Floor Heating Installation: Your Toughest Challenges, Answered Live!

Thanks for joining our webinar.

We've got some really great exciting things to talk about today. This webinar has been in demand for quite some time. I think today we're going to be talking about the pro challenges to help you solve your toughest floor heating issues with installation. We're going to go over a bunch of questions and how to's to overcome some of your challenges.

And let's see, today we're going to be having you have myself here. I am your product expert. My name is Mary Godava and I've been at WarmlyYours for 20 years. So I have a lot of experience in the sales team here. I am the sales manager now and I work directly with residential and large commercial projects.

I manage, help manage all of these types of indoor projects as well as outdoor projects top to bottom. So a lot of those big ones come my way and I've been known to be a pretty good problem solver I think and I do pretty well with the customers and advocate for them as well. And with me today you have our technical expert. Scott, why don't you introduce yourself. My name is Scott and I'm the tech expert just like Mary said.

I've been at WarmlyYours for over 17 years. Work with the engineering team also on the 247 tech support specialist line and we also have done dozens and dozens of tech tips and video series and I've repaired hundreds and hundreds of floors over the years. Awesome. Okay, we're going to do a session format today. So we're going to talk about our really contractor submitted challenges that you guys actually asked us to specifically talk about problem solving techniques.

You're going to get Scott and my expert analysis and solutions for these difficult issues. We're going to ask you for some Q and A at the end and really our goal today is really just to transform your toughest installation challenges into competitive advantages. And I think this is something that WarmlyYours does way better than anybody out there. We're always the ones that you know can come through and make you guys the heroes after something.

Goes sideways, go. Sideways on a project. Right. So we have a. We've had a couple.

We always ask for questions ahead of time. So please bear with me. I'm going to speak as long as I can until I lose my voice. But some people would hope that sooner than later. But anyway we'll go ahead and talk about.

We've got some questions. One of them was from Rod looking for best practices for installation under ceramic tile and LVT and hardwood. We're going to be addressing most of that this webinar. So we don't need to really call it out on a specific Q and A. And then we also had a question from Wes.

We have a job coming up where we'll be placing heating mat below LVP looking for pointers on best methods. We're also going to be going over that too. So, Wes, we are going to be getting to yours. And we have slides dedicated exactly to your question. So sit back and relax.

Yes, join. Buckle up. Here we go. All right, so top installation challenges that we are tackling. Electrical challenges.

This always is something that we want to talk about early in the project. We want to get your load calculations, planning for circuits, talk about your code compliances. This is something, again, we are experts at. We will help you through those. Those difficult questions.

We want to be here to answer any of your subfloor challenges. This is when we're talking about heating. Often we get people, how do I heat over concrete? What. What's going to happen?

Isn't my concrete gonna suck up all my heat? I have an uneven slab. My house is built in the 1880s and it's very uneven subfloors. How do I challenge? How do I overcome that type of challenge?

And even people sometimes want to not have to rip out their existing flooring and still install radiant on top of their existing flooring. So that's more of something like the next slide, our retrofit application. So you maybe just remove a portion of the flooring that might have been there or they do something that you may have limited access for. So retrofit is an option sometimes with radiant projects, unique applications such as that LVT, LVP flooring that is becoming so popular nowadays. Unique flooring applications.

Marmoleum's back in the picture. I had a guy just yesterday asked me about a modular dance floor. That's a new one, Scott. I got to show you those pictures. But yeah, he's got a modular dance floor and he's asking how do I heat underneath something like that carpet.

That's another one. People forget all the time. That carpet can be heated, you know, and in the U.S. in the U.S. correct. Well, you can do it under. In Canada, but we'll talk about that with the self-leveling cement embedment.

And that's not always either. Remember, all the things we're telling you are up to local code interpretations. So just because we say it is so doesn't mean your local code inspector or authority having jurisdiction will allow it. That's why we're always very upfront when we do plans saying please check with your ahj. That means authority, having jurisdiction because we don't want to sell you a product that, that you, that you install and you can't use because they tell you you can't use it.

Right. So whenever we talk about electrical, that's going to come down to the code and it's going to come down to your electrician putting in the right size of wire, what size feed, how many amps, what do I do? What, how do I figure voltage loss over so many feet. That's not something that we do, that's something that an electrician is going to do. So there are certain things we can tell you how to put our stuff in, but when it comes to that ancillary stuff, when it comes to code, you're going to have to make sure that you talk to your code people.

Great, great advice, Scott, thanks very much. One of the other applications we get asked about quite often is hardwood. And then lastly we are going to also talk about integrating your thermostat, home systems, zoning and sensor placement.

All right, so we have the real pro challenge, moisture prone basement concrete. So many times basements are now being remodeled into more usable spaces. So the, the challenge that was submitted is I have a 1200 square foot basement, could be damped, uneven concrete slab. Client wants to tile flooring with radiant heating. So we have moisture management critical for the system longevity substrate preparation, how it affects the heat and transfer efficiency and the proper insulation, how to prevent the heat loss to the slab.

So what WarmlyYours suggests anytime you heat over a concrete slab, to prevent that slab sucking away all of your heat that you're trying to get up into the room. We offer a product called a ThermalSheet which is about 6 millimeters thick. It's a nice thin sheet of underlayment material insulating with a 1.5 R value that can be applied to the existing slab with some modified thinset. You press it down with a 50 pound roller, really get it stuck down to that slab. Once that's applied, then you can apply on your floor heating system following your instructions.

For any cement. If you're doing an SLC, you may have to use a primer or something like that first. But then yeah. So after you have your ThermalSheet down, that's going to prevent that suck the cold suck away of your heating, it's going to insulate, help that heating come up into the room. And what that does is really help you confirm that you're going to Have a nice radiant floor.

It's going to be more energy efficient, more evenly heated and just give you a better energy efficient all over. Right Scott? Yeah, that's right. And the one thing about ThermalSheet is it's also used whenever you're using Environ under laminate because that's the pad you can never put. It's very important for that pad to be there because it does, it cushions the Environ, which we're going to be talking about later.

I just want to make sure that we don't think ThermalSheet. ThermalSheet only for concrete floors. It's always used when you're using laminate too because that's what goes on the subfloor, then your Environ, then your laminate that goes over the top. So yeah, that's, that's all very important when you're, when you're getting this bathroom. Bathroom.

When you're getting this basement floor prepared, get the floor flat, fix any imperfections, clean it and then attach the ThermalSheet to the concrete using an 8th inch V notch trowel of thin, of, of modified thinset that'll hold it down with a 50 pound roller. Then once that's down, you can then start laying your cables and strips like you see in this picture. So that's what you want to do. You want to make sure that your, your concrete is dry. So always chest check for concrete moisture levels before you get started doing your installation.

And that's a very simple test that any flooring installer will have that moisture level checker for you. Great, great information. Okay, here's another pro challenge. I was asked this one today actually, can we heat a shower floor or a shower bench? A lot of times we get asked can we heat the showers in wet locations?

So I need to add electric radiant heating to a shower. How do I ensure proper waterproof and optimal heat distribution? So technical analysis, waterproofing integration. The heating cable must be installed above the primary waterproofing membrane within the layer of thinset. So if you can kind of see in that cutaway drawing right there, you've got the tile on the top, then you've got your thinset layer and the heat mat is directly underneath that layer.

So that's what we're talking about there. The substrate preparation is a properly pitched sloped mortar bed or pre sloped pan. That's going to be for your drainage to make sure that your pitch is correct and that your water doesn't pool, you know, on the size of your shower or anything like that. The thinset compatibility, that is using a flexible modified thin set specifically for wet environments. Same with the grout.

Make sure that you use compatible components to go with your beautiful tile work. Heat loss is also a consideration sometimes here in a shower when you have a thick mud pan or if you're in a basement shower, you may still want to use a ThermalSheet sometimes, right Scott? Absolutely. And that ThermalSheet, the good thing about it, it's a synthetic cork, which means it's not like cork. We would never recommend you put cork in a shower, but you can put a ThermalSheet in a shower because it is not going to foster the growth of any mold because it's not a natural product.

So the mold has nothing to eat. So it's very, very important that if you are putting this over a concrete slab is that you want to separate the heating system from the slab below it. So we know that shower pans work very, very well with, with our product. We have specific shower floors and shower benches. We have, if you take a look here, we have shower mats that are designed with holes in the center or off to the side.

