Learn How to Cut Down on Installation Time for Heated Tile Floors

Hello, thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Lynn. I am a customer service representative here at WarmlyYours. And today I am joined by. My name is Scott. I am from WarmlyYours also. And Thanks for joining us today. Absolutely so today we're going to be talking about learning how to cut down on installation time when you're installing heated tile floors. So we are going to well, first, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them. You can do so either in that sidebar chat or at the bottom of the screen. There is a module that says, ask a question, you can type them either place and we'll see them. If not, we don't get to them right away. We'll definitely address them by the end of the presentation today. So we're going to be going over, like I said, floor heating and kind of the installation and how to make it go a little bit quicker. Some tips and tricks, things like that. So we're going to be talking about floor heating in general, and then we're going to be addressing specifically our own product and our Prodeso® coupling membrane. We're going to be showing you an example project showing you kind of the overview of it and the cost, as well as an installation example. So Scott, can you tell us a little bit about what floor heating kind of what to expect with it, what you can do with for heating? Yeah people that are used to using forced air in their home have to get used to the idea that this type of heat is not like that. It's you're not going to walk into a room that has radiant heat in it and get hit by a blast of hot air. It just doesn't work that way. You're going to walk into an area that's warm and then after you're in that area, you're going to feel warm too, because the radiation from the floor is going to actually heat you up as opposed to heating up the air first, which is kind of like backwards of HVAC. If we take a look at this drawing here on this picture, you can see on the right is an HVAC depiction, and you can see where the hot air comes out of the vents. Because it's hot, it goes to the top of the room and then it cools off and then comes back down to the floor and then works its way across the floor over to the cold air return. So you're just kind of getting your kind of cut in a vortex of hot air, cold air, hot air, cold air coming in the circle. And especially if you are in a basement like if you're in the Midwest or places that have basements, and if you have vents overhead, that heat will be up there. The heat will blow down on you and then it'll get down to about, oh, about a third of the way to the floor and then go right back up to the ceiling again. So what happens in a room like that is that your feet are cold most of the time. What happens in an area that is heated by floor heating is that you are going to be warm and your feet are going to be warm. The heat is going to be concentrating on you as opposed to getting caught on the hot air on the way up and the cold air on the way down. So it's very, very energy efficient, too, because as I said, when you're used to HVAC and you have a thermostat that powers your whole house, you have to get away from that, that range of thinking and think about, I'm going to be heating an individual space while I'm in it. So if you have a bedroom that you use every day, obviously you want heat in there when you are in your bedroom. But if there's a spare bedroom and there's a basement and there's a dining room and there's another room or another room that aren't used all the time, why heat them? Because no one's in them. That's what you have to do. The HVAC with one thermostat in the house, it heats the entire house. But with electric floor heating, you can actually heat an individual space and leave the other areas cooler because no one's there. So it's really, really great to help you zone. It's really, really great to help you cut down on your heating costs, and it's a good way to get even heat and temperatures throughout the room. Plus, you don't have any dust and mites and that sort of stuff being blown around by the furnace. It's simply just warmth coming up from the floor. Awesome yeah, if you have allergies like me, that definitely makes a huge difference when it's not blowing around everywhere. So talking, like I said about our TempZone™ system, this is really our most popular heating system because it can go under the majority of flooring types that people want to heat. So it is actually a few different types of items. We have our own flex roll, which has cable pre attached to a mesh, so you can actually kind of cut and turn it to fit into that space. And then we have our easy mat, which is essentially the same product. It's a flex roll, just already pre sized ready to go. You don't really need to do much or any cutting or turning, and it's really great for going in front of, you know, just kind of designated spaces, maybe right in front of a shower, right in front of a sink or something like that. And then we have our TempZone™ cable and this can be installed one of two ways using either our fixing strips, which are those kind of red little. Plastic strips that you can see in the drawing, and that's going to be attached to the subfloor and you can run the cable back and forth and hook it on those strips or using our PDSA uncoupling membrane, which has channels already in it ready to go and you can snap the cable in. This is going to also give you a bit of extra support for your tile floor. So it's really great if you're using tile and you're planning on heating that. So this is really going to give you a lot of flexibility with your heat, depending on again, how you want to do the installation, where you're putting the heat, how much heat you need and things like that. So we can really help you customize your system. We can customize the, you know, area of the heat. We can help you customize even the spacing. So if you're looking to have more or less heat and specific areas, we can always help you figure out the best spacing and the best products for that type of system. Yeah, when it comes to spacing, it's really important to consider the space that you want to heat. And the big difference is, let's say that you are living in northern Michigan or northern Minnesota and you have a room that's on the second floor above the kitchen and that room is your bathroom. It has no exterior walls or one exterior wall and compare that room to a room that's on a concrete slab or over an unconditioned space like a crawlspace. Two different types of rooms, right? Two different types of needs of that type of heat of the Watts per square foot. A room that's on the second floor that is starting at 70 degrees or 72 or 74 just depends on what the temperature is. Doesn't need a lot of electricity and a lot of BTUs to go from 74 up to 82. But when you're on a concrete slab or you're in an area where you're over an unconditioned space, it's going to take a lot more BTUs to get you from 40 to up to 82. So you can see that the space upstairs may not need as many watts per square foot, but the area over the