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I repair heat cable and have done so for 25 years. It is a safe and more penetrating heat. Once the walls and floors are warmed the ability to maintain that warmth is due to many factors. Over all at the time it was applied to homes was an era called the "gold medalion" homes where utility companies advertised the ability to heat your home in the coldest of winters and the total utility monthly bill would be 25 bucks.
how did you repair the heat cable? i have it in my house and never had to repair it until now because we had a small leak in the ceiling and when we hired someone to fix the ceiling they cut into the heat tape and cut the wires. so now i have no heat for that room and would love to know how to fix it.
I used to have ceiling cable heat, wish I still had it. Whereas heat obviously rises, this heat is most efficient when you have a ceiling fan on low speed in only one area. It's radiant and warms everything in the room, including the floors, especially carpet.
To the person who had sinus problems, those, as I have understood from some people, are caused not by the dry heat, but what they are heating on the ceiling. Installing the wrong plaster compounds can cause horrible allergy problems apparently. I never experienced this.
To install plant hooks in the ceiling, you can use a spray bottle of water and mist the ceiling where the heat is turned all the way up. It will show you where the cables are by where the water evaporates first.
Ceiling cable heat was embraced here years ago, and I still think it's more efficient than most ways of heating. Once a rooms up to temp, it's really easy to keep there.
I'm helping with some repairs on an older home with ceiling heat. It only works in some of the rooms so we've decided to install electric heaters in each room using the existing thermostats and 220v already accessible for the ceiling heat. I haven't been in the attic yet; can anyone tell me how these were traditionally wired? Is this a big chore?
We also have ceiling cable heat.our home was built in the 1970. We were just refused home owner insurance by a well known company, because of the ceiling cable heat system. They said if it broke down in one room, it might let pipes freeze causing a very costly amount of damage.
Anyone else have that problem?
Learned something new here, had never heard of the ceiling cable heat until now. Wanted to touch on this though:
Quote:
Originally Posted by samamey
We also have ceiling cable heat.our home was built in the 1970. We were just refused home owner insurance by a well known company, because of the ceiling cable heat system. They said if it broke down in one room, it might let pipes freeze causing a very costly amount of damage.
Anyone else have that problem?
I grew up in a similar vintage house (1972) where we had electric baseboard heat instead. Same principle as far as individual rooms controlled by individual thermostats, though. So I think it's a little odd for them to cite that so specifically, although I gather they would suggest that the ceiling cables are somewhat more likely to fail than the baseboard heaters.
There are any number of things the insurance company might cite, and some will be more strict than others. Right now I basically can't change homeowners insurance because my roof is too old. It's still okay, but it's borrowed time at approaching 29 years! My current company doesn't cancel me for it, but the premium goes up (just got a new notice) and I wonder if that's part of it.
Cable heat works ok. It's a radiant type of heat and heats everything in the room. I had it in an apartment once several years ago. In a house I don't think it would be as efficient unless the house is very well insulated (and that's not likely if it was built by certain Idaho Falls builders). As for repairs, I had to repair mine once when my roommate shot through it with a 22 rifle. It was a simple fix just soldering the wires back together and fixing the ceiling. I also got a new roommate shortly thereafter. Not sure about zones being out. It could be the thremostats.
I cut through mine putting a ceiling fan up what kind of wire did you use?
We are buying a house that was built in the 70's and has ceiling cable heat. Does anyone have experience with these systems? Do you like how it heats? What about repairs? Seems like a few zones in our house are out and need repair. We are use to gas heat forced air.
Thanks,
Sav
MY mother absolutely doesn't know how to judge "Man issues" and bought this type of house. I'm not going to waste words going into all the irrelevant factors and arguments on this type of heat and what people "like" or regurgitate how it works or functions on this crazy "experimental" horrible design, that wastes ALL your heat, and Money but makes your bill rise. Right now (December) in Vancouver, WA. it's 15-degrees at night and with ALL heaters on Maximum (90-degrees) WITH layered clothing we cannot keep the house above 65-degrees this costs us 230 dollars a month for a 1200 sq. Ft. House! We are in the process of putting extremely thick insulation (12-inch) in the attic and regular double wall heaters (1200-watt) to lower the heat bill....NEVER BUY a house with ceiling heat!!!!
Had to look this one up because it didn't make sense. Ceiling heat seems like it would be annoying since heat rises and it would never get to the ground or living space very well without a fan element to move the warm air down.
Also if you live in a two story home, wouldn't ceiling heat mean you have radiant floor heat upstairs? I looked at a home once that had some kind of infrared heating system, odd and sounded expensive.
I thought I was the only one to have radiant ceiling heat! When I was buying my house, the inspector said that is was only working at about 50% of what it should. He suggested putting baseboard heat in each room and wiring it to the existing thermostats but the electrician I had come by said that since electric heat is basically 100% efficient, it wouldn't save me any money on heating bills and to save my money.
I do have an small area that needs to be repaired (new drywall). Do I have to turn off the electricity (I don't want the contractor to get electrocuted!) and will cutting into the ceiling make the heat in that room non-functional? If so, I guess I will just do the baseboard in that room.
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wiring around existing ceiling heat
Heat rises away from the house and waste money!
