How to Retro Fit Snow Melting Cables into Finished Surfaces

Hello, and welcome to our new video where we're installing snow melt heating cable in an existing asphalt driveway. OK The first step in doing this type of project is to make sure that you give us the dimensions of the area that you want to heat. Because then our engineers will actually give you an installation plan that shows you exactly how these cables are going to be laid into the grooves that are going to be cut. So you're going to get this plan, you're going to get it to your concrete guy or asphalt guy and he's going to make the cuts according to the plan. OK Behind me. We can see where the grooves have actually been cut into the asphalt. You need to make sure that groove is cut two to three inches. So the cable can sit down into that groove. Now we're just showing you the spot here where the cable is. We also need to make sure that the cold leads for the cable are able to get out and over to a junction box. Also, we need to make sure that our sensor is installed correctly and wired correctly and that needs to be cut into this too. So not only are you cutting grooves for the heating cable you're cutting grooves for the cold leads to come out. And also for the sensor to come in. Now not only do you have to cut grooves for the cable to rest in but you also have to make a groove a couple of grooves to allow the cable to come to the end and loop around. You can't just take a cable and fold it back on itself. So if we take a look down here, we can see where jack hammer was used to get that space for the cable to come to one end and curve and go down to the next run. You can also use a saw cut blade to do that. There's a couple of different ways. But you just need to make sure you can get the cable going from a straight run to a curve to another straight run. And that's what we've done at the end of each one of these runs. OK our cuts have been made our curves have been made at the end of the run. Once you're done with that, the cutter as we've seen in the video uses water. So it doesn't overheat the blade. Well that creates a slurry of this stuff that's left in the groove. So at this point, before we put the cable in. We have to take a pressure washing we have to pressure wash all of these grooves out. So the cable will go all the way down. Once it's all the way down in. Then we can have the asphalt guys come and seal it put a top coat over it. And you'll see that in the next shot. OK, So now we've got the one side done and we're going to take a little bit closer look at what's being used here, we're using a trowelable crack sealer which is a little bit higher build than just a seal coat. So what we're going to do is we're going to put this in by hand, over the cable and then we're going to come behind with a squeegee and run it right into the grooves. So just take a look. Well we've come to the end of our project. And we have our electric heating cables installed into this asphalt driveway. So if you get to the point where you had just put an asphalt driveway in or a concrete driveway and you go, we need to get rid of this snow. What we can do is we can do saw cuts actually into the surfaces there, get the cable pressed down into those saw cuts then come back and seal the whole thing up. So no water, nothing gets inside. You can have a nice heated area. And you can see we did tire tracks here. So it allows us to get this area nice and clear for traffic to go back and forth on. If you have any more questions about heating your driveway or heating anything in your house feel free to join us anytime of the day at www.WarmlyYours.com Thanks so much for watching.