Installing Snow Melting Cables | Radiant Heat Deicing

Where we're at now is we have taken the stone veneer and applied it to the sides and the risers of this landing. We've also put the first bluestone step on. Today, we're going to use this same stock, miter the corners, and do a perimeter with this stock. Then we're going to fill the middle with one big, square piece of bluestone. We're also going to lay this mesh on the walkway, and we're going to run the heat cables the long way by looping them 3 inches apart. If you remember from what we talked about the last time we were here, I clipped the corners of the concrete block so that I could run the cable down and we could apply these corner blocks.

They have corners cut out of them, and they go onto the corner like that. The cable runs behind that. There's plenty of room—tons of room—and it runs down behind this one, under and down behind this one, and it comes out right here. This is the heating cable that will continue the loop.

One thing that we also did for future reference, for future projects, is we installed a plastic pipe right here. It will run underneath the walkway. That's a conduit for future work, whether I'm running invisible fencing for a dog, some irrigation piping, wires, or anything. I have this conduit here so I don't have to disturb my walkway. We finished the project.

The WarmlyYours heating cables are installed under the walkway. The bluestone is installed. The landing is complete. We still need to tie in the house, and we also need to attach the snow sensor, which is going to go on the side of the house. The snow sensor works nice because any snow or freezing rain that touches the sensor turns on the system automatically, so you're saving energy.

It snowed here last night. We got about an inch and a half. When I came here this morning, this was completely dry. It was clear. Worked like a charm.

There was never any snow that accumulated; it just melted as it hit. We're down in the basement. This is the WarmlyYours control panel. This is called the APS3C. It's a snow melting and ice controller, and this is pretty much the brains of the whole system.

This is a relay box where all the power comes into and goes out to the different relays and things that control the heating cables. I had the electrician install this power switch, just a basic override switch. Nothing goes to this system until that light is turned on and the power is turned on. This is useful in an emergency to turn the power off or to service anything. It's also nice if I just want to control the system manually.

The system can be turned on by hitting the start button and it's on. But with the sensor, with this switch turned on and the sensor on, it'll turn on automatically as long as there's snow or freezing rain on the sensor. Then there's a timer here called hold-on time. WarmlyYours typically recommends 3 or 4 hours. You set that hold-on time, and then when the snow melts or clears off of the sensor outside, the system will stay on an additional 3 or 4 hours—up to 10 or down to 0 if you want—to continue to clear the ice.

It clears the walkway and even dries it so you don't get that black ice or slipperiness, which is nice. The high temperature limit is for the sensor that I placed in the slab, ensuring it will not allow the slab to get over a certain temperature, and I have this set for 40 degrees. We really don't need anything that much higher than that. We just need to melt the snow off above 32 degrees. So that's that.

That's the system in a nutshell. I really like this system. It worked, and it worked well. It was super easy to install. We installed this nice mounting board as well just to keep everything nice and clean.

The steps are right behind us. That's where we decided to mount everything, right where we wanted it. Super, super easy to install. Really nice product. I'm very impressed with it.

I'm Rob Robillard. You're at aconcordcarpenter.com, and we'll see you at the next review. Take care. Thanks, Rob.