chat. We have a couple of people who submitted questions ahead of time, so we'll try and touch on them throughout the presentation or certainly address them at the end of the webinar. That way we can hear all the questions, reinforce what might have been shared and perhaps make it a better learning experience for everyone. So what's going to be covered today in our webinars? Get well, I'm give me 1/2 because I want to make sure that we're broadcasting. I'll refer to our Facebook people. It's we're real live in living color, that's for sure. Yeah so while he's doing that, I can go on ahead and keep us on track with just our timeline. We're looking to keep this under an hour today, but we're going to be talking about our snowmelt system. Give an example of a project that we did locally here with the walkway project going over some installation steps. And then last but not least, we're going to talk a bit about our controls. So without further ado, let's go on ahead and just jump right in and get started. OK all right. So there are different types of radiant heating products that we offer here. And WarmlyYours. What you're looking at is some of the green stuff for our outdoor applications. We have our snow melt table and our snow melting mat again for outdoor applications, the outdoor systems, they're designed to be embedded in concrete, asphalt or under pavers. They're capable of evenly heating the surface of your project to melt snow and ice from driveways, walkways, sidewalks and more. And with the right combination of sensors and controls, they can also be designed to turn on automatically. Now, I oftentimes on the sales side of things, and I'm sure in tech you get this question to Scott, but I get asked can it be installed under gravel? And what say you gravel? No first of all, it doesn't comply with the requirements of the National Electric Code and also it gravel can wear away over time. If you've ever gone and driven down a gravel driveway that's 5 or 10 years old, you'll see that it's rutted where the wheels are going. And that's exactly the reason why you can't put electric heating cable under that, because eventually after time, those ruts get deeper and deeper and deeper until finally you're going and actually driving on the cable itself. All right. Great points. So that's a no no no under gravel. All right. So moving on to our focus of the day, when installing our snowmelt system for pavers, you can use either our snow melt cables or mats. You just simply spool out our loose cable for areas with odd angles diagonal spaces or circular designs or for stairs, areas that would call for a little more flexibility. Whereas for most larger or straightforward areas like driveways or walkways or some porches with our mats, now the mats, they may be a little higher on the price point, but they're pre spaced for you at a 3 inch spacing. So they can really work well for even coverage in a smooth install. Just coming from the sales side of things, I wanted to know your cost of labor on the front end or the back end. It's something to consider when comparing the two with the labor of the install of the cable as opposed to that of the mat. But I just thought it was something noteworthy to mention. Generally we advise you don't exceed a thickness of 2 and 1/2 inches when it comes to the pavers you use in your project, you'll want to keep that in mind. The thicker you go with the pavers, the longer it may take to heat. You have some insight you might want to share with us on the technical side. Scott yeah, we recommend 2.5 inches because we know it works well and it's also it's not too thick to keep it from melting and it's not too thin to make it unstable. So 2 and 1/2 inch maximum is a good temperature. And if you go to 2.6 or 2.75 inch depth, the system is not going to completely fail. It's just going to start becoming less responsive and it's going to make that surface cooler and cooler. So there's a lot of things that affect the temperature of the final product and that is the spacing of the wire. The further the wires are apart, the more the less watts per square foot you have, the closer the wires are together, the more watts per square foot you have. And the heat only travels about an inch and a half to two inches through from the cable itself. So if you start getting your pavers being four or five, six inches thick, all of a sudden now the heat is not going to get to the top surface because it's simply just the cable is too far away from the surface to get it warm. So that's the reason why we suggest that 2.5 is you're going to get good results as the thickness increases. Your your results may vary and they will probably get a little bit poorer, but it doesn't mean it'll fail. Right well, those are great points and Thanks for pointing that out. And if you have questions like this, that's why we're here from the sales staff to, again, the tech support side, just give us a call and we can kind of talk with you about the specifics because every project is unique. So now if you're installing with pavers or a top of an existing concrete, we have a new product and it's available for use with our snow melting cables. I'm going to say this and make sure I get it right because it's new and it's a long one. We're calling the product snow melt, embeddable attachment grid for pavers and existing concrete. And I wonder why we're doing that? Because we want to make sure we're being specific and we want to make sure that exactly what you can use it for. It's basically a framework to attach those cables with zip or cable ties to help maintain that proper spacing like Scott was talking about. It's a three foot wide roll. That's 50 feet long and with a 1 inch by 1 inch square grid. So that will allow for quick cable installation. It's lightweight, it's durable, and it has a high degree of bidirectional expansion. Can you share with us what that means? Got the bidirectional expansion. That means when you get it in place, it means you can't pull it apart very well in either direction. So there's different grades of this material. Some of them are stronger one direction than they are or the other. So there's reinforcements with one direction and no reinforcement to the other. So they're strong in a certain direction, but maybe they can pull apart in the opposite direction. This has got the same strength both directions. So if you tie it down in the Four spots where the beginning and the end and then every so often as you put it down, it's going to give you a fairly rigid product to tie to tie the cables to. A little bit earlier, you referred to the price difference between the cable on cable on the mat as opposed to loose cable. Well, when you're dealing with loose cable, you're actually going to set this stuff out and then you're going to manually root the cable at three inches or 4 inch spacing and then tie it down with tie wraps. So it's going to be more time consuming than the product that comes already spaced for you on the rolls. So just keep that in mind. You are going to save some money up front on the cost. And if you don't have high labor costs, then cable is a great solution to save some money. Takes a little bit longer to install, but it's a little bit cheaper. So this grid is it gives you it's really helpful on stairs for pre-existing concrete stairs because on pre-existing concrete stairs normally you install the heat cable on top of the stairs and then you cover it with a cap or with a paver or with a limestone cap, something like that. That's an inch or two thick. So this gives you something to tie it down. So what you do is you attach this to the stair or the ramp or whatever. You're the pre-existing thing that's there. You attach it to that. And then you tie the cable to it. It gives you something to towel to attach the cable, because otherwise you can't just place the cable on the stairs and hope it stays there. It's just going to just fall off. So that's what this that's what this stuff is. Therefore, this is what you attach the cable to. It allows you to space the cable appropriately. Right now, she asks with a smile, already knowing the answer, I know that our focus is not asphalt today, but I'm just playing advocate here. Scott, can we install this with asphalt? No, it's not temperature rated to be installed in asphalt, but our product, the much better design is the cable on mesh that's already there