Depends on what you have there. But we have already sized them for, for, for the usual units that you'll see very often. Also we have TempZone benchmats which are sized for various. You know, if you've got a 30 foot long bench that's 24 inches deep, of course we don't have that's a very odd sized bench. But if you have a normal size bench, we probably have a mat that is going to fit it for you.

So we do have those products. They are ul listed to be used in wet locations. We get that question all the time. And if you're doing this over a, a styrofoam form or a styrofoam pan, when you're install before you lay down the heat on that pan, you want to do a real quick skim coat of thinset on that first and then you lay the heating cable on top of that. So you're not going to lay it directly on the, the, the fleece material.

You're going to do a burn in key in real quick up thinset. Then you're going to lay the product on top of that. So you want to just make sure that you're doing and the great thing about the pans is are they're already sloped so you don't really have to worry about getting your slope and everything correct. You just do everything. You know, all you're doing is just adding a thin layer of heat in there.

And it's very, very important that you do that. And when you put the sensor placement in there, we're going to be talking about sensors a little bit later. There were a lot of questions about sensors that came in ahead of time. So I've got a feeling that some people might have run into sensor problems with another supplier. Fortunately, we don't have or haven't had, knock on wood, hardly any if at all.

I can't remember any problems with sensors going bad. But the good thing about that is we have redundant sensors. We send you an extra sensor anyway. So you always have one in the thermostat sensor box and the thermostat box and one always comes attached to the heating product. So you don't really have to worry about of sensors so much with our, with our floors.

So very, very important good things there. On a heated shower floor installation, waterproofing is very important. Also getting that off of the concrete slab, very important too. I think the TempZone is really a nicest product for using in a shower because you can really get it super low profile. It works well with tiny tiles.

So if you have any small mosaic or pebble or little teeny teeny tiles in the shower, your best bet is to use those flex benchmat style and shower mat style systems. Yeah. And, but the thing is we also, we also have Prodeso and, and cable TempZone cable that you can put in there too. And the last one I did was a TempZone Cable in a pedestal membrane. So there's a lot of different ways to skin the proverbial cat.

Right. With a larger tile, with a two by two or larger for the exact tile. Right. I was talking about the tiny ones I get. Oh, sorry all the time.

The tiny tiles. Yep. And one thing is I, I, I got a question out of. It's been a couple years ago, hey, can I use self leveling in my shower? And I go, not if you want that shower drain to not fill up with self leveling.

So no, you cannot use self leveling in a shower. You're going to have big, big troubles if you try that. So please don't do that. So but always remember to test the system with a digital ohmmeter as before, during and after your installation to make sure it's good. Absolutely.

Okay, so here's another one of our challenges. This is a existing tile removal retrofit option. So this is maybe that person who already had tile maybe a couple years ago, they regret they didn't heat their bathroom floor. So maybe now we're going to take out the cabinets, lift up those as kind of this picture showing here, maybe take out the vanity, take out a few tiles. We're going to retile the floor going that way and lay out down a heat mat.

So what they're doing is they're just removing that, prepping the floor to minimize that heat, minimize the floor height. I'm sorry. And again, what's beautiful about our temp products, it's super low profile. You, you barely even notice it in that 3, 8 spread of your thinset.

So all you really need to do is make sure that you're removing any existing, you know, critical adhesive that might have been left from before. You do want to make sure you have a good mortar and primer ready to go for that client expectation. You know, if you were doing a retrofit, you are not probably going to cover every square inch of the floor. So you do have to be a little bit conscious of your limitations on when you are doing a retrofit. We're where you can, it can lift up the tile to get the heat down.

But what we do is we offer easy mats. Those are nice little drop in pieces. If you just want to put a spot of heat maybe in front of your vanity like a 3x6 or something that works really good as a retrofit if you had to. You can also think about doing if you have like more of a complicated plan and you want to just try a cable installation. If it's like an add on, maybe you can always send us a plan or a sketch of that area that you're looking to have heated.

And we're going to try to balance it out for you and give you what's going to be the best method for the height and what you're trying to accomplish using our radiant either mats or cables to do that with the height challenges that you'll be facing. Yeah, just like this picture right here shows, this is heat doesn't magically travel laterally. You can't put a strip of heat down the middle of the room and, and expect the entire floor to heat up. It only travels laterally about an inch and a half from the cable. So if you are up against a system like this, this may be a spot where you put cable in because cable lets you get into oblong or odd areas that a mat won't.

So you could literally do a mat for part of this and then do cable to fill in the spots that aren't being used right There, as long as you keep the wire space 3 inches apart from another wire. So, so you can't just overlap the wire, but you can run it three inches apart and that may help you fill that area. Now the wider, if you go beyond three inches, remember we talked about the heat travels an inch and a half laterally, right. So you have, you have your wire here, you have an inch and a half over here and then an inch and a half over here. That's why they're spaced every three inches, because that's your temperature.

Overlap. Once you start getting beyond 3 inches, then you're going to possibly get stripes down the middle that don't heat as well. So you have to remember that cable has to be spaced correctly. You can't just space it haphazardly because if you, if you get real too narrow, it's going to overheat. And if you get too wide, you're going to have cold spots in the middle of that.

So that's something that we'll be glad to work with, with you on. And this is the main difference. We had a question from Richard about weaving the cables back and forth as opposed to using the mats. And that's it right there. The, the cable lets you get into different shapes than the mats will, but you can use them both.

So I, I know, Mary, you and I had a challenge. I don't know what, six months ago, where they were doing a whole job was a retrofit job. And it, it turned into hours and hours of work because we couldn't go into. Because this is the space you have, right? You can't go beyond it.

So what were some of the problems those people had with, with that plan, Mary, that we went around and around and around on? Oh, yeah, we just, we just could. They wanted to get us into like these little nooks and crannies and just there was not a possible way to get in those spots with, with the way that the retrofit had to take place. Even with the cable? Yeah, even with the cable.

And I think height is really, a lot of the times the challenge too, when they're trying to match up, you know, enclosed porch or something, you know, and height really becomes the challenging part. And sometimes the one, I just did a hardwood install job a couple years ago and sometimes you just have to put a transition in that, you know, a quarter inch high transition to allow you that space. And they thought, oh, I can't believe we have to do this. Now. Two or three years later, they don't even notice.

It. Right. It is not the end of the world. If you have to put a little transition to get into a higher area, it really isn't the end of the world. And I can tell you, because I ran up against that problem and a year and a half later they go, oh, I forgot about that.

So, you know, it's end of the world. But then really isn't, you know. Yeah. Okay, so here is our slide on our LVT or LVP laminate over radiant. Super most popular flooring choice these days.

It seems we're addressing the common concerns and best practices for installing luxury vinyl or tiles or planks or laminate flooring over our radiant heating systems. So as Scott early on said, there's more than one way to skin a cat here. So with our LVT specific challenges, you have the temperature limit. Most of your luxury vinyl products are going to say about 85 degrees is your max temp Fahrenheit. So we wanna make sure we have a way to know that you are not exceeding that temperature or unless the.

Manufacturer says a different number. So once again, if the manufacturer says 84 degrees and then you say, well, WarmlyYours said 85, it's what the manufacturer of the flooring says, not us. So we're giving you a guideline here. Your flooring may say 82, it may say 83, 84, whatever that is, you have to follow their guidelines. One of the other bigger challenges too is the flatness and distance from wires requirements.

So flatness is going to be your ratio of flatness across the entire floor and the distance from wire placement requirements, that means the actual, like, heating wire to the flooring itself. So there has to be some separation in between heating element and flooring. Right? Right. Yep.

Okay. And that's that. Those are the couple of the big ones that people don't get. You know, they'll say, hey, I want to use Environ, which is a floating system, because this is a floating floor. Well, this floating floor isn't resilient enough to not end up showing dents in it and waves in it after a year or two.

It's vinyl. Even if it says stone center, that stuff eventually will show, like a wavy floor over time. And that's where the flatness comes in. Now with laminate, laminate is solid. You don't have to worry about it doing this over the wire.