unheated space or over the concrete slab is going to need more btus, which means more power, which means closer spacing of the wire. So those are the kind of things that you want to think about when you're designing one of these rooms. Yeah, it's really great to think about. So when you're looking at doing a floor heating installation, using a pedestal membrane is really going to give you, again, a lot of that flexibility and also is going to make it very easy and quick to do the installation. So the protest actually holds that heating element in those cables. You can kind of snap them in and you can adjust the spacing as needed. So this also allows you to install the tile immediately after laying out the cables, so you don't need to worry about having one, two or three steps involved in the actual installation process. You can put the Progresso down, put the heat down and then just begin installing tile, as you normally would produce, is really good for doing tile floors. It's not necessary for heating wood floors or vinyl floors or carpeted floors in the US or anything like that, because you don't have to worry about Grout lines cracking when you have a vinyl floor. You don't have to worry about Grout lines cracking. If you have a wood floor, you don't have to worry about those kind of things. So the addition of some companies make you buy the make you buy the membrane because that's the only way they have to install it. But we have different ways to install. We've been in this business for a really long time, so we know how to heat each individual space. And this is best used with tile because it helps separate the tile from movement in the subfloor. And that's exactly what it's for. And if you're going to be doing a tile job, it's going to help you do this tile all in one day. So that is why we're here. Absolutely so when you're looking at doing an installation like this, you're going to want to obviously order your floor heating cable. And one thing to keep in mind is that these are not something you can really adjust on site. So you want to make sure that you're ordering the size that you need, and we're going to be getting into that a little bit more in detail. But one thing to keep in mind is that we do offer complimentary installation plans and quotes. So we can show you exactly and help you figure out exactly what size or what length of cable you'll need to purchase. And then for this installation specifically, they used one of our Wi-Fi thermostats are inspired touch Wi-Fi so they can control it either on the thermostat or through an app on the phone, a circuit check, which is an alarm that's going to go off if there is any kind of damage or issue with the cable itself during that installation. And, of course, that Prodeso® uncoupling membrane. What's great about the Wi-Fi thermostats is they are controllable with Alexa and also Google Home assistant. So you can just say, hey Alexa, turn up the floor, heat in the bathroom and it will do that. So that's what's so great about the wifi, the wife. My job and I want to bring this up, too, before we get too far is because we get this question every single day on the phones from some installer who hasn't really bothered to read the installation manual. So they'll call us, and that's what we're here for. But invariably, one or more times per day, people will call up and say, I have ordered too much. Can I cut the cable? Can I shorten the cable? I bought this online. I bought a huge spool. I just want to use it in this part of the room, and then I'm just going to cut it off and throw it away or use it in another room. You cannot cut the heating cable. You cannot cut the. You can cut the mesh for the product that lays out and you can do the cuts and turns. You can cut the green mesh, but you can never, ever cut the heating cable. So please keep that in mind. If you are working with installers day in and day out, please let them know. Here are the instructions, but please do not cut the cable because we get that question every single day, so we have to measure. We have to mention it in each one of these things that we do here today. Absolutely so looking at a cross section here collation process, we love cross sections at warmly areas. We think that they're going to show you a really good overview of what you're going to be looking at. So when you're installing on a wood sub floor, you can put down your progress using thin set. You're going to thin set that to the subfloor and then you will begin installing your TempZone™ cable and then you'll put another layer of thinset and your tile over that. Some things to keep in mind. And I think, Scott, we're going to touch on this a little bit more later as well when you are laying out your progress. So you want to make sure that you are lining up those studs so that you have, you know, channels that are going to be even across the entire floor. You don't end up having any kind of weird zigzags coming through with the cable. So that's one thing to keep in mind when you are laying out your progress. So make sure that you're lining it up properly. And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, we had a customer question that was sent in earlier talking about, yes, from Jenna asking about the layers needed on a wood subfloor. So this is a really, really good drawing of it to kind of give you a good overview. And if you have any questions on that or want the sun to you, we can always do that as well. The one thing to keep in mind is when you're doing a floor and processos used over many different sub floors, it's the original uncoupling membrane. And when you're doing different types of sub floors, you have different types of fine set that's required. So when you get the Prodeso®, it will come with the installation manual, and the installation manual is simply broken up by the type of subfloor that you have. So if you have self leveling subfloor, you need to use a certain type of thinset. If you have a wood subfloor, you'll need a certain type of thinset. If you use you're going over a cement, you may or may not need a special thin set, but the instructions will tell you here's your subfloor. Here's the type of thinset that you need to about to bind the producer to the subfloor. Now, what's great about Prodeso® is it allows modified or unmodified to be used on top of it, which other companies don't allow you to do. But Prodeso® does allow you to use modified or unmodified above whichever one is good for you. But on the surface between the Prodeso® and the subfloor we have to follow the specific instructions that are in the manual to use the correct thinset to adhere it to the subfloor. So that was a great question, Jenna. And if you have any questions, we'll be glad to send you the installation manual because it's very, very informative. And it's great reading too. Yeah, there is a lot of information in there if you feel like sitting by the fire and reading the installation manual. So the project overview for kind of what we're going to be showing you again, the heating system itself is that temps on cable. So the total area of the room that was going