because you can make it into panels and you can put it down there. So this product you wouldn't really be using for asphalt because you don't have the time to attach the cable to it and get it in place while the asphalt truck is there, you want to do that with the mats? That's a great question. And this stuff is not something that you'd want to use if you're pouring concrete either, because normally our cables on mesh, the squares in the mesh of our product on the rolls is big enough to accommodate the concrete flowing through. So not only just the liquid concrete, but the aggregate that's mixed in there, the rocks and stuff like that with this product that holes are a little bit too small. So if you were actually pour concrete through it, it would strain the rocks and keep them in the upper layer, allowing all the liquid concrete to go down. So it's not recommended for that either. So that's why we're here today to talk about it, where it's best used, and that's with papers. You got it. All right. And I should note that it can now be found on our website and also on the new product on the snow melting cable product page, I think under accessories. So you can read more about the properties and some of the things that Scott had just touched on here. All right. So across sections, they can be pretty helpful to picture exactly how to lay out your project. So here you see, if you're installing your pavers, you're going to start with the 4 to 8 inches of crushed gravel. For a good base layer, you're going to lay out your frame of your attachment grid. You're going to fix the cable to the attachment grid, and then you're going to finish with your sand or mortar and then finally apply your pavers. And again, you'll want to make sure that those pavers are no thicker than, what, 2.5, 2 and 1/2 inches. There we go. All right. Moving right along. So before we leave this one, I would like to make a point that I even asked if it can be applied on exterior ramps and tops of stair landings and. Yes, so, Ivan, so hopefully we answered your question on how that would be done. You would tack this down to the existing surface and then use this to tie that off to. So very good question. Ivan, thank you so much for asking. Yeah, thank you for asking. And Thanks for catching this, Scott. Oh, you're welcome. Oh, man, this is truly life. There we go. All right. So moving right along now. So there was a local project, a customer did here in Chicago and good old us surveying. We get some great pictures where there were some under paver application installed. Were you at this project, scott? I was not. No, you were not. OK well, we're going to all take a look together here just to kind of look at the project overview of what was involved. So this looks like basically one of our electrical overviews. It's pretty much what you get when you get your design back from us along with your quotation, even when you purchase your materials, this would be in the boxes along with your installation instructions. It shows you exactly what you're using for your project, the type of system, the dimensions or the area square footage overview of your project. Basically, even the power requirements here, this project has a total of 75 amps drawn and you can see the voltage, even the operating costs. So with this information you're electrician or if you are the electrician, you can go out and you can start buying the DFB circuit breakers, the Breakers for the control, that sort of thing. Scott for outdoor heating, what do our viewers need to keep in mind when it comes to the GFP circuit breakers versus the GFI or the regular breakers? So the terminology that a lot of people that don't have never done this before say, OK, well I have gfci breakers for this. Well, gfci breakers are for indoor applications. GFP breakers which are 30 milliamps trip instead of five milliamps trip are for outdoors or ground fall equipment protection or a ground. Protection for equipment. You'll see at GVP or PPE. They're interchangeable. But if you look here at the required breakers, you can see that there's a breaker specified for each cable that was done in the install. And that's to what you want to do is you want to keep each cable on a separate breaker because if there's ever a problem with the one cable, let's say somebody drops a wheelbarrow on it or somebody damages the wire with a rake or with a shovel. That would trip one breaker, but the rest of your system would work. That's why you don't put it all on one giant breaker. Because if you have a problem in one of the 10 mats or one of the eight match or whatever it is, the whole system will shut down. And you don't want that. That's why you put them on individual breakers, because if something happens to one product, the other products are still going to work. So that's why we do that, because you don't want your system, you can deal with the system that's compromised. But dealing with a system that doesn't work is a whole different thing. So please note that you will need keep breakers and that one of the Breakers specified here is a non GFI control circuit that's the 120 volt power that's supplying the controller. So the controller needs to have this 120 volts so it can think, so it can turn the system on and off. So that's for. If you have any questions about breakers, feel free to give us a call. But GFP is what's required for outdoors and GVP is not the same as gfci. Awesome very good deal. Thank you. OK so moving on into the smart plan, that walkway here, we wanted to basically show you what that installation plan is going to look like. This is what they got for this project. It looks like they had some nice runs here. We use some mats and then actually an area on the right, you can see there in red we had some stairs involved, so that's where that cables used. It's definitely a nice looking project. I love our design team. They literally work on these plans day and night, so you don't have to do any guesswork in the field. You can double check dimensions again, all the electrical requirements ahead of time. And what they essentially use is that list of products from our catalogs, right? So when someone sends us a plan, our designers, they create designs with prefabricated rolls. So why do we have the rolls already made? Because you can place your order right away. We don't do custom lengths. We literally take stock sizes, send them out to you with a custom design. That way you can double check your work. You can share any details that may change like dimensions, get a new drawing if necessary, all prior to starting your project. Because at the end, you want to know ahead what products to purchase, what size is to best fit for your install. Now typically in the design, you'll see what you saw on the prior page. How many rules, the how many rolls excuse me, the name of the job again amperage, wattage, voltage, all kinds of good info there. Circuit breakers needed this being the case. We definitely stand by. I do. I know Scott does the believes that those smart plans are the way to go. You don't have to try and figure out most of those job details. And our team does the plan for you. Now, Scott, I just want to take a moment and kind of shift our focus really quick to the stairs there on the right side of the plan. As a member of our tech support team, I'm sure there are some things that are helpful to consider regarding stair designs, like handrails and helpful measurements to provide when getting a plan. Can you kind of walk us through that? What's important for our viewers to know when it comes to stairs? Well, I just want to first reiterate what you said. If this is your first time doing one of these jobs, don't try to figure it out yourself. Just send us a drawing. And our sales reps like Carolyn will take this drawing and they'll get it to our engineers and they will get you a product that's designed to fit in there. And that's part of the answer to the beales question, who asked us what's the lead time and installation time? The installation time obviously is going to vary by the size of the job. I can't tell you Watt per square foot time that is, but we do have videos online on our website at Wormley where you can watch and get an idea of how time elapses. And the lead time is. If you say, hey, I like this drawing, these products are going to be in stock and we'll ship them to you the day you order nine