Every time there's a wire, it has a hump over it, then another hump over it. You don't have to worry about that with laminate. But for LVT, LVP, any of that vinyl product, stone center, whatever it is, that's where the flatness comes in. Now if you look in the installation manual many times it'll say the product must be installed a half inch from the heating wire. Well, right there is your half inch self-leveling cement layer that we suggest.

Because that does two things. It gets your flatness requirement and it gets your distance from the wire required requirement. Those are two biggies when it comes to vinyl.

Right? Very true, very true. So when we are talking about the laminate, we are also talking about the risking the gapping due to hot or cold cycling. Low relative humidity, that's a challenge. We always want to make sure the customer has either a dehumidifier or humidifier in their home, depending on the time of year.

That's going to help, you know, with any contraction or expansion of the flooring itself. We also want to ensure proper heat transfer with laminate.

That is also a concern. So. Well, the 800 pound gorilla when it comes to laminate or engineered wood is not the heat, it's the relative humidity in that room. If you have a room that has this product and in the wintertime it's 15% relative humidity and in the summertime it's 70% relative humidity, that product is going to go like this whether there's heat under it or not. So if you're investing in a floor that is going to be laminate or engineered wood or hardwood, even the same thing, the most important thing is the relative humidity.

So you're going to, if you get this floor, you're going to have to buy a dehumidifier for the summertime and you're going to have to buy a humidifier for the wintertime because it's, it's the heat. Does a little bit of this, you know, and a way that those companies mitigate the heat is they make you keep the temperature the same all the time. So if you always heat the floor to 82, it's not going to be doing this. But if you heat that floor to 82 and then today it's 20% humidity and tomorrow it's 70% humidity, it does this pull apart and then buckle, pull apart and buckle. That's relative humidity, that's not temperature.

And that's the one thing that people, you know, as soon as they call us and go, yeah, my floor is doing this, I'll say, what's relative humidity in the room? 18%. Right there is your answer. And I have floors like that in my house that don't have heat under them and in those in the, in the summertime they do this and in the wintertime they do that without heat under them. So that's just something that we know and we're trying to help you during the planning phases is here are things to look for.

Very good advice. Very good advice. Scott. Okay, so we mentioned the temperature control. We're not to exceed it.

Our floor sensor help you determine that. We talked about the self-leveling cement that we recommend and we also want to just mention to acclimate your flooring prior to installation this time of year. What's the time temperature out today? Scott? Oh, 1012 I think I got here.

Yeah, 1012 degrees right now. So yeah. Make sure if your flooring's been sitting in your garage and you're just getting ready to install it, bring it in like the night or day before so that it comes up to room temperature. It will definitely make it easier to install. Leave your expansion gaps around the edge as we mentioned.

And don't forget that vapor barrier or moisture tests. Moisture tests are important vapor barriers, you're still going to use that. If you're flooring manufacturer says you need a vapor barrier, you're going to follow what that manufacturer guideline advises. The WarmlyYours solution for LVT LVP we are confident that our TempZone product can be used for those applications. This means our TempZone cable with the spacing of either 3 or 4 inches.

This means our TempZone flex rolls, easy mats. All of those are the embedded style. Those are the green mesh rolls. Again, super low profile. The required leveling cement is, is typically a half inch.

We understand that seems and sounds thick and it kind of is, but that thick 1 inch layer is really kind of like your heat bank. So think of that layer as just gently heating up your entire space and it's not going to heat it up too fast or too, you know, too hot. It's going to help, you know, just keep it as a nice temperature and keep your room very cozy so it's not going to damage your flooring or anything. Your control is going to give you your precise flooring temperature. And then if you have the other style flooring where you have actually like a wood laminate with a floating method of a dry installation.

Yeah. Your subfloor has to be free of any staples or nails. Make sure anything that could damage or gouge on the heating mat. Make sure your subfloor is nice and. Prepared and then also put ThermalSheet over your subfloor.

Right. There's your quarter inch. Yep. Yes. You need a quarter inch of underlayment.

We recommend our ThermalSheet product. But that quarter inch is going to give you a couple things. It's going to give you a way to channel out a little cutout and recess the power lead cord so that there's no teeter totter on the cord. But that quarter inch also is a cushion. It's the cushion so your, your Environ foil mat doesn't get crimped in between the hard surface of your flooring and the under flooring layer.

So if you don't use a quarter inch underlayment under your Environ, you're going to be sorry. It may not, you may not be sorry tomorrow, but you will be sorry because you'll start to crush the wire. It'll eventually get worn and abraded because it got to have the right pad under it and the right pad doesn't bounce too low and, and it doesn't stay too hard. It's got that in between, lets the cable get down underneath. And it doesn't abrade because every time you walk on it, that layer, those layers do this right and it just like a sandpaper.

So one of the benefits of electric floor heat is over way over. Hydronic. Hydronic. Many, many hydronic and especially older controls don't have a floor sensor. So they're just overshooting the temperature and undershooting it, trying to hope hopefully to keep it around 82.

It may go 86, 87, then it may go 78 and it just bounces up and down. That's what we call overshooting and undershooting. And that's the, the hallmark of hot water with electric, you set it to that temperature and it stays there. That means there's no expansion and contraction. That means that the spot where the doorway is isn't the hottest.

And then when the, when the hot water runs all the way to the other side of the room and, and it's 10 degrees cooler, your doorway is 80 degrees and, and the other wall is 70. That's another thing you have to worry about with hot water because it enters the room hotter and it leaves the room colder. With electric heat, it's the same temperature at the beginning as it is at the end. So those are very, very important things. When it comes to LVT and laminate.

You keep it at a steady state because of that floor sensor, which is very, very important. We had a question about from Dave who said how do you keep the TempZone mat flat and stop it from floating up when embedding in floor leveling compound? Well, I can tell you I've talked to dozens of people over the years who have forgotten to do this and what that means is they're pouring self leveling twice. They've poor self leveling is very, very dense. So if you don't attach the mat or the cables to the subfloor really well, they will do this to the top layer of your self leveling.

You have to keep attached to the subfloor otherwise it will float to the top and then you'll either. And then the worst part is when people come with a grinder, I'm going to grind that high spot down. And unfortunately that high spot was where the wire was. So now they've trashed the trash the floor. So what you need to do is you need to make sure you use hot glue and you keep that product down.

If you're using long runs of cable back and forth the room, make sure you use masking tape every couple of feet to hold it down so it doesn't raise up. And always put if you're doing an installation job with the, with the rolls or the mats cable side down because that is going to keep the loops from going rip like this at the end. So you want to make sure that it's cable side down. Those are very, very important things. And you're not going to be using normal, normal self leveling tools.

You're not going to be using gauge rakes because you will cut and you'll cut through there. You're not going to be using those big rollers that have pins in them because that'll destroy your floor. And you're not going to be wearing spikes on your shoes because that will destroy a floor. We just had somebody use spike shoes last year on a floor and then didn't understand why their floor didn't work because they completely trashed it when they put the self leveling in. So if you just keep those things in mind, self leveling is great.

You attach the stuff really fast to the subfloor, you pour over it, you got a nice flat subfloor, you're ready to go. Very good, Very good. Yeah, I think that's the best, really best method to install any of those LV type flooring choices.

Awesome. Next slide. I'm trying. There we go. There we are.

Okay, our next pro challenge, concrete installations. Oo. This is a good one. All right. Concrete presents its own unique challenges.

This opportunity challenges and opportunities. The radiant heating for WarmlyYours offers tailored solutions for both outdoor snow melting as well as indoor floor heating through slab heating. So let's talk one at a time. We'll do outdoor snow melting first. Outdoor snow melting is a similar looking cable to the indoor, but it is at 50 watts a per square on our 3 inch system, whereas our, our other one would be at 20 watts a per square on our indoor 3 inch system.

The outdoor system, yes, it's a lot of watts. It's to keep your driveways, walkways, patios, think about your, you know, sidewalks out to your hot tubs, think about handicap accessible areas, parking spaces. We do these commercially in front of hotel spaces, loading dock areas, gates that have to be free of ice to be able to slide open. So there's a lot of good applications for snow mounting besides just your huge driveways. We do automated systems.