to be heated is 40 square feet and the actual heated area itself where the cable was actually covering. And you're actually feeling that heat was about 15.6 square feet at that 3.75 inch spacing, which is the spacing that tends to be most common for Prodeso®. So one thing to kind of keep in mind when looking at your project and kind of beginning to think about where and how much heat you'll want is that you really don't need to heat. And it's actually pretty rare that you heat the entirety of the space of the room. We usually say about 80% of a room is going to have heat underneath it. The other 20% is usually taken up by a non heated perimeter around the walls. It's pretty rare that we would heat right up to the wall just because it's not necessary. There's usually, you know, unless you're standing directly up against the wall, it's usually someplace that you're not going to be standing or feeling heat very often. And you also want to avoid putting heat underneath any kinds of permanent structures, permanent fixtures. Anything coming through the. So things like cabinets, heavy bottom bookshelves, low lying furniture, tubs, things like that, you want to heat around and not underneath. So that's where the discrepancy between the heated and the total area comes in. And then the power requirements for this job, it was 185 watts, 1.6 amps and required just one 20 amp non FCI breaker. That non FCI is very important, so always make sure that you're looking at what breakers are required for the job. We always suggest a dedicated breaker for the floor. Yes, because that will eliminate nuisance tripping. If you have a bunch of things on the same circuit that is sharing with the thermostat, you need to make sure that if you have to use an existing circuit, use a circuit that has nothing on it, ideally. And the second most important thing is you. If you have to share a circuit, do not share a circuit with a ceiling fan. Ceiling fans will cause nuisance tripping all the time. Also, you need to make sure that you do not use a GFI breaker. You need to make sure you have a regular breaker in there. That's another question we get every single day is my system is nuisance tripping on me all the time. And the first thing we ask them is, do you have anything else on the line or do you have a GFI breaker? And they will come back and say, yes, I have a GFI breaker. The first step is to get rid of that GFI breaker because the GFI protection is included in the thermostat, so there's no need to have to go office on the same circuit fighting each other all the time. So that's what you want to look out for when it comes to this. Ideally, to completely eliminate or almost eliminate any possible occurrence of a nuisance trip is to get it on a dedicated circuit. So here's a great picture of what Lynn was talking about earlier why we only heat about 80% of a room, and this is even a little less than that here. People go, whoa, how come you're only heating 60% of the room? Because that's all we can heat. First of all, because you can't heat under a vanity, that's a box bottom vanity on the floor, and you're not going to heat under a permanent fixture like a toilet. So those are two rules that one makes sense because you don't need any heat there because your feet aren't going to be there. And second of all, it's prohibited by the National Electric Code. So that's one thing you're also going to do and you're not going to put electric heat under this tub. So there is the room you're working with. And then also keep in mind that you are never going to stand right up against this wall. There's no need to have heat right up against that wall. And what we also try to do with these drawings is we try to stay out of the doorway because when you're doing doorway work, you never know if the trim person is going to come in and put the trim piece over here or if they're going to put it over there. And then all of a sudden you have a floor that doesn't work because the trim guy or gal put a nail through the wire because the wire was too far into the doorway. So when you're doing a room like this, you want to keep in mind that you want to make sure your feet are warm the entire space where they're going to be walking in the room, you may step on a cold tile on the way in or on the way out. But while you're in the room, your feet are going to be warm. 99% of the time, and that's simple enough. One thing that is missing from this drawing, which I find surprising, is that there is no heat vent shown, so maybe the heat vent is under the vanity. That's the way I have it at my house. But you also want to show us if you're giving us a plan like this, a product sketch is to make sure that you show any vents that are going to be in the floor, too. If you're using, you're doing a room that has an air vent in it already. Absolutely it's a really good point. A lot of people overlook vent, so it's definitely something to keep in mind. So this is a great example of a smart plan. So compared to the slide that we were just on, you can actually see exactly how you would be shown, which products you are using and how they'll be laid out. So you always want to make sure that you're getting a smart plan from us. Again, this way, you know, going into the job exactly every step of the installation, what is going to entail and how to do it. So the arrow, if Scott, can you highlight kind of where each of the items is on the key? So that's that arrow at that's the start of the cable itself. The Black square is the actual is the end of it. And then that tee with the line coming out of it is where the thermostat is located with the floor sensor. And one thing to point out here is that the force sensor is not all the way in the center of the room. It's not really far from the thermostat, really. It only needs to be about 6 to 8 inches into where the heating cable is and to an open loop. You want to make sure it's never touching or crossing or run in the same conduit as the heating cable or the cold lead for the heating cable. And then you want it just again, 6 to 8 inches into the loop and it's we're into an open loop and it's going to be able to really accurately pick up on that temperature. don't need to worry about getting it in the center of the room, which is a common concern we come across. This is a perfect slide to talk about misconceptions when it comes to floor heating incorrect assumptions. First of all, you can't put a small pad of heat in the center of the floor and expect it to spread laterally across the whole floor and to eat it. Where there is no cable, there will be no heat. The heat only travels about an inch and a half off of the wire. Actually, if you took a wire and you did it like that, I'm pointing at my camera right now. It would be about an inch and a half all the way around the diameter. So what it does is it heats that 1 and 1/2 inch. So that's where you are going to make sure that the cable is where you want it to be warm. So that's why if you put an easy mat right in front of the vanity, but you don't put one in front of the tub, your feet in front of the vanity will be warm. Your feet stepping