times out of 10. So that's the lead time. The lead time is as soon as you get the drawing and you say, good, we're good to go. It all matches my dimensions that I sent you actually match the dimensions out in the field. Then we can get that correctly done and get that product out to you the same day you order it. But going to the stairs when you're doing stairs. Stairs are notorious for a few things, and they're not really notorious. You you just have to pay special attention to them when you're designing them. And that is we need to know the width of the stair. We need to know the depth of the tread, which is the part you step on. We need to know the height of the riser, which is the height from the top of one stair to the top of the next stair. That's the riser. So we need to see what the riser height is. We need to see the width and we need to see the depth of each one of those steps. And once we know that, it'll tell us how many one how many runs of those cables will fit in there. Now, what's different with steps as opposed to the product that's installed in the ground is when the product is installed in the ground, it's really only getting really, really cold temperatures from above because that's where the temperature is coming from. That's where the exterior outdoor temperature conditions are. When you're a set of stairs, you're also you're getting the same direction. You're getting cold from above. But with stairs that are especially like in Chicago, where you have these stairs that go out proud from the building. So you're going to get cold air from the sides. Cold air from the top. And then if you have a bull nose or a overhang on your stair, you're also going to be getting cold air coming from below. So when you're designing for stairs, you want to make sure that when you're doing stairs is to not have really long bull noses or overhangs, because the further away the cable is from the front of that stair, that overhang, the further away it is, the less it's going to melt. So if you want to make sure that you don't have a frozen strip on the front of each one of your stairs, you want to minimize your bull nose because that will get the cable closer to the front of the step. And that's where you want it. Because if you don't do that, the heat only radiates about an inch and a half laterally from the cable. So literally you will see a line frozen. At a certain point on the overhang. So minimize your bulldoze overhangs on your steps and also make sure we want to make sure we get your measurements correct because then we can get the right number of runs of cable in your step to maximize the Watts per square foot. You also don't want to come in later and start drilling for handrails, because if you start drilling for handrails, you're going to hit the cable. So if you know that your handrails are going to be on this step, this step and this step, then you mark that location and we can design around on that step. So that's how we stay away from that. Or the best thing is to pre leave it, which means you're going to cut a hole in that. And then you're going to work around that hole and then you're going to come back later and put the handrail down into that hole. That's the best. That's what you call pre slaving and that's the best remedy for stairs because then you're not going to damage the cable. Excellent it's definitely good and important information. You know, there's definitely a method to the madness when it comes to just getting that project information in those details ahead of time. And certainly important again for the stairs. How wide, how deep rise or dimension bono's? It's pretty much just kind of those things you want to keep in mind. So definitely helpful info. Thanks, Scott. OK so once you receive your system, you're going to want to make sure that you test your product. You're going to be testing at every step of the way. You're going to be testing it before, during or after your installation, and you're going to be using a mega ohms meter. And you want to make sure that when you use that, it's basically you're just ensuring your project is installed properly, and that you're getting working product. Absolutely test before the install. I like to encourage my customers, all of our customers to test it. As soon as you get the product, our team, we test it before it leaves the warehouse. It's absolutely something that it's just part of the step. It's part of the process. We kind of have everything working here like a well-oiled machine, but it's always great to double check, make sure you have everything you need, eliminate that element of surprise. You don't want any last minute exchanges that come about before your install. I mean, that's why I'm here as your sales rep. But make sure that you're trying to take every precaution ahead of time. So use that megaphone meter. It's not a regular digital OMS meter like we generally recommend for our indoor projects. And with this, you're actually making sure that you're testing it within the margin listed on the product label that you get. So the mega meter is an insulation tester, essentially. Can you walk us through what that means? Scott well, it means it's testing. There's three wire, three little tiny wires inside that heating cable, two of them heat, and one of them's at ground. So what it's doing is testing the insulation around that wire the entire length, and it's making sure that this wire does not touch this wire anywhere down the line. And it's shooting 500 volts down the wire to see if it'll jump to the other wires. Your digital meter at home only has 9 volts or six volts, and that sometimes not enough to jump to make that spark go across. So what this does is this is testing the installation of each individual wire to make sure that the installation is intact, the entire length of the cable, and that those two cables do not touch anywhere and make a circuit. So it's very important that you use this. Also, one of the things that's really important when you do this is to realize that you're going to need an electrician there. The electrician is going to have to install conduit the. And if you look at our installation plans, we'll show you where junction boxes are. So, Carolyn, could you maybe go back real quick to the previous slide and we'll take a look at that. If you look real closely, I'm going to have to get real close to see two. But if you look on those little drawings, let's say that green 30 foot run there on the right side of here. Yeah if you look there, there's a circle with a number and that circle tells you what the number of that mat is or that mesh on the plan will coincide. You will say table number three needs this or whatever. That's mat number three. But if you look next to that, you'll see a triangle. That triangle is the starting point of the heating product and there's a 20 foot cold lead attached there. And at the end is a square and there's nothing at the end. It's just an end cap where the wires are all terminated there. So if you look like Vanna white, if you look there above the three, just a little bit above the three there, and then to the right, you'll see a circle with a gel in it. And that's a junction box large that's a large junction box. And it's placed there because your cold. Leads are only 20 feet long. They're only designed to get from the product to the junction box. And that's for the electrician makes your connections and then the electrician supplies their own wiring to get from that box to into the house or into the garage or wherever that is. So these cold leads are 20 feet long. They're only designed to get into that junction box, and those junction boxes are placed strategically to the beginning of the mat. So that way you can make sure that power is available there. So when you get this drawing from us, make sure that the power is being shown on the correct side. Because if we take a look at that little gel there, maybe the power is coming from below number three as opposed to on top of. So if that's the case, we want to try to get all the junction boxes on that side. So you'll tell us I have power coming from this direction or I have power coming from this direction, and then that will determine where the junction boxes are placed. So very, very important. That's how the plan that you send us gets turned into an installation plan that we show you how to put in. So that's the kind of