This is going to help you prevent that snow buildup. So the system going to kick on automatically during the snow event. You don't have to worry about turning it on yourself. This solution is great to help protect the lifespan of your of your new driveway or patio or brick pavers. You're not going to need to use that salt, you're not going to have the scraping of the snow blower plows on the driveways.

So that is a really pro advantage for using a electric radiant driveway or system on your outdoor uses. The main thing is you're going to have a dry driveway with no black ice. So if you have somebody out there with a plow and they're plowing, there's always going to embed a little bit of snow and a little bit of ice in that into that concrete layer right on the very top. And you're never going to get rid of that. But with the electric, it will actually melt that, it will evaporate and you'll have a completely dry surface with no black ice forming.

Yeah. So outdoor is, is an awesome thing. And as we know this year people are getting clobbered with those ice storms in the southern states. So I'd like to hear from some southern folks this coming fall be willing to put in some snow melting for the upcoming years. And a hint and a hint for people that because we're supposed to be getting, you know, that we may, we may get Snowmageddon this year.

We don't know. But if you know, all of our systems allow you to manually turn the system on to get it started if you want. So what you can do is if you know it's going to snow. You can turn your system on an hour or two ahead of time and that way the surface is nice and warm when it does start to snow and then that stuff won't accumulate. We have an anonymous attendee who's asked some questions about stuff we talked about five, five or six slides ago.

I think, Mary, what we should do is we should answer their question at the very end instead of going back five or six slides just so. Anonymous attendee, we're going to answer your questions, but we're not going to go backwards. We'll do it at the very end. So please stay with us. It's the hook to stay with us.

Go ahead, Mary. Okay, let's talk quickly about the indoor concrete option. So indoor concrete is, let's say you're pouring a new foundation, you're adding on a new patio or not patio, I'm sorry, a new like sunroom or something for your home, or you're adding a dog kennel indoors, or you're adding a indoor chicken coop or some other housing for animals. We get asked for that quite a bit. Although we do get asked for your indoor slabs for your residential uses as well.

Sometimes slab heating for commercial uses I can think of is even like refrigerators and things. So there's so many options for slab heating indoors that you don't always realize this transforms your cold concrete slabs in your basements or garages or new constructions. It's again providing that uniform, even comfortable heating. You're heating up that massive slab is what you're doing in these situations. It's going to reduce the overall energy consumption compared to the forced air because it's just going to be a bank of mass of heat and it's compatible with various floorings.

Once it's actually in the concrete, you can floor on top of most, most of these surfaces. So the number one thing we see indoors with people doing this is stained and polished. So if you need to do a stained and polished basement floor, this is your product. The installation on that right side is perfect for that. Yeah, these products are going to require that bulk of cement.

So it's at least like a good 2 to 3 inches of concrete over the top of the heating element on these types of these indoor and outdoor slab systems. Yeah, National Electric code requires at least an inch and a half above the heating element. So you need to make sure that it's at least that deep. We suggest usually around 2, 2 to 3 inch depth. Because if you have a 4 inch slab, the most important thing on this that I've gone out and done dozens of these installs.

The number one problem I see with people doing these installs is they, they tie the cable to the rebar, but they forgot to prop the rebar up off of the, up, up off the surface. You want that rebar to be up in the middle of the, of the pore and that's where the cable is. If you look real carefully on this install, you can see where they've used bricks underneath here. And those bricks are enough to prop it into the middle of the pore. The last thing you want to do is go and do this huge installation and have the cable sit on the bottom and then there's 4 inches of concrete that it has to get through to get up to your feet.

Okay? That's the last thing you want. You don't want it down here, you want it in the middle. And that's what we're doing with these items, propping it up. Very, very important.

It's the number one mistake I see people don't think about, oh, I should have propped that up. So now you're walking around and it's all just at the bottom of a 4 inch pour of, of concrete. So please, please think about that. It's in our cross sections, every one of our cross sections that we send always you want to prop that up and hopefully that hopefully answered your question about the similarities and the differences between indoor and outdoor slabs. Outdoor has different rules.

Outdoor snow melting requires GFEP protection for personnel, not GFCI. The one on the right requires GFCI. It's indoors. So indoors products and outdoors products are not the same. So whenever we have a question, and I've worked with Mary over the years with the sales reps, is it indoor?

Because if it's indoors, we're using slab heating cable If it's outdoor, we're using snow melting cables. Because snow melting cables have too many watts per linear square to be installed indoors. They're not supposed to be put in there. Now, once again, that's a code interpretation. It's up to your code official.

You should ask them. But we're always going to ask you indoors versus outdoors because you don't want to take the Slab Heat Cable, put it outside, because it doesn't have enough wattage to melt anything outdoors when it's 18 degrees. Right? So two different products for two different applications, make sure both of them are in the middle of your pour to make sure that the heat gets to the top and it doesn't sit at the bottom of the concrete. Awesome.

Very good information there. All right, so our next pro challenge comes to our multi zone electrical planning. So this is somebody that maybe has submitted their challenge for a 2,000 square foot main floor living area. You may have like four living spaces and they need an electrical solution. So there's again more than one way to skin a cat.

You can, you know, first check your available breaker spaces. This is 2000 square foot is pretty large. Each thermostat, whether you're in 120 volt or 240 volt, is limited to a 15amp load. So every 15amps of space. So in 120 volt you're talking around 120 square foot.

If you're doing a 240 volt system, every about 220 square foot, that's about a 15amp load. That's the only difference between 120 and 240. Every time I do one of these webinars, I feel like I have to go to the mountaintops and and yell, 240 is not better than 120. It's the same. It heats exactly the same.

The only thing 240 does is it lets you cover twice as much space at 15 watts per square foot to keep it under 15amps for that control. That's the only difference. I mean, I get that question almost every single day. Yeah, same, same. I always thought the easiest way, and this was my trick to remember, you know, there's that movie Mr.

Mom. Do you remember when he's trying to be Mr. Mom and he says, oh, he's trying to show off to his wife's boss and he says, oh, you know, what do you got put in there? He's like, oh, you know, 2, 210, 220, you know, whatever it is, 240 line. He was just trying to lingo talk him.

But the easy way to remember is 110 volt. 110 square foot. 210 volt, 210 square foot or same 120. 120 square foot. 220 or 240.

240 square foot. That's right about your threshold level. So that's when you know you're going to go 120 or 240 and then for every additional square footage, you're going to go another 15amps, you're going to have something either another thermostat or another power module. So it really kind of depends if you're wanting the entire space zoned all as one Control one thermostat from your living room to your hallway to your kitchen to your mudroom, or since the mud room's way kind of at the other end, and maybe that room is by the back door and it's colder, that room, you may want to just put it on its own thermostat control and not zone it with your other two or three spaces. So there's definitely ways to talk about these multiple areas on the same first floor.

heating it all on the same thermostat is not always a great idea. So, Scott, tell us why that's not always a great idea. Well, you have, you have a product in your hallway, and you have a product in your little tiny half bath. Then you've got a product in the master, you know, in this huge room that's 200, 220 square foot. And the people.

Well, I want to save money on thermostats. I just want to put this all on one if I can, or I just want to put this, a thermostat on a power module. Well, what they end up with is that little tiny bathroom that's there at the end of the hall. And it's 95 degrees in there because the thermostats out in the gigantic room that has tons of heat loss, exterior walls, big windows, you know, that's heat loss and it's all going to go away there. So, you know, I have a thermostat in this room and it's going, oh, we have to heat more, heat more, heat more.

And this poor, the poor people in that little bathroom at the end of the hall, it's like, oh, for crying out loud, it's 99 degrees in here. Somebody knock it off. So that's, that's why you don't want two dis. Separate areas being heated by the same control. It's, you're.

Oh, I'm saving lots of money. Well, now, which do you do? Do you have the gigantic room set to 60? Because that room over there is 90. Or do you set the thermostat in the room that's 90, and now the people over here, it's 50 degrees, you know, so that's why you put a control in each one, so you can dial them up and make them comfortable.

And you're not really saving much money by. By eliminating a thermostat. You're, you're. I mean, you've. I think you and I talked about a job like this.

What. It was a couple of weeks ago, right? Yeah. And it's, you still need the same amount of circuits. It's not like, you know, you're saving a circuit or something like that.