in and out of the tub will be cold. So if we take a look at this drawing, what's great about this drawing is it also shows you these dimensions in green. These dimensions in green are the distance of the wire from the perimeter, so you can see this wire in space three inches away from the tub. Well, first of all, you know, no one ever steps out of the tub and steps directly against the wall of the tub down onto the floor. It's physically impossible to stick your foot out and then go back against the wall of the tub and put your foot down. You always put it down an inch or two away from the tub. That's where you get in or get out. So that's why you need to make sure heat is there. But the heat isn't right up against the tub, so that's why you have a 3 inch space here between this wire and the tub, because we know that the heat from that wire is going to travel an inch and a half and it's going to get within an inch and a half of the tub, and that's going to cover where your feet are placed getting in and out of the tub. So you need to keep that in mind. Second thing is to 40 is not better than one 20 volts. So if you are designing a space that's on less than 120 square feet, we are going to automatically choose 120 volt product for you because you can use a thermostat up to 15 amps and a 15 amp thermostat will handle about 120 square feet on a circuit. So there is no need for 240, 240 or 220 or whatever you like to refer to it as is not more efficient than one 20. There's no reason to use a 240 dual pole breaker to take up two spaces in your breaker panel when you can do it with one breaker panel space. So that's why we always choose 120 volts. So those are two very, very common misconceptions about heating floors and bathrooms. Is the heat travels laterally an inch and a half on all the way around it, and second of all to 40 isn't any better than one 20. If you have 150 square feet, then we would do 240 volt because that allows you to use up to 240 square feet on a 240 volt circuit using 15 amp limit for your thermostat. So on this drawing, you can see where the dimensions are called out. You can see the size of the cable that's installed, which is right here, what the amperage is, what the co-lead length is, what the ohms readings of it are because you are always going to do ohms readings, we're going to be talking about that in a little bit. You are going to need a digital ohm meter when you do this installation. There's no way around it. It's part of the warranty process is to get the ohms readings of the floor before of the heating cable, before installation, during installation and then after installation. That number gets written in the installation manual and given to the homeowner. So those are the important things that you need to do if you just. Following some simple rules, you're going to have a very, very successful installation, and I do a webinar every Tuesday talking about the two and don'ts of doing installations here on our broadcast channel. And it's simply, if you follow these simple requirements or simple hints, you're going to have a trouble free installation. That's the most important thing that you want. The last thing before I quit droning on here is this red dot, which is the red dot that's shown on this plan. That's the halfway mark of the cable and the halfway mark of the cable. We're going to see it a little bit later, but if you are laying this product out, here's the beginning. If you are laying this product out and all of a sudden your red dot is over here, that means you're using too much. If your red dots all the way over here, that means you've used too little and you're going to have a bunch left over. Those are the people that call us and go, hey, can I cut this Matt off or can I cut this cable off? You can't do that. That's why we go to the trouble of putting this dot here, because then, you know, halfway in. Oops OK, I'm right on track where I need to be. I can keep going or I'm off track by a whole bunch. I went to spaces instead of three. I need to redo the first half. It's much easier to redo the first half of the installation than to go all the way to the end. Find out that you have 30 extra feet of cable and go, oh, I've got to completely redo this again. So that's why we show you the halfway mark. Absolutely, yeah, that's a really good point. Saves you, saves you a lot of time if you did start it off a little bit wrong. So looking at that project cost, so the cable, the 50 foot cable is $199 all MSRP. And then the InspirED touch Wi-Fi is 3.35. The circuit checks 15 and the espresso is 209 454 square feet. So the total project cost of this was $758. You are going to want a circuit check, but it's not a substitute for a digital meter. It's just an alarm that tells you if you damage the wire. While you can't hold the cables on to your meter while you're actually over installing it, you can't hold the cables onto the meter and then go lay tile, right? So you have to have something watching over your installation, and that's what the circuit check is for. And that leads us right to the next slide, what a coincidence. Absolutely so, Scott, can you tell us a little bit about I know you kind of went into some of the information on the O meter, but what exactly you're looking for and how to properly test the system? Yeah, I guess keep it simple because that's what you want to do. So you don't want to go out and buy a meter. That's $500. You want to go to a big box store, you want to buy a meter. That's digital. First of all, never, ever get the analog meter with a needle on the front. And you do not want one of those because you are not going to be able to use them. And this meter that we have pictured here, was $19 at a big box store. And the other thing you want when you're picking out a meter is to pick a meter that has the knob on the front, and that knob allows you to turn it manually to a specific range of ohms because if you're not careful, you'll go out there and you'll buy a digital o meter, which is self ranging and self ranging meters are very, very difficult to use. You'll end up probably giving it back and going back and getting one that you can use like this, and I'm just going to save you that trip to the hardware store because you want to make sure that you have a 200 range and you have a 20k range. Those are the two that you're going to be using a 90% of your installations. The 20k range is for your sensor, for your thermostat, to test it, to make sure that it's good. And the 200 range is to actually test the product that's heating up in the floor. People ask, well, I want to turn the system on to make sure that it works. And our reply is you do not want to turn the system on to see if it works. So it's completely the polar opposite of what people want to do because the way you know it works is because you're doing ohms readings. If you have ohms readings, you will have heat. You never want to turn the system on before this flooring is put over it. You never, ever want to turn or hook it up while it's on the spool, because it will burn because you cannot have heating, wire touching heating wire in