thing you want to do. And each one of those places where the wire, the non heating lead goes from the walkway over to the junction box, that has to be in conduit. You can't just run the wire out the side, run it across the yard, and then run it in a box. It has to be done with. Conduit well, the person in charge of conduit at your job is going to be the electrician. So you obviously want the electrician there ahead of time before you go to install this product because you want to make sure that the conduits are all lined up where they need to be and that he's dug a trench to get the conduit from one spot over to the junction box. And then the junction box is recessed into the ground. So there is an electrician, an electrician here that needs to be actually there before the installation starts with the mats. So that's one thing that a lot of people don't realize. And that electrician is the person that's going to be doing the testing with the mega meter. So if you're getting an electrician to do this job, you're going to say, hey, you need to come here. We need to talk about this. Here's the electrical plan that WarmlyYours is given us. It tells us what breakers are involved, how many breakers are involved. It shows us where the junction boxes are. I need you to put the conduit in there. I need you to get the Breakers and to take this thing all the way back to the beginning. If you're thinking about heating an area around your home or your business, you want to look in the breaker box first to see if you have any breaker spaces open. Because if your breaker box is full. You can't use. There's no space. There's no place to put the Breakers for the system. So you don't have enough space. So you really want to look into that. And then you also want to say, I don't have any breaker spaces. I need to check and see what it would cost for an additional service here. So you need to think about that stuff. If your breaker box is full and you don't want to get a new surface service, electrical service, then you need to make sure that you let us know, hey, I have four breakers open. I have six breakers open. I'd like to do a job that's six breakers instead of eight or whatever, because we can do that. We can change the coverage and do that stuff to make sure that your job is done. We got a question. Can you see it? Yeah Yep. So metal conduits are required from electrical panel to the junction box? That is correct. Once power is in the junction box, then gets distributed. Not kind of, but if you have three mats attaching to one junction box, you're going to have three individual runs of power to that junction box, not just one that hooks up to three. So if you have three mats on, say, that little gel, that jail, the large junction box, if there are three mats that meet there, you're going to have three runs of power coming from the relay panel. So hopefully the breaker panel. So hopefully that answers that. You're not going to just run one wire out and attach match to it because that doesn't match up to your breakers that you've installed each breakers power mat. It needs to have an individual run into the junction box. Then you make your pairing up that way. Yeah so here we have the three. It looks like the cable and then mat number 3 and Matt number two. But you also have a small junction box there and then you have another one over here next to mat number five. So they can essentially that's where your spots are. That's right. Yeah you can see the jail there by number. Mat number two, mat number three, and the cable from the stairs all go into that box and would require three runs of power, just as Ivan asked. Yep my question. I haven't. Excellent so I guess base your conduit sizes on that. Yes, that's correct. Got it. OK so moving on to the base layer. So if you're installing those pavers again, you're going to start with that 4 to 8 inch crushed gravel for good bass. Lay out your frame. Lay out your mat and your cable and you're going to finish with your mortar. Do you have some pro tips here that you want to share about that gravel layer or the thickness of what you're applying here? Scott the gravel layer is going to be industry standard. So whatever your particular soil type is that determines the depth of your aggregate, that gets buried and all that stuff. So that's all normal stuff. When it gets to when it gets up to the electrical, that's some locations it's 44 inches on those eight, some it's 12. If it's sandy, you need to do all this. We don't care about that. We just want it designed to your local standards for paving. Then once that's the case, then we are going to install our product on top of that. And then the pavers going to install pavers on top of that. So the main thing you want to watch out for is when you're doing these jobs, do not drop the pavers directly on the cables because those are big heavy items and you do not want to crush the cable inside. And that's why we always use the mega ometer to test as we go along to make sure that nothing nothing has happened as we go. Right OK. So speaking of the layers, and this is where we're going to get into talking about attaching that grid installation. So you're going to do your Dri FIT of the grid before installing making any necessary cuts or adjustments and affixing the grid down. Now, definitely, you want to make sure that it's at this point anchored down properly. Do you want to maybe elaborate a little bit there, Scott, on these couple of touch points? Yeah you want to make sure that your grid is attached very tightly, as tight as you can get it, because if you just can't just lay it loosely and then tie cable to it because the cable has a mind of its own and it'll start Messing all up and there's nothing there to hold it in place. So what you want to do is you want to take this. You want to anchor it. Along the edges to make sure that it's nice and resilient and will stay there. Then you can start laying the cables out and tying them down with cable ties. So that's how you would do it. With this type of installation on the stairs, you're going to be using concrete screws, bolts, washers. Your concrete person will tell you how to attach those, but that's what you're going to use when you're going over a pre-existing ramp or a pre-existing stair that's going to be covered. Yeah, I think we have a visual of something like that in the presentation here now actually sharing a tad more detail on the mats because again, for this project in Illinois, it had both the mats and cables. So just as you would with the loose cable installs, any of our radiant heating elements involving the plans, you're going to lay them out. According to the smart plan designed and provided for the project, you'll want to make sure that your mats are also secured to the ground properly and definitely want to encourage you again to test the heating element at this stage with the mega meter, is there anything that maybe you want to add here? Before we moved on to the next slide, I think we're talking about see hammocks. Yeah, Yeah. Whenever you see a hammer and a great big nail, you kind of get scared because you don't want to do that. But what's happening here is you're using a big stake and you're putting that stake in that mesh and the mesh that is going to be held taut with the stakes. And that's what's going to hold it in place. So he's not hammering into a heating cable. He's hammering into the mesh. Definitely very important point. And then you're simply following the spacing and the layout provided on the smart plan. With the cable, you attach them to either the metal grid or with the mesh attachment grid excuse me, the metal Rebar grid or the attachment grid underlayment. I think this is where you were indicating about those anchors and the application here. I think this is the visual. I was thinking of anything that you wanted to add here as well. I think we have a question that just popped up here. OK while you're looking here, I can tell you that this can see the grid underneath this loose cable, the cables being attached to the Black cable ties. Best thing to use here is plastic cable ties as opposed to metal. But you can see that there are metal screws and washers holding the grid in place and then the grid helps hold the cables in place. So that is how they all work together to keep that cable at a certain spacing. Very, very important. You cannot have the cable cannot touch each other because it will overheat. That's why it's so important that you tie these cables to the mesh to keep them from touching, because if they overlap, you're in trouble. Yes now, the wonderful thing is, is we've got two questions and they're both actually on the same topic. We have one our buddy Ivan is asking. He says he's located in Canada. He wants to know if there are any issues or concerns that want to provide with regard installation. