How To Install Heat Tape On A Roof

This is a guest blog post by Steve Kuhl of Radiant Solutions Company. Part 3 of 3.

Welcome to the last entry in my three-office serial on water ice dam prevention and heat cables. In function 1, Should yous install heat cables to prevent ice dams?, I discussed the most common solutions employed to prevent ice dams. In role two, Not all rut cable is created equal, I geeked out on the topic of heat cable types in depth. Today I will draw how to best employ heat cables on your home to prevent impairment from ice dams.

Where To Install Oestrus Cables

Ice dams are nigh often located on the lowest edge of the roof, commonly called the 'eave'. They are also found in other, sneakier places such as above skylights and low slope shed dormers. For the about office, the bulk of the heat cable jobs we install involve treating the eaves and gutters. Running cable in the typical "zig-zag" pattern along the eaves of areas prone to ice dam germination volition eliminate leaks from water ice dams past melting paths through the snowfall and ice, giving water the opportunity to leave the roof.

Gutters and Water ice Dams

Speaking of gutters, I demand to clear something upwards immediately. Gutters have NOTHING to do with the formation or severity of water ice dams. Detect in the above analogy that the origin of the leaks caused by the typical water ice dam does not modify, with or without gutters. Put simply, if your home has bad ice dams and you take gutters, removing those gutters volition have zero impact on the severity of those ice dams.

I know, considering I have seen this attempted a number of times past drastic homeowners. Moreover, homeowners often brand the mistake of thinking that installing heat cable in the gutters alone volition help. It will not. Yes, it is smart to put heat tape in gutters to help h2o move off your roof and away from your foundation. No, installing cablevision in the gutters alone volition non prevent damage to your abode if water ice dams visit.

How to Determine What You Need for a Roof and Gutter Oestrus Cable Arrangement

The simplest way to figure out the parts and pieces needed for your heat cable system is to plug in a few pieces of basic information into an online Oestrus Cable Computer. Measure out the length and depth of your eave. If you have gutters and a valley, plug in that info as well. No special skills or noesis are required; just answer a few basic questions. The heat tape calculator will immediately tell you the cablevision length you demand in improver to the number of heat cable roof clips required. It's that like shooting fish in a barrel. You tin can use this information to buy any self-regulating rut cable arrangement y'all like.

Which Oestrus Cablevision to Use for Ice Dam Prevention

As I described in great particular in Office Two of my water ice dam prevention series, there are only ii classes of heat cable 1 can employ for ice dam prevention: Abiding Wattage (Sold under the make names EasyHeat, Frost Rex, King and Prime), or Self-Regulating (Sold under the brand names Rut Tape Pro, Raychem and Thermon). We install Heat Record Pro exclusively, but Raychem Winterguard is some other splendid self-regulating heat cable our installers have used in the past. To a big extent, it doesn't thing which cable organisation you use as long as information technology is self-regulating and fabricated by a reputable company. The limitations of abiding wattage systems far outweigh their only advantage, cheap prices.

Roof Clips for Heat Cable System

The type of clip you will utilise for your roof and gutter deicing system will depend on the roof material on your domicile. The vast bulk of heat cable is installed on standard cobblestone shingles making the roof clip option simple. The Grip Clip is the prune we use for all of our installations because it eliminates the demand to drive nails or screws through your roof organisation. It likewise installs in most three seconds without the use of tools. We yet use traditional nail-on clips for the installation of heat cable on rubber and metallic roofs. Installers apply a dot of adhesive to the dorsum of each clip before securing it with a nail or screw. Nosotros let the adhesives to fully cure before installing the heat cable, a process that tin can take a few days or weeks depending on variables such as the roof material and the outdoor temperatures.