a great big bundle, so you have to watch out for that. So you only ever want to turn it on after your thin set or self. Leveling has cured, not solidified but cured. That could be seven days. It could be 28 days, depending on the type of thinset that you used, so you do not want to turn it on to heat it up. What I'm trying to get as is do not try to warm it up before the thinset is cured on the final installation. The way to test it is with the digital ohm meter, and then that circuit check is your siren. If you Nick the wire or if you damage the wire, it's going to scream at you and tell you whatever you just did has caused a problem. A lot of times if somebody's taking Vincent and clearing your trowel and hitting it on the floor and going, oops, I forgot that I had heating wire on the floor. I've done that myself, so I can tell you honestly, I knew there was a wire there. I was there because there was a wire there and I still hit my trowel on the floor. Fortunately, I didn't hit the wire nine times out of 10 because of Murphy's law. It would have hit the cable and I would have had to pay for it myself. But this one time, one moment in time is a famous song says I got lucky and didn't hit the cable, so the circuit check is actually there's three parts of a wire. We're going to go down the rabbit hole just a little bit because it helps everybody understand what's going on in there. In the wire, there's three separate wires. There's two of them, which are heating wires, which is where your ohms should be. That's where you want to read ohms. And once again, we're not checking continuity with the meter. We're checking for ohms and then there's a ground. So what it's doing, what this device, the circuit check is doing is it's measuring to make sure that you have a circuit from these two wires and that you do not have a short between the ground and either one of them. And that's what it's looking for all the time. It's a simple continuity checker. That's all this does, checking continuity in your heating circuit and making sure there's no short in the non heating part of the wire. So this is a continuity checker which is good to use during an installation, but it is not a troubleshooting tool like a digital meter, and you should have both of these when you do your install. Absolutely so looking again, a little bit closer at that uncoupling membrane at that protest, though, so there are grooves in the membrane that allow for the cable to be laid out in any pattern, and it's going to protect them from the floor load and protect the tile from any kind of like, Scott said, know Grout cracking and things like that. So you want to make sure that you are following your smart plan for seeing exactly where the PDSA will be one thing to keep in mind is that Prodeso® does add height difference to the floor, so you do want to make sure that you're putting the actual membrane itself under the entirety of the floor, even if you're not planning on heating that specific area. You'll want to dry, fit it to the floor, cut it dry, fit it before putting anything, any kind of thinset down to hold it in place. And again, kind of we mentioned it earlier, but it doesn't hurt to really drive it home. Make sure that the studs are aligned properly so that you can get that straight line throughout the entire room. The minimum tile size when installing over Progresso is 2 inches by 2 inches, so it's definitely something to keep in mind if you are looking at installing, you know, maybe a mosaic floor or something like that. You want to make sure that if you're going to be using Espresso that the minimum tile is at least 2 by 2. But you also want to do is you want to make sure we have a great video, by the way, at warmly ask.com that shows how to do a waterproof bathroom using Prodeso® and the waterproof bands and corners. And what we did is we used that for a waterproof bathroom because it had a curbless shower. And the reason why it's so big a deal to do a waterproof bathroom is with the curbless shower. Obviously, if you get a drain that gets clogged and you don't notice it, then the water is going to go all the way into the bathroom. Well, it's a good idea to waterproof that entire bathroom to make it like a Bowl. And that way the water will be contained in that space and you don't have to worry about it. Just getting out of the shower and then going down into the room below. So we have ways of doing waterproofing, and you can see right here if you have two pieces adjacent to each other, what you do is you run the cable back and forth and then if you need to make it waterproof, we have the waterproof bands that would then go over the seams and then we would have the waterproof bands that go over where it meets the wall. And then we would have the waterproof membranes to do pre formed corners, which as an external corner. So we have those that are premade also and then internal corners, which is a corner right here, if you see that. So also, when you're laying this out, make sure that you use the appropriate travel size and that will be mentioned in your installation manual, what type of trial size you need to use and also when you're doing it, pull back the producer to make sure that you are getting good adhesion like you see here. Well, it may or may not be real visible for you, but there's real good adhesion here. Not so great over here. So that's where you'd want to pull it back. You find that spot use a little more thin, set in that spot. And then push it back down. And then what you're going to do is use a roller over the top to make sure that it gets pushed down and you get that good adhesion. OK, so now we are on to the exciting part of the installation, which is the actual cable, the heating cable itself, so this is installed directly into that membrane and it snaps into the grooves between the studs. So one really, really helpful tip is using a rubber float to make sure that the cables go into the studs easily and you don't end up wearing out your thumb and your forefinger because that can definitely get a bit tedious. Isn't that right, scott? Yeah, especially after you do like a whole day, your fingers are kind of stuck like this and your thumb hurts. And I learned that the first time I installed it without a rubber float was like, Oh boy, to my thumbs hurt from pushing it down there. But once you have the rubber flow going, you can just guide it with one hand and it push it with a rubber float with the other really, really makes the installation go very, very quickly. One thing you need to do when you're doing these installations is never overlap the heating wire, because where are the heating wire overlaps with itself will burn a hole there, and it will cause the system to fail. So you cannot cut the cable, you cannot overlap it, so always make sure that you do not overlap. And that's why we do the installation plans because we show the installation plans running in a serpentine manner across the floor without ever crossing and getting to the end of the floor without having to cross cables over. So if you're crossing cables over, you will have a failure in that spot. And