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Any issues or concerns if we want to provide insulation board below the attachment grid. And the second part, Kip was asking, can insulation be installed underneath? Underneath so insulation is the question of the hour. Yeah and the people are asking that may have some experience with hot water systems. And that's why they ask because hot water systems require insulation because as soon as hot water leaves the boiler and makes its way out to where the heating needs to be, it starts getting cooler. And by the time it gets to a certain point at the beginning of the installation, it's going to be cooler than where it was when it left the boiler. And then by the end of its run, it's going to be much cooler than it was where it entered. So the hot water is always hotter in one area than it is at the end, and that's oversimplification. I realize that there are hop water circuits that are done like in circles and that sort of stuff to try to minimize that hot in, cold out type thing. The good thing about electric wire is we don't require insulation because the wire is the same temperature at the beginning as it is at the end. It doesn't get Colder as it goes on. It's the same temperature at the start as it is at the finish and it generates a few more BTUs than that. So if you've noticed, if you ever take a look at any of our installation cross-sections or our installation manual, there is no mention of insulation. Because we just it's simply not required. But if you are interested in doing insulation, then what you should do is you should ask your paver where's the best place to put this insulation. So and also you might want to talk to your code official to see if they allow you to sit the cable on top of the insulation, because insulation is different than dirt. The national electric code in the United States says that there has to be an inch and a half of non combustible medium, which means asphalt gravel or asphalt pavers or concrete. And there has to be 2 and 1/2 inches of non combustible medium below it. Does your local code, in fact inspector, consider insulation as non combustible or not? Because the rules for electric are different than the rules for hot water. Because electric has to be embedded in noncombustible medium. So so to answer your question is insulation board is not required. It can help. It can help to continue the. Ivan is continuing to ask about insulation. It does help redirect the heat. And if you're interested in using insulation, then you're going to need to talk to your local inspector to see if it's OK, if it's considered non-combustible medium. And if they say yes, you're going to have to talk to your paper installer to find out where is the best place to put this. So that's up to you. But none of our none of our products require insulin regulation outdoors. If you want to add it and you want to spend the extra and and hopefully get that little bit of extra performance you're more than welcome to. But it is not required like it is with hot water. There are two different animals and I do get asked that question a lot actually in the sales side. So that's great to cover it here. It's really helpful when you guys ask these questions and it's a learning experience, like we said, for everyone. So thank you for contributing here. You're part of our presentation. All right. So yeah, that's the reason we leave it out of our drawings because of the non-combustible medium requirement of the Electrical Code. Then you get into what does this inspector consider it combustible or noncombustible. So that's why we don't even go down that road. You're welcome to try it and see what your inspector says. Well said. Things going. So after those cables, the macs, they're installed, you're going to have your layer of sand out on top. You're going to be using like a piece of wood, the layer smoothed out. So it's flush with the snowmelt system. You're going to want to put enough sand to allow those pavers to settle into the surface without laying directly on top of the heating system. Scott had touched on anything that you wanted to add here. Scott well, one thing that I think might be left, and that is that you want this layer to not necessarily just get to the top of the cable. You want this layer to be an inch to an inch and a half thick because that's going to allow you to set the pavers down and move them and later come back later and vibrate them down because you do not want the pavers resting on the cable, because as we all know, I had pavers put out in the backyard a couple of years ago. And they're starting to do this. They start to sink. There's nothing you can do about that. And if you place them directly on the cable, then after it sinks a little bit, then you're every step that you take on that pavers being translated. Directly to the people underneath it. So the pavers should never, ever. At the beginning, when it's installed and 10 years later, the pavers should not be sitting on the cable, it should be sitting on sand. So when we say put enough sand to allow the pavers to settle into the surface, that's about an inch to an inch and a half, which also just kind of touches on everything that you said here in this next slide, you know, making sure that you're not punching those directly on top of the mat and so forth. And just an extra step here that we want to keep noting is that you're testing the material every step of the way. So make sure they're nestled into the sand carefully, make sure not to punch directly or place those directly on top of those cables or those mats. OK so keep in mind that we're trying to transfer heat from this cable up to the top of the paper. So what we want to try to do here, the best thing to do is to use mortar to set the pavers in mortar if you can, because that'll give you a solid base and it'll translate the heat directly from the cable through the mortar that's bonded to the paver. That's the way that you get the most heat out of a system. We realize most people don't want to do that. They'll do a normal paving installation and that is going to be done with sand. The more air, the more air you have in that medium, the more it's going to keep the heat from going through so sand. You want to get this fine sand is going to translate the heat not quite as good as mortar does because mortar bonds itself to both of them and creates one thermal mass. But the thing here is you want that sand layer to make sure that you're using the correct amount of sand and that you are not using stone dust because stone dust is not a good match for this type. And every once in a while, you'll see stone dust mentioned in different places. But I had a conversation personally with one of the people from the National paver association or national network, National Asphalt paver association, whatever their term is. And one of the industry experts says that stone dust is a bad match because it stone dust has big granules and has little tiny granules, and it's enough to hold water to not let it flow through. And it tends to expand and it does affect with efflorescence to the top of the pavers. So you want to steer away from stone dust. OK now that's a great point. And I actually am just taking some notes here because I think next time we do this presentation, we want to make sure that we include that just maybe make that an additional bullet point because it's helpful information to know, OK, so where are we here? We're getting into the wiring part. I got your favorite. OK, so your cold leads, they should be routed to the junction box as he kind of touched on before a groove may need to be cut out for this. All your splices or extensions you need to make those in these boxes. They're designed to be long enough. These cold leads to reach those boxes. But essentially it's the location where you're supplying the wiring from the relay panel to meet those cold needs. So basically, that