And it really, if it's a remodel, you're probably really making it way more complicated for the wiring, these thermostats and power modules. Either way, they need a dedicated breaker, right, Scott? Yes. So. So you still have to make the home run there.

I personally, I think sometimes, yeah, putting it on multiple. Ability to control temperature would be pretty important to me as a homeowner. So I always want to suggest, talk to your clients about that. Follow your code compliances. You know something, sometimes they're not going to want to put all the thermostats in the rooms because they're not fashionable and I want to put them in a closet or I want to put the thermostat, power modules all in the utility rooms.

You have to check, you have to check on code because that might not be code compliant because a lot of National Electric code says you have to have a disconnecting means in that room. And usually that's the thermostat. Your thermostat is your disconnecting means. And if you're heating that space, you need to have some way to turn it off. It can't be, oh, it's really hot up here.

Hey, can you go down to the basement and turn this brake? You know, it's. So you need to make sure your code compliance is there. Very, very important when it comes down to that. So, yeah, each, each one requires its own, its own breaker.

So if you're going to do a bathroom, let's say we're going to shrink things immediately and go to a bathroom that's 52 square feet. You don't need 240 in there because the 240 circuit breaker takes up two spaces in your breaker panel. A 120 only takes one. So you're using up all this space. And when it comes to this gigantic room, the first thing I tell somebody is, do you have any spaces in your breaker panel before we even get started?

Because if your breaker panel is completely full, then you're going to need another service, right? Absolutely, absolutely. So, yeah, we will tell you all those electrical requirements when you do get your smart plan from us. So fear not, we have you covered. We got a question.

Isn't 240 more efficient and cost wise? Absolutely not. You were charged by the wattage you use, not by the amperage you use. So 120 watts, 120 volts, heats exactly the same as 240. There's no, no, it's not any energy.

Efficient It's not going to be cheaper on your electric bill. Absolutely. But great question. Yes, we get that very often. All right, so selecting the right thermostat for your clients and yourselves.

We have a couple different options to choose from. We have the smart home integration with our new WI FI thermostat. This will work with your Google Alexa, Amazon Google Assistant and your Alexa Amazon. That is great. If it's maybe a remote or, you know, vacation home or something like that where you need that WI FI capability.

Our trusty old friend here, the reliable nSpire Touch Programmable. That's a really nice unit because it is pretty user friendly. You can walk up right to the face of the unit app on it, wake it up, push your buttons up or down, program it right from the unit. Incredibly easy to program. If you folks have been in this business for a long time where you had the old thermostat with the doors open up and you had all these buttons that you had to up, up, up and down, down, down, and you know, all these, you know, mechanical things, this is so much easier.

This is the one I suggest to everybody that's had an old thermostat that is not working any longer and you don't need WI fi, then this is the one you want because it is so easy to use. Yeah, definitely. The great model. And then we have our set it and forget it model. This is our user friendly option.

No programming required. You simply just tap the unit to wake it up. It will illuminate as you kind of just see like the temperature, the little up and down arrows in that circle. So your circle is your on and off arrows are your temperature up or down. That's great for, you know, maybe older folks or maybe even like your, you know, kids bathrooms or something.

So you don't want them to deprogram anything or let's say it's even like a guest bathroom, you know, something that's not used very frequently, just when guests are there. That would be a good model. And this model also is very good for floors that are not allowed to be set back at night. And a setback temperature is what a programmable thermostat does. With a programmable thermostat, you say, I want it to be warm during these hours and then during these hours I want it to be cool.

Okay, well, hardwood floors, laminate floors, engineered floors, LVT floors, they don't want temperature swings. So your manufacturer may say you can set it to 82. But there's no setbacks allowed. That's the terminology you want to look for. That's the keyword, setback.

Because setback is used to cut the temperature overnight when no one's on it or during the day when no one's on it. So if you have any of those floors that I just mentioned, you are not going to want to buy a programmable thermostat because you can't program it. You simply set it to a temperature and keep it there forever until spring. And then you lowered a couple degrees per day until you turn it off. And in this, in the fall, you turn it on and raise it a couple degrees until you get up to, to the temperature.

But you can't go 82, 65, 84, 65 with some of those products if you have that situation. You want the non programmable thermostat. Yeah. Basically manual is what we're saying. Go back to a manual unit that's just going to remain constant.

The floor sensor. Here we go again. Fluorosensors. We've mentioned this little guy a couple times. We offer one thermal floor sensor inside the box with your thermostat.

So when you receive your heating cable or mat, you are also going to get a spare backup. This is now complimentary from WarmlyYours with your heat mats or cables. This goes for the TempZone products and the Environ products. Packaged with your cellophaned up roller cable, you will find a little black sensor wire. I believe we even have a sticker that says don't forget to add your sensor wire.

So the installer will find one with the heating unit element and then the other sensor will be in your box with your control. So you no longer need to purchase a separate spare. Unless this is again a retrofit option where you're maybe not replacing a thermostat so you don't have that extra spare sensor. If there's any reason for redundancy, you're very much welcome. I believe they retail for about 12 bucks, so no big deal.

If you'd like some extras, some folks like to just buy a couple extras to have in their toolbox in case one gets lost or misplaced. So I highly recommend that if you're a regular installer, next go around, purchase a couple extra sensors to have with you. And we're going to talk more about sensors in a little bit. Okay. Integrated GFCI protection.

This is another one we get asked all the time on the sales side and the technical side, the GFCI Do I need it? Do I need a dedicated circuit? My mat is so small, it only pulls one air, two amps. You know what is our answer to that, Scott? Well, it's the same guy who used up.

He tapped off power from his GFCI outlet and sent it to his thermostat. And he's had nothing but trouble with nuisance tripping because he has a GFCI thermostat, he's got a GFCI outlet, and now one or both of them trips because they're fighting each other. Okay, that's another reason why never ever install a GFCI circuit breaker. You cannot imagine the number of people I've talked to. My electrician told me to put a GFCI circuit breaker in there.

And I tell them he's a smart guy because he knows GFCI is required. However, we outsmarted him. We put it in the thermostat. So now we need to make sure that that smart guy who was already planning ahead but did it too well, you. He needs to come back and take that.

That. Break that GFCI breaker out and put a regular old, inexpensive breaker in. Yeah, I was just gonna say cost is probably a thing too. Your GFCI breakers are gonna be more expensive, and you're already paying for that with, with any of our model thermostats of these units here. Your GFCI protection is built in, so you don't need that expensive breaker.

Yeah, and. And please don't. Here's a simple test. If you have an old install, if you want to find out some, Some interesting information about your system, find your therm. Find the, the circuit breaker that's supplying power to your thermostat.

Turn all your lights and everything on in the bathroom and then turn that breaker off. And when you turn that breaker off, you'll see everything else that's on that circuit. So your lights may go out, your outlets may go out. That's what I always tell people is take a couple of lamps, plug them into your outlets, now go turn the breaker off. And does anything else go off besides the thermostat?

No. No, that's it. Then there's a pretty simple way to find out if you have a dedicated line or not. You don't require any special tools for that. But if you turn that off and all of a sudden, ding, ding, everything goes off.

You know that the reason why you're getting GFCI trips is because all those other things. I had. I had a bathroom that they had wired it together. With the exhaust fan. Exhaust fans are notorious in bathrooms for throwing off dirty power on a circuit that a thermostat is on every.

So I said watch this. So I, I had the thermostat turned on and then I took the, the, the switch for that, for that fan and I went like this. Up, down, up, down, up, down. And all of a sudden boom, there went the thermostat. thermostat went off.

And that's. Those are just simple tests that you can do to find out what else is on this circuit. Very true, very true. Last we'll just quickly touch here. All of these models come as dual volt.

The same unit. Whether you're 120 volt or 240 volt. It is up to your electrician to provide it with the right power. And your, your heating roll will or mat cable will tell you which one it is. You must connect it to the right voltage.

Yes, Scott. Thank you Mary.

We get this question all the time too. So I had to talk about it. If I send 240 to this thermostat, will it send 120 to my 120 volt? Matt or Vice? Believe me, I get this all the time.

If I send 120 to this thermostat would automatically change it to 240. It is not a transformer, it's just a switch. So if you send 120 into it, 120 is going to go out of it. Same thing with 240 but it says dual voltage. That means it will switch 120 or 240.