then moving on to the floor sensors. So I had kind of harped on this a bit earlier. But again, you want to make sure that this is in between runs of cables 6 to 8 inches into the open loop. You don't ever want it running across the cable. And again, you want to make sure that it is run in a separate conduit back to the thermostat from the cold leads for the actual heating cable itself. Ideally, you are keeping the force sensor as separate from the heating cable as you possibly can to make sure that it doesn't end up getting damaged or get inaccurate readings. The floor sensor does come in the thermostat box, so make sure that if you're doing the installation or if you have somebody else doing the installation and/or the wiring, make sure that you before you finish the floor and cover anything up that you are going into that thermostat box, ticking out that force sensor and laying it into the Prodeso®. And then Scott, can you tell us a little bit about the White dot in the center of the screen there? I will in a second, but to go on along with your thought there is, you need to make sure that the sensor wire does not travel in the same conduit as the non heating leads. And the reason why I wanted to say that is again, because I know, Lynn said at the first time, we get people that do it all the time and then they call us and go, oh, my thermostat sensor. I'm not getting any readings from it because the readings are blown away by the high voltage going down through that same conduit. It's also against the National Electric Code to put a low voltage wire in the same conduit as a high voltage wire. So there's two good reasons not to do that. So you need to watch out for that. And also you don't want to run those two wires, glue them together and run them for long distances. If for some reason you do have to get the sensor wire into the wall by crossing over the lead, that's OK. As long as you do it this, that's not going to affect the readings, but you need to watch out for that. So that's very important. Also, this job we didn't do. And you can see the sensor is in a little bit further than we recommend. It's not going to do any harm, but it really only needs to go about halfway of that distance to get an accurate reading. And that's kind of especially important if that thermostats kind of the way down the wall a little bit. You may run out of cable. There's no need to get it all the way here. And then that white spot is that halfway mark on the cable that shows you that you can match up with your plan to make sure that you are using just the right amount of cable to use that floor correctly and not have to cut the cable. Awesome and then moving on to what I believe is the fun part is installing the tile floor. So you're going to lay it directly on top of the espresso and the heating cable. You really can do all this in one step. It does not need to be especially complicated. So Scott, can you tell us, I know you've kind of actually done these a bit more. Can you tell us the actual installation process for putting the tile down? What you do is you never, ever cut the never, ever cover the entire process. So with Vincent and then come back later, you'd never do it that way. You only put enough thin set over the Prodeso® to set the tile in. Also, you'll want to make sure that you're using the right size trowel, and you're also going to make sure that you back butter your tile to make sure that you get good adhesion going over this, over this the membrane. You can also see that they're using spacers, and some people like to use the leveling systems. That's OK if you use a leveling system. Does it makes for nice flat floors, but you just need to make sure that you don't when you're sticking that, that spacer in or that leveler that you don't get the cable caught and then the cables between the spacer and the tile and then you try to compress it. So you just want to watch out very carefully when you're doing that. So notice on this picture, there is only thin set where they're going to be getting in the next couple of minutes. That's all you're going to be doing is one or two tile at a time. And then that way, if you say, you know what, we did a great job today, we started from nothing and we got this far. We're going to have to come back tomorrow. You're going to tile up to this spot where the thinset is and that's where you're going to stop when you come back tomorrow. This whole area will be exposed just like it looks now and then you will just start over and the areas that have not been covered within set yet. So that's we've dealt with a couple of people who did this for the first time, and they did make the mistake of covering all the pandesal within set. And that was a big problem. So you want to make sure that you use just enough to lay each individual tile down and then you back out of the tile and get good adhesion? Awesome those are some really great points, thank you. And then kind of looking at the wiring and, you know, we kind of touched on the conduit earlier. So you want to make sure that you are wiring this according to your local code. So we do have a lot of tips based on National Electric code, but we always, always recommend checking in with your local code authority, your electrical codes, building codes and following any recommendations or any rules that they might have for your specific locality. A lot of local codes will require that the wiring be done by a licensed electrician doesn't ever hurt. In my opinion, to have a licensed electrician do the electrical wiring in your house, so definitely something to again look into and keep in mind when working or beginning to kind of start your project. And Scott, there are some localities that require the actual heating cable itself to be laid out by an electrician, correct? Yeah, just a couple of states, actually. So that's where the electrician would lay the product out in the desert, and then the tiler can come back later and put the tile on top. But the last two places I've lived, the last two houses I've lived in about seven miles apart from one another, one house required conduit for the non heating leads and the place I, the original place I lived, did not require conduit at all for anything. It was just simply remix in the wall, so that's seven miles apart. Two different rules. And then if you get a little bit closer to Chicago, you get into Chicago, a place where the city actually burned to the ground. They're really, really particular about low voltage wires. Some people will have low voltage requirements to be those voltage, low voltage wires to be in a conduit, and you can understand that the entire city burned down so they have the reasons for stuff like that. But yeah, Yeah. So just check and see what your local code requires and make sure that you follow the code requirements of that. What we've done now is this drawing, particularly is the National code that allows a conduit for the high voltage leads and one for the non heating leads. So if you do this, do it this way. You're you're not going to have any trouble, but you might want to check for your local electrical authority