Black wire that you're seeing here, they're there for a reason. They need to go to the junction box. They're only 20 feet long. And Scott had mentioned simply made long enough to get to a junction box. So definitely, again, helpful for us to know which side that junction box is going to be on. Do you want to maybe go in depth on this part for us? Got anything that you wanted to add there as well? Well, if you're doing a commercial job that's 277 volts, those products are cable only and they have 50 foot long cold leads because we know that they're normally used in commercial jobs. And commercial jobs tend to be much larger. So sometimes you have to travel a little bit further from the non from the heating part to the junction box to get out there. So you want to keep track of that. And if you're doing a commercial job, just know that there are 50 foot leads for that. Also one part that we didn't talk about is can see this Black cables and non heating lead. We saw earlier the color green, which was the heating part. So the heating part meets the non heating part. So you have a place where the green meets the Black and that area is a lump and there's a lump there because that's the splice where the non heating leads are spliced onto the heating wires. And it's about six inches long or so, about a half an inch thick, maybe, maybe a little bit less. And that part cannot be bent. You can't take that part and you see how it's running up the side of the stair here. You can see how it runs up there. The non heating lead can do that, but the cold lead, you can't take that cold lead and bend it because as soon as you bend it, that's where your connections are. The three connections inside. And as soon as you bend them, they come apart. And now you have a damaged cable. That doesn't work at all. I had to go out to an installation and replace every single mat that was at the installation because the electrician bent the splice to get it into the conduit. Well, first of all, splices don't go in the conduit. They have to be at least six inches away. And they also the bending part also ruined it. So by having to go out and replace all of it and it was like 97 degrees that day, it's a day I will never forget doing that is we got to code compliance because the splices were not in the conduit. And the second thing is we got it to work because the splices weren't broken anymore. So make sure that you pay close attention to those factory splices. There's one at the beginning, then there's an end cap at the end. Do not bend those. OK? Yep. Excellent. Thank you for pointing that out. OK so, all right, we've talked about grids. We talked about mats. We talked about cable. We it's time to talk about what makes the system. Turn on and off. This project for Evanston, Illinois, it used the premium snow and ice control with the snow melt aerial sensor. And that control and includes, excuse me, what we have here hold on feature and that's to help continuing melting snow and ice after the snowfall is stopped. So the aerial sensor that automatically detects falling or blowing snow at temperatures at 38 degrees Fahrenheit. What's that? Hold on time, Scott, if you want to just maybe elaborate on that part. Hold on. Time is the most misunderstood or not even most, most unknown part of snow melting. And that is excuse me if you have a sensor here. And this sensor will tell you if it's below 38 degrees. And if it's getting rained on or if it's getting snowed on, if you have snow or rain and it's below 38 degrees, that's an event. That is a snow event. The snow is happening or the freezing rain is happening. So that's the event when it stops raining or snowing or if the temperature goes above 38, that's the end of the event. Well the system will work while the event is occurring. That's very important for it to do that because it melts snow as it comes down. But then we cannot sometimes keep up with that snowfall. So it's the snow that's built up there. If the system turns off when the event is over, you still have an inch or two or three or six inches of snow there with ice, slush underneath it. So what the after runtime or the hold on time is the post-event running period. And that's very, very important. Then people don't even recognize that. They just say, oh, it's snowing, it should be on. And it's going to turn off when it quits. Snowing, right? No, it's not going to turn off when it quit snowing because you don't want it to turn off when it quits snowing because you want it to continue. And there's a little knob there on the front that allows you to turn it for the number of hours that it stays on. And this number, when you first get a system, you're just going to stick it in the middle and see how it acts. Then you may say, well, I don't need that much time, so I'm going to turn it down. Or it didn't melt the last few times, so I'm going to turn it up a little bit for a little bit longer. So instead of 6 hours, I might go to 8 or instead of six I might go to four. But you always start in the middle and work your way one side or the other, depending on where you're located on the planet Earth. So to get that figured out isn't going to run that number of hours after the event to melt the snow and then make the water evaporate. So when you're done with this snow event, you're going to have a completely dry, paved area with no Black ice, with no nothing in the Grout lines. There's not going to be ice or snow pack down to the it's going to be completely dry and free of snow and water. That's what the after runtime or hold on time does. And most people don't even know that exists or what it does. Right, exactly. Because you don't want an ice skating rink when you're finished. So that's definitely something handy. OK if we get calls from customers who turn their after run time or hold on time to zero, and we invariably get phone calls from them and we say, what was your what was your whole time set for zero. That's why it shut off after the event. It still needs to do all this other work. Right very good points. OK so this diagram, it pretty much shows us an overview of what your wiring is going to look like. I really like we looked at this the other day and this really illustrates and just kind of points out what controls are designated for the indoor area and those designated for the outdoor area. Can you walk us through just a brief walkthrough with this diagram? Sky yeah, everything on the left side goes indoors and everything on the outside goes everything on the right side is outdoors. Then we're done. But you'll take a look at that, that control that we just looked at in the slide before. And that's a weatherproof box. But when it comes to doing an installation, where are you putting the control is if let's say that you want to manually let's say, you know that it's going to be snowing in an hour. And you say, I'm going to turn this on now so I can get a head start and get it warmed up. So then you're more than welcome to do that, but you do not want your customers when it's 12 below zero and it's blowing sideways. You do not want them to have to go outside and traipse around and turn that switch on manually. You put the control indoors so the customer doesn't have to walk out into the snow to melt the snow. That's what you're trying to get away from, right? They don't want to be out there shoveling anymore. They want to be inside. So don't put the control outside. Put the control inside where they can get at it. And then also you'll look at the relay panel. The relay panels are NEMA 1 boxes. They cannot go outside. If you put a NEMA one box outside, the range is going to go right in it. It's not designed to be waterproof. So that's a big problem we saw a long time ago is people would put the relay panels outdoors because I want to get them close to the job. You don't want to do that. You need to keep them inside because a year later, they were calling us to say, my relays failed. And the reason why the relay failed is because water was getting in there while they were on and because the boxes are not designed to be outdoors. But if you can look here, you can see the sensors are outdoors, the boxes are outdoors, and the heater cables are outdoors. So if you take a look from right to left in that upper part of the picture, the heater cable, that's that 20 foot cold lead that runs from the heater cable to the J box that's supplied