But you have to match the voltage of the product installed in the floor. Right? Very true, very true. So pay attention to your voltages. And again, remember that cusp, you know the 120 square foot is about 120 volt.

220 square foot is about 220 volt. Okay, so for our professional insights now here's what's going to help you get through your projects. You are going to do your pre installation checklist. We want you to test the heating system with your digital multimeter. Document the substrate conditions.

You are going to verify your electrical capacity and plan the cable or mat routing before your installation. So that's placement of power basically even when you're sending us the plan to make your sketch or your drawing to request that. SmartPlan. Especially in big jobs, big rooms, multiple rooms. Having that idea of where the thermostat goes is pretty important to us.

If we're designing your plan because we require to Start that heat mat or cable within a certain distance of where your power is coming from. So if your power is in the, you know, upper right hand corner of the room, then we don't want to put your power in the lower left hand corner of the room. So it really changes around your whole mapping of how the heating system is going to go in. So we want to plan for that as early as possible. And the thing is, the circuit check that you buy from us is not a substitute for a digital meter.

You've got to have a digital multimeter to do this job with. The circuit, check the egg, whatever you want to call that, the detector is not a substitute for that. Right? Yeah. That's just your little buddy to help you know, if you accidentally have dropped something or gouged something, put a trim nail in something on the job at the moment of impact.

Yeah. So this is not your fail safe. Take your OHMS multimeter to it, please. Proper cable spacing. This is very important for your installation.

Homeowners will tippy toe around the room to find the cold spots. So beware that you're as Scott said, it's about an inch and a half laterally across your tile how much that floor heat's gonna radiate out. So if you're too far away from your toe kicks or you don't heat the toilet room up to the bowl, somebody's gonna be standing in a cold spot and not be very happy. So proper cable spacing to avoid and even outdoors to avoid striping, to avoid any of that. Too tight, too wide.

Bad securing your cables properly with the right fasteners. If you're doing outdoor stuff, we're talking zip ties on, on a metal mesh. If you're talking indoors, we're talking securing it with the hot glue guns, the proper cable strips, proper cement and self-leveling cements, stuff like that. You're going to test that resistance once again before, during and after. We can't stress that enough.

And post installation, thermostat installation is going to be one of your final checks. Get that guy up and going. That's going to be after your final OHMS readings. Contact the client, educate them, show them how to operate the thermostat that you have and then just any system commission requirements. So test early, test often and that will help you prevent all your callbacks.

And don't forget to install your floor sensor. We got a question from Dave and Dave asked about. They've used a glue gun to, to hold the product down so it doesn't Float. All I can tell you is that's the best thing that I've used. And I, for me it's worked.

But I realized that sometimes a work zone is not the cleanest place. So if you're using hot glue and it's not sticking to the subfloor, I would you. He has, can you use thin set instead? Well, I also use hot glue to hold it in place while I put thinset over it. So I mean it's kind of hard if you're putting thinset down over the mesh to hold it in place unless you use a hot glue.

What I found is that there's a better way to install, to use hot glue than instead of putting it down, putting the wire down and then gluing over the top of it. What, what you do is you just, you put a dollop of glue on the surface, you take a one inch wide chisel and you take that wide inch, one inch wide chisel as a spatula and you put that dollop of glue down. You take the, you, you push the mesh down. Then you use that 1 inch piece of metal to push it down into the glue. So you're not gluing over the top of it.

You're putting the glue down. You're. And then using, or you can, you can lay the mesh down, put the dollop of glue on top, but then use that 1 inch wide blade to push it down to hold it down better. And that works like a charm. So you're actually using that one inch piece of metal not over the wire, over the mesh and you're pushing it down into that mesh down into the subfloor.

So whatever you can use that you're comfortable with that will hold it down. Just don't, please use, please don't use a bunch of masking tape to hold the product down before you self level it because you're going to have a bunch of hollow spots if you're, if you're doing that. So please don't do that. Hot glue is the best. And experiment with putting the hot glue on in a different method than you're currently, currently using.

Because I think that's what's worked for me. And third of all, if you want to use thinset, you're more than welcome to try that too. So hopefully I second the spatula recommendation. I had a guy tell me that he took his wife's cake decorating spatula and she was not happy about it. I said if I, my husband took my cake decorating spatula to lay tile or Grout or cement or something.

I'd be upset too, but he's like, it's the best tool I've ever found is to spread this. Yep, spread it thin. That way it dries faster too. Yeah, you're getting that thin layer. All right, so something new for this year.

We are wanting to introduce you to our new friend, Ray. She is our new AI companion. Ray is going to be on our website in various places. You're going to see her around. She is going to help guide us through how to get your SmartPlan, how to get your custom layout within 24 hours.

This is going to include your electrical specifications, your material calculations is all provided within this SmartPlan. We're going to show you how to how that precision mat is placed, the thermostat requirements, the power requirements, the component identifications. We're going to even let you know if you, you know, maybe want to check this with code. We're going to make any little notations on your plan that are going to be very crucial for you and your installers and crew to check to make sure that this is going to fit your project as designed. It eliminates all that guesswork.

It reduces your installation time, saves your guys just, you know, all the time scratching their heads on how to do something right when you have this nice guide here and it ensures that you don't have waste and code compliance. So let's see what that looks like, Scott.

Okay, so here's our new website. This is under the radiant floor heating smart plan section. From here, you just jump on and you scroll down just a little bit to start your smart plan journey. You have two options on how to send us those SmartPlan. The first option, my favorite, is to just give us your sketch drawing, upload it, hand drawn sketches, fine.

If you have a professional 2020 drawing, whatever you have, dimensions, placement WiFi thermostat, flooring, subfloor and flooring choice. If it's outdoors, basically the same thing. Just need to know the surface of your concrete, asphalt or paver. Or you can go. Excuse me, to our online design tool.

The online design tool is a fun way to sketch out your room using our neat drag and drop tools and configurations to actually submit a digital drawing to Ray, our new designer, and she will send that out to our engineering team who's going to then give us this expertise quotation back on your quotation, you're going to get the customized design and guidance. We're going to tell you all those electrical specifications again, efficiency for the project, operating costs for the project all of those good keys are right there. Scroll down a little bit more. All your plans are numbered too. So we do keep really good records here at WarmlyYours.

Every time you get a quote, you get a quote number. Every time that quote has a specific room, that room has a room IP installation plan number. Very crucial for how we keep track of how many times a room may get revised or just simple ways. So if you've got a installer on site and he's got a question, our toll free number is right there on this beautiful guide of how to do everything. And the information, your ohms readings there, your voltage is spelled out there, the room name is spelled out there.

The size of the cable or mat is spelled out right there. So there's as many things as we can possibly think of to help you not make a mistake. We try to incorporate in these beautiful plans. We even show you the heated area spaces which is a little bit sometimes different than what the cable drawing looks like. You know, so the homeowners really get a good visual.

This is such a helpful tool to have the smart plan for your records for the homeowner's records for when the homeowner sells the house to the next guy. You know, if there's ever a troubleshooting down the road, having your installation smart plan from WarmlyYours is. I can't tell you how many times in my 20 years that I have, I'm dealing with a homeowner that I sold a job to in 2008 who is literally now just getting to finishing her installation. And she's the most lovely lady to work with. But if I didn't have such good records, I never would have found her project on how to help her.

You know, 18 years later, here we are. Yeah. And exactly. It's like people that at the very beginning, they want to figure it out themselves. Oh, I got so many square footage.

So I do this. I divide by three and I divide by four or whatever to get the different spacing. Just send us this. It's so much easier. Especially if you're a beginner.

It is so much easier. Yeah, yeah. We will really help you take all that guesswork and we will help you be confident in what you're doing and your confidence will show through to your, your customers. The other thing you get at WarmlyYours is someone like me. You get your dedicated account reps. All of our reps here.

My team is really great. We've all been here tons of years. I can't even. I mean nobody's, nobody's New. No, no, nobody's a, a rookie.

So yeah. Use your dedicated account managers to help you guide those tip. Difficult questions. And they will, they will help you get those plans. Our turnaround is typically like 24 hours.

