0:00
In this video I want to bring you along as I install a roof heating system that
0:05
keeps ice and snow from building up along the edges of roofs during winter
0:09
I'm going to be installing a system called Edge Cutter. It's from a Canadian
0:14
company called Heatline. I've installed some of their other products before, water supply and drain line frost proofing equipment, but I've never
0:24
installed this system before and it's quite a bit different than regular roof
0:29
heating systems. It uses this radiating panel here. This is aluminum. The system
0:36
is called Edge Cutter and as you're going to see this slips up underneath
0:41
the shingles along the eaves and there's a heating cable that fits into a channel
0:47
here. This is the heating cable here. It's a self-regulating cable which means that
0:54
it heats more or less depending on what's needed along its whole length so
0:59
it uses less energy and there's no chance of it overheating. This cable fits
1:05
into this groove here and it's held in place with this channel that snaps down
1:12
over top. At least that's the theory anyway. As I said I've never installed
1:16
this before so let's go up top and see how the first part of the installation
1:22
goes. So here we are at the eaves and I kind of expected to run into a little
1:29
bit of a challenge here and I did. Although the shingles aren't supposed to
1:33
be nailed down right along the eaves where the Edge Cutter aluminum
1:38
extrusion is supposed to fit, it was kind of sealed down and there were also a few
1:45
nails that were close enough to the edge that I couldn't slip this in. I couldn't
1:51
slip it in without doing a little fancy footwork so this small pry bar did help
1:56
me to loosen the shingles at the eaves and it did help me to pry out the odd
2:02
nail that was around. There were also some roof staples and I used a
2:06
reciprocating saw carefully and slowly underneath of the shingles to nip all
2:11
those through. It took a bit of time to get this to work. This system would be no
2:17
problem at all if you were installing it from scratch if this thing went down before the shingles and as I said there are not supposed to be any shingle nails
2:25
near the edge like this so you may have an easier time than I did but even with
2:31
the challenges of this roof it wasn't too bad. Now the extrusion slips up
2:41
underneath like this. Now this probably would stay there just fine on its own
2:49
but for the actual installation as I go along here I'm going to be raising
2:56
this up and I'm going to be with a caulking gun injecting some of my
3:01
favorite outdoor adhesive here and that would be some polyurethane caulking just
3:04
here and there so it'll glue the aluminum heat transfer extrusion to the
3:10
top of the drip edge that's here and it'll sit like this. The shingles are
3:17
raised up a little bit they're still kind of stiff it's probably about 10
3:22
degrees Celsius here about 50 degrees Fahrenheit so they're a little bit stiff
3:26
I'm sure that once they warm up either in the Sun or when we get this cable
3:30
thing turned on they'll flop back down again and and be more even like they
3:37
like they were before. So this is the process of installing the extrusions one
3:44
at a time and I'm going to go along and do some more of that and show you how that works. One of the things to keep in mind is that the extrusions are supposed
3:51
to be separated by about a quarter of an inch and that's because aluminum expands
3:56
and contracts quite a bit with changes in temperature so you want to give it a
4:00
little bit of room to do that and with all the extrusions in place then we will
4:06
lay the cable in place so one section at a time held in place with the the cap
4:12
piece the aluminum cap piece that encapsulates it and protects the cable
4:16
and helps to dissipate heat too. So I've got all the aluminum in place now running
4:22
along the whole length of the eaves there's that quarter inch spacing I was
4:25
telling you about and of course there's going to be a little bit of extra in
4:30
this case not a whole lot so I'm marking it I'm gonna take this piece down now
4:36
and cut it it's actually a pretty easy thing to do given that it's aluminum as
4:41
you'll see. As it turns out a regular wood carbide blade on a chop saw works
4:49
really well for cutting aluminum there are specialty aluminum blades made out
4:53
there but just for the odd cut like this you'll find that your regular carbide
4:57
tipped blade does a great job. You want to wear safety glasses of course it's a
5:01
must because little bits of aluminum are going to be flying around and the process is really loud too so hearing protection is a great idea
5:11
Now the only thing you need to know about is that whenever you make a cut
5:23
you need to smoothen the cut edge because it's kind of sharp now there's a
5:28
bit of a burr there. The cable is going to be laying in here so we want to go
5:33
gently the casing of the cable is quite strong but you want to give it every
5:37
chance you can so I'm just going to go at this with a little sandpaper and
5:42
smoothen that up. So now it's time to actually install the heating cable in
5:46
the aluminum. Before I do that I want to point out a few things. You're not
5:51
supposed to power these things with an extension cord. In this case I'm going to
5:58
be installing an electrical outlet right under the eaves to plug this into but
6:04
each one of these cable packages is custom-made so you specify whatever
6:09
length you want because they can't be cut on site. It has to come from the
6:13
factory to a specific length and you can also specify how much of a cold lead
6:18
they call it you get. So that's the the power cord and plug up to the point
6:24
where heating starts. So the standard is a four foot cold lead which is what I've
6:30
got here. You can get the cold leads up to 24 feet long so they make it pretty
6:35
easy to avoid the need to use an extension cord even if you don't want to
6:41
install an outlet under the eaves. Another couple of things each one of
6:46
these comes with a ground fault circuit interrupter built right in. This is to
6:53
make sure that things stay safe and that the shock hazard is eliminated. I'm all
6:59
set to start laying out the cable now but one thing you should know about is
7:03
that the cap in order to snap properly onto the extrusion it needs to be very
7:11
clean in here and all this wrestling around this gravelly asphalt shingle
7:16
business has put some dirt on top here so just going along with my utility knife
7:22
and just picking out the bits of dirt for that section that I'm working on
7:29
Now another thing to notice too, this is the piece we just cut so it's shorter
7:34
than standard and this cap is a standard length. What you want to do is you want
7:41
to overlap the joint. It'll look nicer that way and it'll help to keep the
7:47
pieces of aluminum extrusion aligned with each other and it'll also provide
7:52
continuous protection for the cable. So overlapping is good. In this case we're
7:58
only overlapping about four or five inches but I think that's fine as long
8:03
as it's at least a couple of inches then it's going to serve that purpose. So I
8:08
just noticed here on this piece of aluminum it's a factory edge here but
8:14
there's a little bit of a burr and our aluminum is already in place so it's
8:19
kind of hard to get in there and sand it but the nice thing about aluminum is that it's soft enough that you can easily chamfer it with a utility knife
8:29
You just want to make sure that there's nothing here that's going to be sharp
8:33
because the cable is going to be in here and that cable is going to be moving
8:37
back and forth a little bit as it heats and cools so you don't want anything
8:42
that's going to rub through the outer casing. So it's time to snap all this
8:46
together. The cap rests on the top catch there and sits there and then use some
8:55
pliers to snap the bottom in and it goes together with a satisfying kind of click
9:16
It's all buttoned up and ready for the next section. So all the caps are in
9:21
place now the cable is routed into the system from the end that has the cold
9:25
lead and we're just waiting for some cold weather to plug it in