by us. From the J box to the relay panel that supplied by the electrician. And that's going to be in conduit if we take a look at the sensors down below the sensors down below those wires that run over to the controller. Those are going to be in conduit also, but they are never in the same conduit as the high voltage wires because first of all, that's against code. And the second thing is the high voltage in those high voltage wires will keep the signal from getting to the controller from the sensor so they cannot go in the same conduit. And we've had calls from people who just spent a lot of time and money installing their system and now it doesn't work. And the reason why it doesn't work is because they put their sensor wires in the same conduit as the conduit going from the J box to the relay panel. You cannot do that if you want it to work. So that's just a word to the wise in advance that these need to be in their own conduit down here below the two low voltage wires can run in the same conduit. That's no problem at all. But those two wires cannot run in the high voltage conduit running from the J box to the relay panel. OK great. Thank you, Scott. All right, so here we go. Let's look at the cost breakdown. All right. For this project, there was quite a bit of coverage. You had your formats in the walkway area. The one cable for the stairway each was covered by its own control, which ultimately called for those different sized relay panels as described in the snowmelt control and sensor diagram. We also offer accessories such as the snow melting junction boxes, which we showed on the diagrams, and then also the snow melt pack, which per national electric code here in the US that states that any embedded snow melting equipment, it must be evident by the posting of some type of caution signs or markings where it's clearly visible. So we don't want anyone coming along and digging up your lovely work or anyone risking getting harmed. So you'll want to make sure that plaque is there to indicate the snow melting equipment is indeed located underneath the material. I should also note for our friends out there, I know Ivan is from and in a different location, but this pricing, it is us dollars, but you're roughly looking at about $7,400. You'll still want to consider at times that we may have some unique sale pricing with taxes and shipping included. This is really not a bad price when comparing to the cost of shoveling snow year after year, or especially using any of those harsh chemicals and so forth for any of our frat friendly pet buddies out there like myself. So let's share some quick key tips and takeaways. Definitely that heating cable, you don't want it to cross or overlap itself at any point that would cause the cable to overheat. That would require some replacement. Generally, you would basically be involving some repairs that would call for you to dig. We don't want you to do that, so make sure you install it properly and as instructed. You don't want to cross the street. Heating cable length should not be cut or altered under any circumstance. This may cause again overheating damage to the cable. Under no circumstances people think that they can order a bunch of the cable and cut it to size. And that's actually not the case. That's a big no no, which is another reason why we encourage you with all of our heart to take advantage of our free next day design services. Get that smart plan, verify those dimensions, because if you cut or shorten the rolls or the cables sometimes I know Scott, he's been on the other end of that call. People are going to call and you call and let us know that ultimately your system is not working properly. So you want to make sure that you follow those instructions. The cold lead that can be excuse me, cut or extended with a conventional slice. Just kind of want to fast forward to basically someone saying, hey, can I extend my cold leads? Can I do it in a junction box? Yes, you do it in a junction box because it's required by the National Electric Code. But also if you bury them under the surface that Scott was mentioning, splice fails. You're digging up your driveway now, Scott. What happens if you reach the end of your install? You have some extra cable one. Can you cut it? No but I think, you know, I've sent a couple of calls your way before, where you kind of walk someone through maybe taking some of those last few runs. Maybe if you could just kind of expound on that for a second. I know that we're about two minutes out. Yeah, Yeah. We get this question all the time. My installer finished the job and now there's 60 feet of cable coiled up in the front yard. OK, well, you just can't. You just can't cut it off. The reason why I think a lot of people kind of get confused with I'll just trim it to length is because another product we sell that goes in roofs and gutters can be used off of a spool and can be cut. It's called self regulating cable, right? So self regulating cable can be cut to length. It's designed to be done. This product is called constant wattage and constant wattage is based on there's so many ohms per linear foot and times the voltage that gives you the number of watts per square foot that it gives out. There's a fixed amount of resistance that the voltage is hitting. It's going to give off this many watts of power. If you remove half of the resistance, which means you're cutting half the cable, you've now removed half the resistance. When the resistance gets removed, the current goes up. And that means the more you cut off, the hotter and hotter and hotter it will get because the current goes up, up, up, the more the cable's cut off. So Ohm's law is your enemy here. So that's why you cannot physically do it. And even if you want to, Ohm's law is going to get you and that system is going to get very hot and overheat. Before we move on, you can change the spacing of the cable. The cable can be the minimum bend radius. Radius of this cable is 2 and 1/2 inches. That's as close. That's as tight as you can bend it. So we normally design it 3 inch spacing. However, if you want if you need to make the last 10 or 15 feet fit, you start disconnecting your cable from where you have it tied down and you start doing 2 and 1/2 inch spacing instead of three or the four that you were doing. And that'll help use up that amount of cable and still get it to fit under that. So if you see you have too much, you can get the spacing down to 2 and 1/2 inches. However far back, you need to go. No and as long as you're in the ballpark at that 2 and 1/2 inch spacing, you can sometimes make it fit. Now, if you have too little, we always say it's better to have a little too little than it is to have a little too much because you can't cut it off. So if you are in a place that's not the North Pole or the South Pole and you're designing it 3 inches and you're running out of cable, you can go to 3 and 1/2 inches to help space that out. But just remember, the further away the cable is from each other, the further apart it gets, the less watts per square foot you have and the less heat. You have. But in some temperate climates, you can go 3 and a half, 3 and 3 and 3 quarters, 4 inch spacing, and that'll help use up that cable if you need to or help expand that cable coverage. If you need to reduce the coverage, if you need to cut back on the cable, go to 2 and 1/2 inches and that'll let you fit that into the area. And Keith had a question about how many square feet did the 70 $400 cover? According to the project overview, that was 390 square feet. Right so that and again, you're also including in that cost your cables and your accessories and your controls and whatnot. And that can vary because you may choose a different type of control. So and if you have some specific questions about that, you're welcome also to reach out to us. Keith, if you don't have an account manager, you can reach out to us at WarmlyYours and I'll make sure actually I think we're coming into the end of our webinar. So I'll make sure to share on the screen the different ways you can contact us directly so that if you have a specific project in mind, I'm happy to walk you through an estimate in your quotation. OK all right. So we are. Yep there we go. I think we had a couple of those questions were in advance. And then was there maybe one or two more or did we reach all of them? Yeah, there was a fairly technical