How to Test a Floor Sensor Wire for Floor Heating
In this video, our tech team shows you how to properly test a floor heating sensor for your thermostat.
A WarmlyYours floor sensor is 10k ohms, and it works with all floor heating controls available from WarmlyYours, including the nSpiration Series. It’s compatible with a wide variety of floor heating thermostats, making it possible to take readings of the floor and adjust heating as needed. The 15-foot cable offers enough length for optimal thermostat positioning in your room.
The floor sensor should be tested before installation to ensure it's in working order. As mentioned in the video, a non-ranging digital ohmmeter is recommended for this test. Set it to the 20k range before attaching the red probe to one wire and pin the second wire with the black probe. The reading should fall within the range of 8,000 and 18,000 ohms. An additional test to make sure your floor sensor is working is to hold the nodule at the end of the wire in your hand, as your body heat warms the sensor, the ohms numbers will begin to decrease.
Please note that every WarmlyYours thermostat already comes with a complimentary 10k ohms floor sensor. A second sensor can be ordered and installed as a backup if desired.
Video Transcript
Hello and welcome to today's video. Today, we're going to show you how to test your floor sensor with a digital ohm meter. So the digital ohm meter is right here. You want to make sure you use a digital meter, not one of those analog meters that has a dial on the front and you'll want to pick one that has a 20k range. You would prefer that over a self ranging meter. So let's take a look at this box. Inside this box is where your floor sensor is located. Don't forget to put the floor sensor in the floor. So to find your floor sensor, open up the thermostat box, take the thermostat out, take the filler card out. And in the back of the box will be this floor sensor. So let's take a look at the digital ohm meter that we have. The digital ohm meter that we have is the one that you want to try to find. It's a non ranging ohm meter and what I mean by non ranging means that you select the actual range yourself with this knob. So to do our test of our floor sensor, we need to set it to the 20k range. So we take our knob on the front. And we set it to the 20k range. The 200 range is what's used to test most of the floor heating product that we sell. But for the sensor, our readings will be done at the 20k range. Now that we know how to set the meter, we have it set at the 20k range. I've attached one probe to one wire and I'm going to now use the other probe and pin the wire against something to get our ohm reading. And we can see that our ohm reading is 10,000 ohms now, if we take a look at that, that's a good number. You want between 8000 and 18,000 ohms. And another trick you can do to test if your sensor is really working correctly is to take your hand and find the knob at the end of the wire and actually put your hand on there. As you put your hand on there, your body heat will warm it. And as it warms up, the ohm numbers will drop. Well, that wraps up our video today on how to test your floor sensor. Thanks for watching and check us out at WarmlyYours