There's no reason that you can't send us a plan and be ready to present to your client the very next day. And if you need to call us for assistance, it's much easier for us to help you if you got a drawing, an installation plan done. Because if you don't, we're all shooting in the dark. Right. And that's why it's so important when you call is we're going to ask you, do you have an installation plan?

Because as soon as I see an installation plan and this person tells me something's going on with it, I usually can look at the plan and go, well, I can see a couple of areas that you might want to look at. Right. So it's like something that I can help you with without the drawing. Okay. We can, all we can do is guess.

Right, Right. Right. So yeah, very true. Use your dedicated account reps. We'll be here for that. We'll also be here to help you place any orders.

So it. And we also can help you, you know, meet. We do some training as well. If you want to do some like, you know, one on one zoom stuff with your account managers, please let me know or let your account managers know and we will get that set up for you. Lastly, we want to go over real quick is that you will get a complete delivery of the system.

This is all your heating components. SmartPlan. We conclude the smart plan in your order so it actually goes to your job site. That was something we thought of years ago because, oh, what good is it to give a designer a floor plan if it. The designer would take that floor plan, put it in her, put it in her shelf.

I'm going to file this and okay, you guys take this away. I'm going to send you the thermostat later too. Don't worry about it now. So they go without the sensor. Yeah, it was, it was kind of a thing that we said like, yeah, we need to be putting a copy of these floor plans inside of every order.

So. So with your packing lists, look for your floor plans. Make sure your installers know this because if your guys don't know this information, they're not even looking for it either. They, they're thinking, they're just here to put it in. They, they maybe haven't seen this before.

They don't know that we provide such great services. So let them know that we shine above all the other floor heating products they've probably ever put in with all this great information that we're able to provide them. We have the warranty documentation in there and of course our toll free number for 24. 7 Tech support is always in there. So WarmlyYours has been around for decades and decades.

I'm hitting in my 20 years. Scott's hitting his I think 17 plus years. So we'd love to earn your business if you're not with us yet. And if you are, we thank you so much for being with us all these years. And I think.

What else we got there, Scott? That's Ray. There's Ray. That's the. Is that the end of it?

No, I think we got more after Ray. Oh, okay. Look at that. We've got some pro tools for success. Okay, so we've talked about our multimeters, we've talked about our circuit checks.

We have talked about our concrete testers. We have appropriate trowels. Okay, that's always good. You're going to follow the trowel for your size tile, right? Roller.

We did talk about the roller for the ThermalSheet. Anytime your concrete installing over concrete with a thermal insulation sheet, get a 50 pound roller to make sure it's well stuck and adhered before you pour out your cement. Masking tape, securing hot glue, staple guns as discussed already. Let's see, we have our support resources 24. 7 technical hotline.

We have the best in the industry. Starring our lovely Scott Rosenbaum installation video library. Those videos are key guys. I mean there are so many good tips and tricks in those videos. Please check out our new video selection.

You can sort them so much easier than you used to be able to. So please check it out. We have awesome troubleshooting guides. Emergency protocols WarmlyYours really does document everything. Photos, callbacks.

We will help you get through your tough times. So be at ease. We are here for you.

These are the common things that we help people all the time with. It's that system's not heating. What is it? How come my thermostat? Is it just a programming error?

Is it a incorrect sensor appointment? How about circuit breaker issues? How about damaged heating elements? What do we do with all those things? So when it comes down to a lot of installation stuff, when you're doing an installation, if you have the choice of taking you have a bucket that weighs 5060 pounds full of thinset.

And if you have the choice of putting that 60 pound bucket with the sharp edges on the bottom. We all have those buckets at home and you put it down. If you have the choice between putting that down on the cable or if you have a choice of putting that on top of a piece of cardboard on top of the cable, you always want to put a piece of cardboard on top of the cable before you put that heavy thing. People ask us, there's a problem in my floor. How could this have possibly happened?

Oh, I can give you a laundry list because I've been, I've been, I've seen it, I've done it myself. I actually cleaned my trout, my trowel mistakenly. I, you know, I always hit it on the ground to clear it. Well, the problem is I forgot. It's like, oh, I sell electric floor heating wire and I just missed the wire.

And I go, I've got to quit doing that. So it happens to people who even know the wire is there. You're going, and somebody says, why? I watched all the time, well, what, you're not going to see somebody doing this, you know, but you, you may not notice somebody cleaning the grout line or putting down a heavy, heavy bucket of thinset or putting. Somebody comes in, hey, I've got to work on that light real quick.

I'm going to put my ladder here. Well, that ladder and a 250 pound person on that ladder is going to short the wire. And it may not show up at the very beginning, it may show up later. My, my floor worked great until my trim guys came in. And now I've got beautiful trim and I've got a floor that doesn't work.

Or the trim guy just put in this fabulous doorstop. Well, that fabulous doorstop is drilled right through the wire. Okay? So that's the kind of stuff that can happen. Somebody drops a hammer, you know, from, from two feet.

If you drop a hammer, it's going to cause a short. So just like I said, there's a laundry list of things that can happen that may look innocuous to you when you're watching. But it really isn't innocuous because that can happen. And it's like, well, why did it show up three years later? I went out and repaired a floor that had, that was a 120 volt floor that had been sent to 40 volts for 11 years before it failed.

I mean, it's crazy how those work. To me, I'm like, what? It's crazy, but. And I'm going out there, I go, well, this is a 120 foot floor and I measured the voltage, it's 240. And I go, well, that's why I know that there's a problem in the floor.

It burned out, but it's been working for 10 years. Well, those are the 10 luckiest years of your life because sometimes it'll, it'll. As soon as you hook the power up, it'll, it'll blow apart. Because a 240 volt can't be sent to a 120 volt product. So we've had so many comments and I know we're running long here, but these are people that are asking questions.

So I have to answer the question, right? That's my excuse when it comes to sensors, faulty sensors. Now I can tell, and I'm not stretching here by any means. I can't remember the last time I had dealt with a faulty sensor. Mary, have you had one lately?

Almost in my 20 years, I think I've literally had maybe two that actually gave a bad ohm reading on the sensor. So obviously it does. I think there, I think in the industry, there was a problem with sensors in the industry last year, the year before or something like that. We haven't had that issue. But I can tell you if you have a bad sensor, you can replace it without ripping up your floor.

And the secret is, is to get a thermal camera and with that thermal camera, turn your heating system on and where you have that, mark it with the grease pen where all your heating wires are around your thermostat. Okay, so like you take a three foot perimeter around, on the floor around your thermostat and take that thermal camera and mark where the cables are. And what you want to do is you want to find a grout line that's not right above one of those heating wires. You want it off to the side because you don't want the sensor on the wire. You want it somewhere between two heating wires.

And the best way to install, and this is going to answer another question. The best way to install the sensor is to play if you're, if your wires are this, this far apart, you want the sensor to, to land right there. You want it to be in the middle. Okay, so your wires are 3 inches apart. You want your sensor to be about 6 to 8 inches out in the floor, not all the way on the other side of the room, not out into the middle, just six or eight inches into the floor where it's heated between two of the heating wires.

That's the best way to install that wire. But getting back to Retrofitting a wire, retrofitting a sensor is. Is fairly simple if you know where the heating wires are. With your thermal camera, you can pick the grout line that is not right above that wire, and then you can score that grout line and take that grout line out down to the depth of a tile. If you go too deep, you're going to cut your heating wire.

But if you go down the depth of the tile, you then lay that sensor in there and then grout over the top, and you'll never know the difference. So the secret is there is you have to have a thermal camera, and they're available everywhere. Now, it's not like when you and I started, Mary. I can tell you the first thermal camera I bought for this company was $5,000. So that was a big deal around the office.

You remember that 15 or 17 years ago, I said, we need a thermal camera. Oh, it's going to cost 5,000 bucks. They cost $100 now. Right. So things are so different.

So you can get a thermal camera everywhere and find that open grout line, route, route it out, put that retrofit sensor in there, grout over the top, and hook it up to your thermostat. That's the easiest way to do that. And we covered all those. Oh, how to find that, how to find the bad sensor, we really haven't had to do that very often. But what you can do is you can use a cable tracing tool where it sends a signal from where the thermostat attaches to your.

Where your sensor attaches to the thermostat. You disconnect that, and you have two little wires. You put the noisemaker on there. It's electronic noisemaker. And you just follow that line down to your floor.

