How to install an AIR-SS-2 Aerial-Mounted Snow Sensor

Hello, and welcome to today's installation video. Today, we're going to be installing a aerial sensor for a snow melting system. Let's talk about places that you do want to install your sensor. On the screen right now, you can see a picture of this building in the wintertime and you can see where the snow is resting.

We want to put a sensor in that area that's in the open where snow can hit it. Some things you want to remember when you're doing the installation. Make sure you can get pipe out to that spot, and make sure that you can run your sensor wire from that spot into the building because you cannot go in the same conduit as a high voltage wire. So we found a spot where the snow always falls, and it's not right next to the building, it's not directly under a tree, it's somewhere where the snow always hits in the wintertime.

So we're going to install it here, and we can also get our conduit from the building over to here. You have to remember, we need to make sure that our do and run for the low voltage does not go into another conduit that has high voltage in it, so we need a a low voltage conduit to run from this spot into the building.

As you can see, we've moved indoors and we've done that to make it a little bit easier to see how to make our connections. At this point, we're also going to talk about what is acquired to assemble this together.

So first, we have our sensor. We obviously need that, if that's what we're going to hook up. We're also going to need our waterproof box, our waterproof box fittings. We're going to need pieces of PVC and glue to glue them together because all your connections have to be watertight, and we're also going to be using extension cable.

This extension cable is eighteen gauge extension cable, which will allow you to get the sensor up to one thousand feet away. If you use twenty gauge, you can get it about five hundred feet away. Also, what we're going to do is after we get it put together, we're going to show you how to test it. And that's what this water is for, and that's what this can of compressed air is for.

Okay. We're now going to assemble this and to do so, we're going to need to put our PVC in, and we're going to need to glue it in these connections have to be watertight, so you're going to be using your PVC glue to get that connection in. We're also then going to get our PVC in this end. And once again, this will be glued in place using PVC cement or the appropriate type of cement.

Remember all these connections have to be waterproof.

The next thing we're going to do is we're going to take our sensor, and we're going to feed the wire into the top of the junction box.

And we're going to glue this in place using PVC cement.

Then we're going to get our extension cable, and we're going to run it in.

This extension cable will be supplied by the electrician.

And this can be either eighteen gauge, which will allow you get one thousand feet away from the control, or twenty gauge, which will allow you to get five hundred feet from the control. And what we're going to do is we're going to join these three wires, two three course bonding wires of the supplied extension cable.

Once we get our connections made, then we can go ahead and seal the box.

Okay. You have your aerial sensor installed You've got it wired up to your control using extension wire, and now it's come to the point where we need to test it to make sure it works. And you can do that by turning your controller on and also making this trigger, you're going to trick it into thinking that it is wet and that it is cold. And to do that, you're going to need water and you're going to need compressed air.

Not just any compressed air, you're going to need to turn pan upside down because we're going to freeze this sensor. So if we take a look at the sensor, we have part at the top which is the wetness sensor and then there is a temperature sensor here at the base. So this control turns on when it is wet on the top and below thirty eight degrees. So we have to fake it and tell it that it is that.

So the first step is to take water and to put it on the top grid, so it connects the separate parts of the grid together by water, and it circuits it. So that is going to be the first part. We're going to make it think it's wet outside. The next thing we have to do is we have to trick it into thinking that it's cold.

So to do that, you need to locate this tab which is right above the label. You're going to turn the system or the sensor around and we're going to go to the exact opposite side and we're going to take our can of compressed air turn it upside down, and we're going to spray the base.

And you may need to do this for thirty seconds forty five seconds. Make sure that you have a full can of air because this is going to freeze that sensor. Now within a few seconds, you should hear the controller click on and that completes your test of your aerial sensor. Let's take a look at the way the sensor is in called. The sensor should be tilted just slightly about fifteen degrees, that allows the excess water to drain off. So that's what we've done here. Also you want to note, you want to make sure that you have a long enough tube here because if you glue this on to this tube, all these connections have to be waterproof.

So you want to make sure that if you have to replace the sensor, what you can do is you can cut the tube. If you don't have a long enough tube, you can't get your your cutter there to cut the tube to replace it. So always make sure you have some extra space here. Also make sure you're using a waterproof box that has a waterproof seal around it.

We want all of our connections inside to be dry. One of the main problems we see with sensors quit working, is that they really are working, but the connections inside have gotten wet. Well, that wraps up our installation video on our warmly yours aerial snow melt sensor install. If you have any more questions, feel free to give us a call at eight hundred eight seven five five two eight or check us out at warmly yours dot com.