having jurisdiction to make sure that you follow the rules that they have. Yes, and then the same kind of concept when installing the thermostat, some will require this is done by a licensed electrician. This is just another part of that wiring. Once everything is up in that gang box ready to go, then you can install the thermostat again, according to any local codes, making sure that it is up to code and that you are again talking to your Code Authority and to your electrician or whoever will be doing the wiring installation. Exactly and then from there, you can begin setting your thermostat, so you'll first go through, there are quite a few steps it takes you step by step. It's a pretty easy setup. First, you're going to choose any floor protection that is needed. So if you're installing tile tile is really going to be the type of flooring that allows you the maximum amount of heating beneath it. So you can go up to 104 degrees, set it to 104 degrees below tile. It doesn't even necessarily mean that it's going to get that high again, depending on ambient temperature of the space. And you know, there's a lot of different factors, but that is something that you can set it to, if you would like to. I don't know many people that often set it to 100 and four, but it definitely is possible if you want to, whereas something like a laminate or a vinyl often has a max temperature of about 82 to 84 degrees. So for this specific project where you're putting tile over, that espresso you would set the floor protection to tile and then you want to also verify that the sensor application is set to floor. There are two different settings for your sensor application. It can detect either for temperature or air temperature of the room, the ambient temperature. So for something like this, you'll set it to floors so that you can control the temperature of the floor to the exact degree. So one thing to keep in mind is a couple of things about the flooring that you're going to be using. You need to really design the heating system per what the flooring is that you're going to be using. Because of these limits, temperature limits, our limits not set by us. There are limits set by the manufacturer of the flooring that you're buying. So if you're buying a hardwood floor, they may say 84 degrees, no set back temperature, which means you can't cool it off in the middle of the night. You may be heating light using temp stone covered with self leveling, but it doesn't allow set backs either, and it has a maximum temperature of 82 or whatever that is. You have to keep in mind, we get the question all the time is I'm interested in using this product as the sole source of heat. Oh, that's all well and good. That's fine. A lot of people do use it, but the reason why I bring it up is because this is a great slide to talk about it. Because if you look at laminate, a laminate floor is not going to get as hot as a tile floor is. So if you were looking to heat this particular space, would you choose a product that could only get up to 80 two? Or would you rather use a product that can get up to 90 85 90 depending on how cold the room is, how many windows it has, just because it says Max temperature one to four? It probably not. It's probably not going to get up there, but that's the maximum temperature you can program it for doesn't mean it's going to get there because if you're over a concrete slab as opposed to the second floor bathroom, you can understand the differences. And that's why I like to bring these things up. So if you want to do sole source of heating, you're going to want to choose like if you're doing a three season room or something and you want this to be the sole source of heat, you want to choose something that's not throttled down, right? So if you had the chance of doing a NASCAR race with a car that had a throttle plate limiter and one that didn't, this is for the NASCAR fans out there. You would want you would want the one that didn't have a limiter on it because you could go faster, right? So that's why you would rather use tile because you can get it warmer than if you were using laminate. So that's why we just like to bring it up. And if you're interested in doing sole source of heating, make sure you contact us or go on our website and look for the heat loss calculator because that will tell you how many BTUs your room needs. And then that will compare that with how many beat to use the floor heating can provide. So that's why it's so important to talk about these things now, because we get these questions all the time and I'm not going OT too much, but it's just important things you need to think about if you want a successful installation that meets the expectations of the people who are paying for it. And that's the idea, right? Isn't that what it all comes down to? So that's what you want to look for. What type of flooring, how do we need to treat it? That's very, very important. Yes, absolutely. That's a really, really great information. Thank you, Scott. So we do have a question that was sent in by bénin. I am assuming I'm butchering that name because that's kind of what I do ask does the mortar on top of the cable crack and cause the tile to crack? Scott, do you have any thoughts on that? Well, if you have thin set, that's cracking. There's a pretty good chance that's because of shrinkage, and usually that means that it was mixed too thin. Usually, any problems that we see with tile are people that are not mixing the tile. I mean, mixing the thinset exactly as it says on the bag. Some people say, I'm going to mix it a little bit thinner here so I can work around this corner. You don't want to do that. Or I'm going to mix it a little bit thicker here because I want to do. You don't want to do that. You need to mix it exactly as it says to make sure that you get the proper, the proper work, the quality of that thin set. And another thing you don't want to do is you never want to turn the system on before the thin sets cured because you can actually damage the thinset by turning the heat on before it's absolutely cured. So what people don't realize is thin, that kind of it starts out as this like peanut butter, but then it eventually grows tentacles, which grabs onto the crystals, turn into like tentacles and they grab on to each other, and those tentacles are grabbing on to the subfloor. And they're also grabbing on to that fleece backing of the producer. And that's what makes it bond. OK, so you need to make sure that the thinset isn't too thin or too thick, that it hasn't skimmed over, it hasn't gotten old in the pail. But the idea is, if you do it correctly and you use the proper thin set over the top of the membrane, you shouldn't be getting any of those cracks. And the cracks that we've seen have been because of shrinkage and it was mixed too thin. But that's a great, great question. So make sure you follow those instructions on that bag. And that's very, very important. Also, if you're using a natural stone, you want to read the installation manual for the Prodeso®. Because if you're using pandesal with a natural stone like marble or something like