The homeowners of this new sunroom wanted to add an extra level of comfort, especially in the cold winter months. To do this they’re installing an electric radiant heating system that will warm the floor tiles from underneath.

Video Transcription

Male1: The sun room being built on this house at Texas Hill Country will be connected to the home’s heating an air conditioning system but the homeowners wanted to add an extra level of comfort especially in the cold winter months. To do this they’re installing an electric radiant heating system that will warm the floor tiles from underneath. They chose a system from Delta-Therm for an economical healthy way to comfort heat the sunroom. Male2: This electric delta warm cable actually heats the mass of the floor, which is going to radiate heat throughout the room. Now we already have a plan exactly how it’s laid out. It goes back and forth through the whole floor. Once it heats up that mass the room’s warm. We don’t have any vent to this room because this is all we’re going to use to heat the room. Without vents we can put our furniture anywhere that we please plus we’re not going to be circulating dust and allergens throughout the room. Another great feature is radiant heat is not a dry heat so in the winter time, we’re not going to dry out our sinuses because we’re using forced heat running through the house. Male:1 Ed Witte of Delta Therm first installs a standard 4-inch electrical junction box that will hold the thermostat at the power source. Then he attaches 2 metal conduits with 90-degree bends. This will keep everything below the finish floor level. Using a template, he carefully measures and marks the runs for the layout of the floor warming cable. Then he snaps chalk lines for guides. The heat sensor will be embedded in the flooring. He then connects a thermostat to the sensor which at the size of a pencil eraser. He slides the sensor down the wall conduit and then to another conduit that extends towards the center of the room. This metal conduit will protect and embed the sensor in the flooring. Duct tape is put at the end of the pipe to seal it during a flooring pour. The sensor called the thermostore is a thermo-resistor. It ensures the thermostat will accurately read the control the temperature of the floor and not the temperature of air in the room. Ed Witte explains how thermostore works. Ed: The resistance of that device will change with temperature. So we embed this device into the floor between 2 heating runs and as that heats up it changes the resistance and then the thermostat reads that and gives you the temperature of the floor. Male1: Now, its time to install the warming cable, which is made to the proper length at the factory. Ed: This flooring cable has actually 4 parts to it. It’s got a cold lead section which means it doesn’t get hot. Inside that either have a 12 gauge or 14 gauge wire which has a braid around that, it’s used as your ground. That connects to a silicon jacketed cable and this is actually the heating portion of the cable. This has a resistance wire in it and it has a cap tongue wrap. Its silicon wire, which keeps the moisture out and it has no problem with temperature. Male1: One black lead of the warming cable is fed through the other conduit up to the power source. Ed: When I install this cable, we do it in a serpentine pattern. I’m going to start of in a way where I’ve point or where I start the cable out and I ultimately want to end up at that exact same point. So that way we could use the same conduit to bring both of the black cold leads up. Male1: Delta Therm provides a layout of the pattern for each room. So he displaced exactly where it is needed. If you like a really hot floor, they can put the cables closer together. If you don’t need it as warm they space them farther apart. Ed: Typically the best thing to do is use plastic clips that we supply with the cable so I’m going to put in some clips. And I’ll use that as a guide and then I’m pretty much as going to run the cable through the clips kind of like a loom. And I’m just going to proceed across the base of this floor and six in spacing and if I did my drawing right, I’m going to end up back where I started from. This cable is actually a resistance wire, which means there’s specific lengths with this cable. This cable cannot be cut and shortened in the field when you’re doing you install. By doing that you’d lessen the resistance of this cable and they’ve just changed everything. Now it’s going to get real hot. So you won’t want to do that. Each cable, different lengths have different resistance values. Male1: Edward turns the second black cable warming lead through the second metal conduit back up to the power source. Then he ties all the electrical wires to one common ground and checks the resistance of the warming cable. Now it’s time to wire the junction box. Ed: This junction box is usually used also for a thermostat. So you’d make a connection into the thermostat and the thermostat in turn would supply and disconnect power through your heating cable. The thermostat comes with a trim plate so once everything is programmed in here you can set this up for set points per day 7-day timer. And when the cable is installed on the floor, and you’d pour a deep concrete or some light weigh compound on this. In this case I’m using Max on deep concrete flooring. And when you pour that on there it comes out as kind of like soupy. And then when it dried, it’s self leveling and that material will absorb the heat from this cable. And that just becomes a large heated surface. And that’s a thermal mass if you will and that is your heating source for the room. The deep concrete lightweight product that’s formulated and specially designed for this application. It’s light weight. It’s easy to use. It has a quick set up time. After we poured within couple of hours you can actually walk on it. Mike: After the therma-floor dries out properly, tiles or other floor covering can be laid. This radiant heating system can be used as the primary heat source for a room or to supplement an area that just needs some additional heat. For more information on Delta Therm’s line of radiant heating systems, visit Delta Therm’s website at 4deltawarm.com.