Rut Cablevision Installation: Some Tips and Tricks

Heat cable tin be installed at any temperature but it's generally easier at thirty degrees or above. Once you accept your cable and clips in paw it's time to roll up your sleeves and go to work. The tools required for the average install are quite bones: a putty knife and a ladder. A tool belt is handy to keep your roof clips readily bachelor. Manufacturers provide installation manuals that draw the process in greater item, but here is a summary:

1.  Visualize Your Heat Cable Layout: The cablevision should exist installed in a zig-zag pattern along all eaves yous wish to protect. If you take gutters, it should be run in the gutters to give h2o an avenue to escape.

ii. Power Source: If your power source is near the ground, programme on running the heat cablevision either up your downspout or upward the side wall of your dwelling house. In the instance of the latter, you can utilize standard wire staples from whatsoever hardware store to affix the cablevision neatly to the wall. Otherwise, your cable volition stitch the downspout in order to provide a path for water to utilize as it travels off your roof.

3. Employ sidewalk chalk to lightly marker out your clip locations on the roof before installation. This extra stride will help work through challenges similar clip spacing before you commit to installing the clips and heat cablevision. Clip spacing oft gets compressed virtually valleys and this is completely fine.

4. Install Grip Clips approximately 24" autonomously on both the bottom and superlative of your zig-zag design. Y'all can install Grip Clips on the side of a shingle as needed to conform cable that needs to run vertically upwardly the roof. The height of your pattern–how far upwardly the roof the heat cablevision will travel–is adamant past the depth of your eaves. The rule of thumb is that heat cable should become nigh vi inches beyond the location of the exterior wall below. For case, if your eaves are 12" deep, y'all will desire the oestrus cable blueprint xviii" upwards the roof.

five. If you have a valley, run the cable a minimum of six feet up and back downward the valley. Use Grip Clips installed sideways on the shingles in the valley to keep the heat cable locked in place in the valley.

six. Stretch the cablevision out in the yard to remove any twists. This will make install much smoother. Run the heat cable from prune to prune, pulling the cable just tight enough to maintain a make clean, tidy pattern on the roof. Compression the cable into the 'cradle' of the heat cable prune. Do not pull the cablevision tight between clips as this volition put unnecessary stress on the system.

vii. In that location are few hard and fast rules in terms of installing cocky-regulating estrus cablevision in gutters. There is no need to braze the cable to the gutter itself because it volition exercise its job even if it is but laid in the bottom of the gutter. One important note is that you should use a downspout hanger whenever the cable drops downwards into a downspout. This will provide protection to the cable confronting damage from the sharp edges and screws.

Heat Cablevision on Metal Roofs

We receive many requests each week for the installation of heat cable on metallic roofs. Heat cable on standing seam metal roofs, corrugated metallic roofs and screw-down metallic roofs all require slightly different approaches. The same bones rules apply to installing heat cable on metal roofs as for standard asphalt shingle roofs (i.due east., cable design, clip locations, etc.). The primary difference is the blazon of roof prune and how they are installed.

Installers effectually the country have used the same method for installing heat cable on metal roofs for years. Specifically, they use traditional nail-on roof clips with a combination of adhesive and screws to provide anchoring points for the heat cable organization. It is permissible to use gasketed screws to braze these clips directly to the metal as shown in the PDF above linked to above when the roof system already has screws exposed. All of these methods are a piffling rough and so nosotros are currently in the development of some exciting new solutions to fastening oestrus cable to metal roofs (Coming early 2022!).

Summary

Rut cables have a dubious reputation in the water ice dam prevention industry, mainly considering people buy the cheapest cables possible and when they inevitably neglect the entire concept of heat cables is discredited. Do your inquiry to determine if the other ice dam prevention approaches I discussed in part one are viable for your home. If not, consider a loftier-quality rut cable. If readers were to take two critical points away from this three-function discussion on heat cables they should be: one) Oestrus cable isn't supposed to be a substitute for habitation improvements that address the underlying crusade of ice dams and, 2) If you are going to the spend time and coin on rut cables to prevent ice dams you should buy self-regulating cablevision from a manufacturer you lot trust.

If you are interested in learning even more than about heat cables, a few weeks ago I saturday down with Reuben Saltzman and his crack team to talk shop for his Construction Tech podcast.

Note from Reuben: I practice not 'accept' guest web log mail submissions. All guest web log posts found here are initiated on my end. I asked Steve to write about this topic after doing the podcast with him.

Writer:Reuben Saltzman,Structure Tech Dwelling Inspections

Source: https://structuretech.com/heat-cable-installation/

Posted by: owenhiout1981.blogspot.com

Share this post