Tile man forgot the thermostat wire in heated floor

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Stevenfyeager

Senior Member
Location
United States, Indiana
Occupation
electrical contractor
I told the customer that the tile man will have to carefully remove one tile to install the thermostat wire he forgot. I don't think the heated floor will work without it, right ?
 

Dennis Alwon

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Chapel Hill, NC
Occupation
Retired Electrical Contractor
Well you could install a line voltage stat but that will take the temp of the room so it would be have to set at 90 degrees or so.. Not a real working situation. You could also put it on a timer and just heat it for a short period but you would have to do that long before you walk in there.

IMO, pull up the tile right next to the wall where the T-stat is mounted.

If there is a crawl space you may be able to fish the sensor down the wall and drill up into the tile area from below.... If you heat the heat cable you are screwed.
 

Stevenfyeager

Senior Member
Location
United States, Indiana
Occupation
electrical contractor
Well you could install a line voltage stat but that will take the temp of the room so it would be have to set at 90 degrees or so.. Not a real working situation. You could also put it on a timer and just heat it for a short period but you would have to do that long before you walk in there.

IMO, pull up the tile right next to the wall where the T-stat is mounted.

If there is a crawl space you may be able to fish the sensor down the wall and drill up into the tile area from below.... If you heat the heat cable you are screwed.
I will look at the programable thermostat. Maybe it has a time option. But I'm guessing it won't work using that thermostat because it has connections for the two heat sensor wires, and is dependent on those. ? It's on a slab floor. I bet I will just have to install a digital timer like you suggest. I wonder if timers are ok for that load. I haven't yet looked closely on the tag of the heat cable for amps. It is 120 volts. Thank you. Last year, on another job, I noticed the exact same thing, different tile person, etc. Luckily they had just laid the tiles a couple of hours earlier, and they were able to remove one tile fairly easily, and I installed the sensor.
 

Little Bill

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Tennessee NEC:2017
Occupation
Semi-Retired Electrician
In the future you may want to try what I do. I run conduit or "Smurf" tube inside the wall. I notch out the bottom plate to accommodate the end of the conduit and where the wire will go in. Then I run a string in there to pull the T-stat wire in. Explain all this to the tile guy. Kind of hard to forget with a string laying where the tile are going.
 

480sparky

Senior Member
Location
Iowegia
Yep.......... the tile's gotta come up.

No wall-sensing stat is going to work. Floor heat that's designed to take the chill off the tile just doesn't have the horsepower to generate enough heat to turn a wall stat off.
 

Stevenfyeager

Senior Member
Location
United States, Indiana
Occupation
electrical contractor
In the future you may want to try what I do. I run conduit or "Smurf" tube inside the wall. I notch out the bottom plate to accommodate the end of the conduit and where the wire will go in. Then I run a string in there to pull the T-stat wire in. Explain all this to the tile guy. Kind of hard to forget with a string laying where the tile are going.
Yes, I do that too. The notching plate too. But I wasnt there when he was, and so he just tied his heat cable only to my pull wire. I found the sensor cable still in its box on the vanity. :(
 

peter d

Senior Member
Location
New England
It could be worse. You could be the electrician that put the floor heat on a 2-pole breaker when the floor heat was 120 volts. Just the cost of the tile alone without re-installation was $5000. True story. :slaphead::slaphead:
 

JoeyD74

Senior Member
Location
Boston MA
Occupation
Electrical contractor
I’d add it in a grout line before I ripped up tiles. You may have to try a few spots as you don’t want it over a heat wire directly.
 

Knuckle Dragger

Master Electrician Electrical Contractor 01752
Location
Marlborough, Massachusetts USA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
Most tile heat programmable T-stats can be programmed to sense ambient air temp.

The tile may not have to be torn up. Standard procedure when a sensor fails is to cut out the group line and set the replacement sensor in the grout line then fill in.

A raceway from the T-stat location is is a good idea ( I do that in some circumstances)but that wouldn't helped him out if the tile guy didn't install the sensor in the floor.
 
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