question. And if you could go back, Carolyn, to the slide where we show the plan, the installation plan and are there and Eric asks, are there any applications where they can be used under poured concrete as well as bordering a driveway to outline it. And so if let's say we ask this question. Yeah, exactly. So if we take a look at this plan, if you decided to put a concrete decorative stripe, 6 or 8 inches wide all the way across, that the concrete installation is different than paver installation. So you wouldn't be able to use the cables or the mats that are shown here because you can't go from paving to concrete with the same product. It just doesn't work that way. It's installed different ways. So if you wanted to do this line, you would actually have to use a separate heating cable in that concrete by itself, if you wanted to run that demand using line or lack of a better pronunciation on my part, I apologize. But if you're going to be using any borders that you want to heat, you're going to have to heat, especially if you're going from paver to concrete, is you're going to have to use a single product in the concrete part because it can't be used. It can't run from concrete to paver back to concrete paver. It can't do that. The paver product goes here and the concrete product goes here. Yeah OK, that's good points to bring up. Thanks for taking us back there and definitely a good question, Eric. That's I think that's one that I hadn't been met with before. So all right. So let's move right on through to our I think we were talking about when our next presentation is going to be. There we go. OK so yeah, we need to check for any questions real quick because we run the question slides. So let me check. OK, anything. I thought we didn't have any more, but let me know if there's anything on Facebook. No, I can't see Facebook. But I even asked another question. He gets our MVP vote for today. Thank you for your participation. You get a gigantic participation trophy, green heart. There we go. Yes, exactly. OK so the question is, would exterior stairs using precast concrete step of 6 inches to 7 inches thick rise or height? Will it still heat properly? If you were doing these in precast, you would need to put around. You need to build a form inside that would keep this cable three inches from the top. The cable has to be about three inches from the top surface for it to work. If you bury a cable six or seven inches deep, it's not going to do anything probably or take weeks to work, as opposed to the 3 inch. Now, I don't understand about the riser height because riser height doesn't have anything to do with heating. It just tells us how much cable it a riser that's 2 inches high as opposed to a riser that's 12 inches high. This just tells us the amount of cable it needs to get from one step up to the top of the neck. That's all we need to figure out if it's this big, we figure 12 inches rise or high. So it takes 12 inches to get from here to here. If it's real low, it's three inches from here to here. We use that to calculate the length of cable used in the step. Right so the riser height has nothing to do with anything except our calculations. But the deep the depth of that cable from the top has everything to do with the results that you'll get. So if you are saying, hey, I'm going to be putting this heating cable, six two inches, six or seven inches below the surface. You don't want to do that. Right so performance wise and code wise. But absolutely. OK so all right. Well, I definitely want to make sure that we take the time to encourage you to join us on the next webinar. I have a feeling that we're going to be asking you all to come back so we can engage in some of this lively discussion that we've had so far. This is really great because again, we've got a real live learning experience for everyone involved. So join us next time. It's actually going to be on the 11th of August and that's going to be at 1 PM central time. And as we mentioned, the our monthly. You're actually going to be learning also, I think, our smart services here. Let me just touch on that. Or is this our daily training? There we go. OK so daily training sessions, we actually have another today. I'll be right back on same bad channel Monday through Friday on various topics, calculating your heat project costs on how to choose the right control for your project. We go over all of that stuff. So live on Mondays at four Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays at 11 and four, and then on Fridays at 11:00 AM Central time. And then here we go. There are the services. So in addition to providing our products, we do offer a measuring service or a remote or on site installation support service here in the US for heating, snow, melting installation, troubleshooting services. Most of these are located within about 50 miles of the Chicagoland area. But if you're outside of those service areas and want us to come out to you or make arrangements to support you remotely, we can certainly work with you as well. Feedback we value your feedback. You got to let us know. Email us if you like the presentation. If you like us, smile, smile. Scott and we certainly appreciate your comments, your suggestions. Definitely look forward to hearing again those ideas. Send them in to us. Let us know if there's some information that you want to have covered or info that you're looking for. We're happy to discuss those radiant heating ideas for you with you. If you're curious about that and that are important to you and definitely feel free to contact us with any questions. We're happy to talk with you directly. I always like to say that's what makes us. US we talk with you directly. You're not talking to robots. You're talking to live individuals who can walk you through your project. You can call us about 7:30 AM Central time. Some of our early birds get in there, but for the most part, it's 730, 830 central time to 530 central time. We're available. Or you can shoot us the email. The email address I mentioned, I think it was Keith. You can use the info as well, but also the sales email address. That's at WarmlyYours or sales at WarmlyYours. Make sure you have two whys, not just one. And then also even with our company president Julia, she definitely is one who likes to be hands on and make sure that people are really getting what they need with our product. She definitely stands by that great customer service. She's a big advocate for that, so definitely feel free to reach out to us there via our website, even our Facebook page. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we have our 24/7 tech support. So people like Scott. The important thing is there, if you're ever in an emergency and you go, I need an answer to this and it's a Saturday afternoon, I need to put this in right now. You can call us and we'll be glad to help you. Now, when it comes to what color tile warmers are available, that that's not an emergency. We'll be glad to help you with that as much as we can. But really, the 24/7 is designed that we work all day and then we take our phones home at night and work on the weekends and we answer those calls. So you're actually getting directly to us after hours, but that's why we do emergencies and not what color do you do you recommend for this? So just keep that in mind. That question for me. Yeah, Yeah. Carolyn is excellent at those and I can tell you how to put them in. So if you're stuck putting that towel warmer in, you don't know the answer. We're always here to help. Absolutely all right. Well, we definitely appreciate you guys joining us. And we actually did pretty good on time. You know, we took some time out again, address some questions. We really had a good conversation here. So by all means, feel free to come on back with us. We'll be back online with you on Monday. I'll be back online with you. I think it is at 4 PM tonight for one of our many training sessions. So I absolutely appreciate you taking the time and feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions. I also have my email address available. You can just ask in our sales email address and you can ask to speak with me directly and I'll point you in the right direction. If you have an account manager already, I'll make sure you get online with them as well. So bye bye for now. And as always, stay warm and be radiant. Thanks, Scott. The thing.