that, you actually need to have two layers of underlayment. There's no way around it, so you're going to have one layer of underlayment and then four natural stone of any kind. You're going to want to put a second layer on that. It's part of the instructions. It's part of the requirements. So you need to really make sure that you read what your application is stone versus tile. And if you're using stone, you need to have a second layer of plywood. This this system, the Podesta was not going to eliminate that second layer that's required for natural stone. Very, very important reading. Great question. Yes, thank you very much. Are there any other questions? And if you think of them kind of. While we're closing up, feel free to type them away or again, you're always welcome to reach out to us. So looking at our next webinar, which one is that, scott? Um, I'm going to click on that and that'll give us all the answers. There we go. Snow melting it for asphalt driveways will be what we're talking about on April 14. Again, right here on broadcast 1 o'clock Central. So please join us for that. If you'd like to learn more about snow melting systems before asphalt driveways or asphalt, anything, really, it's actually driveways. I don't know how many people have asphalt patios, but I guess it happens. Yeah well, my landing strip in the backyard, it was asphalt two. There you go. Yeah, well, he had we had a very random piece of asphalt in our backyard that someone had installed for some reason. So now you just get to enjoy it. Yeah, it's just our dogs, like walking on it. So then we also do have daily training videos as well. So these are just short little videos, usually 5 to 15 minutes, kind of depending on the topic and how many people we have joining us, often hosted by me or by Scott. So feel free to pop on in and learn a little bit more about our products and things like these are. These are ones that we say, how do you how do you choose the right thermostat or what should I choose here, the ones I do, or what common mistakes are made and how to eliminate them, stuff like that. So I mean, there's a lot of good real world experience stuff that we've found over the years and we've been doing this for 20 plus years. So we're not new kids on the block. Sorry for that dance move, but the new kids on the block would approve of this. And then for march, we are offering 20% off our environment environment mat, so these are four underneath floating floors and they are again 20% off our website for some more information. We have another question from Joseph. He's asking, do you need to embed the sensor in thin set or can you leave it free for easy replacement if need be? That's a great question. You need to embed the sensor. It needs to be embedded in thin set between two of the heating wires. The that's what the heat that's being absorbed from the wire is spreading into the thinset. And that is then the fence that's carrying that heat to the sensor from both sides. That's why you put the sensor in the middle between two heating wires. So the thinset is actually heating up and heating that sensor right in the middle. If you get that sensor directly on the heating wire, the system will short cycle and it'll never get warm because the wire when you turn it, when you send power, when the thermostat turns on, sends power to the wire, it gets hot really, really fast. So it goes from 60 degrees to 90 degrees in about three seconds. So then the thermostat goes, oh, it's warm already, I'm going to turn off. That's what you call short cycling. It turns on for 10 seconds, the wire gets hot and then it turns off, and then it waits for the wire to cool down and then it heats. That turns back on again. And it's just that short cycle over and over and over again. The floor is still 70 degrees, so it has to be embedded. But the secret is why this is such a great question, Joseph, is that you, if you're worried about it, if the failure rate on sensors is like one in 10 thousand, it's very, very low. But if you want to have a spare, you're more than welcome to order a spare and put it in the floor in the next open loop. Not right next to it. You just put it in the next open loop and put it in there and then run both of them up to the thermostat. However, we instantly know when people call us and we know immediately because we know that they have a spare sensor. We know that they've done that because they've hooked them both up to the thermostat and the thermostat says the floor is 150 degrees. Well, the floor isn't 150 degrees. It's just because you have two sensors that are wired together and it throws the readings completely off. So you're more than welcome to install two sensors just ball one up and keep it in the back of the box and just attach one of them to the thermostat. So great. Great question, Joseph. Thank you for asking that. Yes, thank you. So shortly after this webinar is over, we're going to be sending you an email looking with some feedback. We really, really appreciate hearing from you. If you have any comments or suggestions things we could do better things you liked what you'd like to see in future webinars. Please feel free to send that into us. And I mean, really, if you just want to send us some really nice compliments even about our hair or something, you can definitely do that too. You had to say that too, because I told her before we started that I did not check my hair before we got started here. I didn't meet her. So I think we're all so maybe don't comment on our hair. Yeah, Yeah. And then of course, we're here if you have any questions, so please don't hesitate to reach out. We love talking with you, helping you figure out what you're going to need for your project, answering any questions you have. So please give us a call or shoot us an email. Also, visit our website. We've kind of touched on a lot of different, really great information that we have on our site. We have videos, blog posts, diagrams, so visit us there. We also have a chat feature on our website as well that you can reach out to us during business hours. It's actually staffed by all of us, our customer service and sales team. So if you'd like to chat with us there, feel free to visit our website or again any of our social media pages however you like to contact us. That's what we're here for. Yeah, the very, very popular thing now is love everybody. Every question, every day, multiple times a day. How do I heat LVT and we have videos right online that show how to do that? We also have a video that shows how to heat a wood floor, how to nail it down, all the rules that you should follow when it comes to doing those. So if you're interested in a specific type of installation, make sure that you go to our website warmly and then go into the Explore section of our website. And that's where our videos are. And if you just want to watch a bunch of old webinars that we're doing here, those are all there too. So it's great cure for insomnia if you want to do that. So thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Until next time, as always, stay warm and be radiant. Thanks, everybody.