And with that, with that microphone, you can find where that sensor is. So you can use a tracing tool to find where the sensor is, but it doesn't really matter if it's not working, just put another one in in a grout line. So I think that was a great question from Carl and from Jim, because those are questions that obviously are very important. We don't have to deal with it very often, luckily, here, but that's how you work around that. Good, good, good.

Okay. Like, I think the last things we left here off was on the uneven heating. We did brief a little bit on this earlier, but we talked about the inconsistent cable spacing. We talked about what can happen if you don't request your floor plan. And you're left to guess where to put the heating where you can have poorly heated areas and complaints from your customers all the time.

And once it's down, there's not much more you can do about it except for try to take it up or redo it and it's not fun. So get that floor plan from us, please. installation is done in improper insulation. I'm sorry, that's the not using the thermal barrier. Then there is no more depressing call to get.

You know, Mary, you've taken dozens of these. I have to. Yeah. This time of year, in this kind of climate in, in Chicago area or anywhere where it's been cold and they're on those existing slabs, that slab is just sucking down your heat, man. So my floor is only getting too.

It's been on for 36 straight hours and that's all it's going to get. Yeah. Because the wire was put directly on. The slab and, and you know, don't forget about the crawl space guys too, guys. If you're heating over unheated crawl space, I, I mean I would try to get some insulation under that crawl space, but if it's not possible, at least a thermal insulation over could possibly help your project.

So improper insulation is a issue that you always want to tackle first. Installing too deeply. Scott mentioned where the cable or wire needs to sit in the installation method. You don't want that cable at the bottom of a 4 inch pour. If it's concrete, if it's, you know, even in your shower, it's right under that layer of tile.

So we want that heating pretty close to where it's going to come up. You'll be able to feel it. So don't install too deeply. This product is designed for thinset installation. It's not designed for mud beds.

Right? Yeah. You don't want to put it in a giant mass unless it's outdoors. We're talking about. Right.

All right. Substrate irregularities again, we're talking about get those floors as even as possible prior to even talking about putting in floor heating. So get your floors ready, prepped according to what you are going to be installing. So what I'm going to do is preface this last one, Mary, and keep it simple because it's the same thing every time. If you're having problems with your floor heat, get your digital ohmmeter and give us a call because we're going to tell you how to do an OHMS test because that's the number one thing that you have to do to determine whether your floor heat works or not is based on OHMS resistance.

You send voltage across resistance, it gives you heat. So that's, we're just going to, we're going to wrap up on that one. Just talking about that. If you have floor heating problems, the first thing you're going to do is ohm testing. Absolutely, absolutely.

And if you need videos or guides on how to do that, contact your account managers, contact the tech team, one of us will pop it off to you. We do have it very easily at your fingertips on our website. Just type in OHMS in the search and you'll get to a video and an installation guide. So let me take this one, Mary, because we're running out of time troubleshooting tools for accurate diagnosis. We've already talked about the thermal camera.

That's going to tell you if your wires are spaced too close or too far apart. It's also going to tell you where there is heat and where there isn't heat. So if someone says, you know, this spot's really cold thermal camera, the reason why it's really cold is there's no heating cable there. Okay. Simple as that.

Now if you come to a problem five years down the road and you need help, we have tools that can help you find the spot. The number one thing that gets in my craw every time is an electrician will say, there's a problem in that floor, we have to rip it all up and start over again. You don't have to rip it all up and start over again. You use our, our tools to create a hot spot in the floor. You use the thermal camera to see that hot spot and then you break up that tile or two tiles and you break them up, lift them up, fix your cable and put two new tiles down or one new tile down and that's it.

You don't have to replace the entire floor. And you can also use a mega ohmmeter to test your insulation. This is required for snow melting jobs and for, for slab heating jobs. It's an insulation tester to making sure that your, your wires that heat up are not making any contact with the ground anywhere the length of the cable. So we do have tools that can help you troubleshoot your problem.

Your floor does not have to be ripped up. Awesome. That's so good to know. Okay, so we have the anonymous attendee who would like us to talk about humidity in a basement for tile above cement for a basement. Do I need to put down any sort of cement sealer prior to placing the thin thinset, then mat, then 50 pound roller, then thinset, then wire, then thinset, then tile.

When it comes to mitigating moisture in a, in a basement, first thing you want to do is ask the manufacturer of the product you're going to install what their rules are. Do I need to make sure that the wetness percentage of my slab is below 6% or what is that number? You may need to have a person that is skilled in moisture mitigation come in and tell you how to fix that problem first before we can tell you how to install that floor. Because we're not moisture mitigation specialists, I can tell you how to install the floor, but your, your flooring manufacturer is going to say you need to have this type of vapor barrier. It needs to be this thick and it needs to be applied here.

Those are their instructions that you need to follow when it comes to that. Once you comply with their requirements, then we're going to tell you where to put the heating cable, hopefully on top of ThermalSheet. So you can, you can put the ThermalSheet down on the, on the, on the waterproofing. They tell you put the ThermalSheet down on top of it, put the cable on top of it, and then attach the cable to the ThermalSheet and then thinset over the top. And we've got tons of drawings that show how to do that Mary.

So if you want to get a hold of Mary or someone in the sales, we can get those in that information to you. The second question is after this tile install atop the thinset wire mat, is there any weight concerns for the tile due to the mat that is underneath the mat? You don't have to worry about. The mat is not going to get smashed because it's completely encircled by thinset and tile. So you're not going to get it to compress.

You don't need to worry about that. So that's a question we used to get a lot. We don't get it really very much anymore. But the, the thin set and the tile is going to be the support that you're not going to squeeze the mat. And you don't need to worry about that.

If you are doing laminate, if you're doing LVT and you're doing Environ, the last thing you want to do is put a pool table on top of that because there's nothing to support that weight. Right. But when you're doing tile, the tiles on top surrounded by thinset and that cable's not going to get smashed. So that is, hopefully that answers your question. Moisture mitigation.

Follow the rules of the flooring, follow where their layers are required, what product you have to use and once you get that mitigated then we can tell you how to build your layers and we've got cross sections that we can send you that. So hopefully that answers your question to say it's a very good question.

We've got another question from Jonathan. Would it work on a paver installation? I'm hoping that's outdoors. Yes, we do pavers all the time and snow melting with pavers. So yeah, if you're interested in doing that you can contact us at, at our 800 number and we'll talk to you about how the layers are for that.

So hopefully that answers that question. And I don't see any other questions. Do you Mary, see any other questions? I do not. But yeah, I just want to remind everyone if you, you know, if you are looking for a quote or need some explanation on how to install it and which product goes matches up with which flooring choices, definitely reach out to your sales reps here.

Anyone can help you. If you don't have a dedicated rep reach myself, my name is Mary and I will get you a rep to. Work with and she would love to meet up with you at a roller derby contest and we can take my antique car, one of my antique cars there and we'll watch Mary go around in circles all day long. That'd be great.

All right, I think that wraps it up guys. To continue your success, don't forget our 247 technical support. We have our professional resources available online and by phone. Use our videos, our technical sheets for all your best practices. We do guarantee our quality in our work.

We are industry warranty leaders. We have the best technical and customer service support if I do say so myself. Yeah, we're supporting the entire industry too because we're out there. We're sending people tools to fix our competitors product too. Oh yeah, we get plenty of those phone calls.

Plenty, plenty, plenty. And somehow we still managed to really be able to provide those, you know, floor plans and quotes within 24 hours. We can usually get your orders out within 24 hours. So there are so many advantages to sticking with a, a great family based company like WarmlyYours for success. Please reach out to us.

Yep. And there's all of our phone numbers, social media Everywhere, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube x the next webinar Mary there is at the bottom. What's that going to be? Will be coming up in February with our bathroom tile heating installation fundamentals. So if you are a beginner or just want to brush up on your tips and knowledge of how to do tile installation for underfloor heating.

Again, we'll be probably featuring our membrane and cable style systems and how to really do a luxury gorgeous bathroom. And that's it. That's it for us today. So thanks so much for joining our Pro challenge solve your toughest floor heating installation issues with Mary and Scott for our conclusion of our January webinar. So thanks for joining.

Bye. Take care. Stay warm. Yes, stay warm.