Open Circuit in Electric Floor Heating Wire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbKCt0ahkp4

I have tried one of those but it is not accurate enough, there is potential on all the 200 sq ft floor.

thanks for reading

if you're detecting leaking voltage ANYWHERE you need to remove the circuit from service and tear the floor out

Yes, but because "ceramic"is not a good conductor, the source should not be detectable by means of electric field...

water is a lousy conductor but impurities can make conduct well enough to kill, I'm off this thread

Many here have a lot of time to waste. Including apparently, you.

I recommend that you seek professional help.

You should also seek the help of a qualified electrician to solve your floor heating wire problem.

[Edit] after reading your #35, I believe that you are not going to get much help here.

I can see why.

Can you at least narrow down where the worked-in areas you think the damage may have occurred?

If you have put a screw or nail through the wire perhaps you have a potentially live metal fastening you can get a reading off using a proximity-based voltage (field) detector or a multimeter set on voltage.

HI,

Unfortunately, the work on the first floor cover the full space of the above kitchen floor, I have tried the "proxy" sensor, as I mentioned to another "subscriber" with a high impedance multimeter I can read about 50 Vac (dry day).

I would just pull a new wire.....

That is the last thing an electrician troubleshouter would say...

No, a licensed electrician should immediately remove any and all wiring not installed by another licensed professional, regardless of it working today. Their license and your lives are hanging on their approval.

Well I worked as a troubleshooter for 30 years+, and if you can't find the problem without destroying the floor, then you disconnect the circuit and run a new one, possibly using an alternative route.....You obviously don't have any idea what you're talking about...

How many parallel and series circuits are there in this network?

Montreal is a rare name for a location but it is conceivable that the electric power for your floor heater is not 120 VAC, 60 HZ, earthed, split phase power regardless of your location. Do you know what it is?

Does a fuse blow or only one region not get hot?

"I can measure approximately 50 volts to ground, if I am kneeling on the floor." Between what and what nodes with what kind of a load and with what phase angle for the current? An expert would know what I'm asking.

Speaking of current, what magnitude and phase angle do you have on each side of your broken leg with an unknown load? How does this change when one flips the split phase wiring? (Sorry for asking a question based on a pending answer.)

When you ask your under-skilled friends to do unsupervised skilled craftsmen work do you at least buy the pizza and beer afterwards regardless?

Hi Redfred, First of all, the contractor hired was professional, they did a lot of work in hard condition. They have sometime to do things a little risky to make there invoice on the right side of the customer, so I am not here to judge them. My discussion is aiming electrical troubleshooting.

Montreal is in Quebec, Canada. Unlike USA our domestic power supply is a split 240 Vac (not 220, that how we "push it" to NY). The system i am talking about is hooked on the opposed "phases or hots" of the line, 240. There is no junction in the wire, small urban apartment. As mentioned in the title, the circuit is open, no short circuit and current draw is none.

If I am touching one probe of my Fluke279 and the other one on the copper water pipe, while kneeling on the floor, today the meter read ~50 Vac. At this point there is no load or I am the load, the thermostat is by passed. Now when you are talking about phase angle, I do not know what you are talking about because as far as i understand we are talking about purely resistive load.

I hope this will help you to help me, because so far you are the best reply.

Thanks, Pierre

I'm glad to hear you hired a professional for these installations. I suspect one of these professionals did a shoddy job. From your troubleshooting description it is obvious you should hire another professional to troubleshoot this problem.

Good Luck.

Was there any "warranty" on the installation(material and labour) by the original installer?? If he was a "professional" he should guarantee his work.

Sounds like you may be needing a fire suppression system.

Given your success at running wire I'd probably have a professional install it.

Touche`

I knew, this is not my first rodeo...

ok

I think I'm getting the picture now....

Don"t you have anything else to guerk about

Please do not waste your time with me any more.

That guy lives down at the corner of Whitney and Boulder Highway. I've seen him. You should see him strip #0000 wire!

a pinger

I know, there was someone...

Hello, Thank you,

You are right I think this will work. I will try that as soon as I am back from work, one month.

Consider using an ultrasonic cable tracer such as made by Cabac and others. You can often hire these devices from electrical suppliers or hire shops.

Disconnect both ends of the element from the other wiring and connect the tone generator.

Use the probe to trace where the wiring is routed, the signal will cease at the break point. Repeat the test from the other end to confirm the result.

They are generally pretty accurate.

Consider also that since a break has already occurred there may be other issues with the element, and any repairs may not fully expunge the problem.

I really don't like this guy, I was never going to save him, unfortunately both you and Ram gave him the shortcut

Yeah forget me

you are suppose to be out, keep it this way.

Thank you, I like the idea.

The more I think about it, the more I like it. I understand your consideration but at least if I can point the location of the "break", I will tear down that tile and go from there. I will reply to your comment to let to know the result. However I am going at sea to work for a month so do not hold your breath.

Thanks' again.

Hi Spade,

A tracer Is going to be worth to try, but i am feeling good about the success.

Thank again for the time, and professionalism.

In addition, I design and sell similar systems now (yea, really a jack of all trades), and although I have no experience fixing an installed under floor system that has developed a fault, I got to ask - is there a case where you can go back and get compensation from the company's insurance provider that screwed up your underfloor heating and just replace the whole lot?

Also it sounds like you now have a potentially serious safety concern so until the fault can be fixed you should probably tag and lockout the heating circuit if you have not already done so.

Got access to a thermal camera or thermocouple temperature meter, or is the floor heating too uniform that the variations in temperature would be too small to measure to narrow down the area of the suspected failure?

Hi, Well I hope this is going to be a first time for you. I have to do something to fix it because that is what man does, right...

Insurance reclaim would be good if I had cought right then when it happen, but now I presume the fight between insurances co. ( mine and the contractor) will be tough and painfull.

Also for your safety concern, the power supply is securely isolated.

Thank you for you time.

A TDC (Time Domain Controller) test device if used properly will tell identify the location. It will tell the distance from where the tester is connected to the fault but you must know the layout of the circuit in order to pinpoint the location in reference to the floor area.

Time Domain Reflectometery (TDR) will only work accurately with known transmission line cabling. On top of that, knowing that the break is 40 feet away from one point and 10 feet away from another point is useless information if one does not know how the wire is laid under the ceramics.

even when you attempt to prevent someone from killing themselves or other people who encounter their "craftsmanship" it can be thankless to even try.

A time-domain reflectometer (TDR) is an electronic instrument that uses time-domain reflectometry to characterize and locate faults in metallic cables (for example, twisted pair wire or coaxial cable). It can also be used to locate discontinuities in a connector, printed circuit board, or any other electrical path.

• Time-domain reflectometer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-domain_reflectometerWikipedia
• Thanks for correcting my terminology.
• We use TDR test devices not only for identifying distance(s)-to-fault(s) in all types of metal conductors but also in our fiber-optic communications cables.
• They are very accurate.
• I agree with you in that a TDR tester is useless if the location and layout of the conductor in question is unknown.

Did YOU personally install the heaters on the second floor?

Good grief! Have you informed your fire and liability insurance company about this?

Harbor Freight in the US sells a cable tracker. . I have used one many a time to trace wires in the wall or underground. battery operated. you connect one lead to the conductor and the other lead to the casing and turn it on. It injects a signal down the wire. You trace the signal with a probe. One problem you may have is that the conductors may be very close together and it may be hard to exactly pinpoint the spot, but you should come close. My son has used one to find hidden junction boxes left by the previous owner. Someone should sell something similar in Montreal.

Bonne chance

Before all you naysayers get going, I have over 40 years in the electrical trade, both construction and maintenance, worked 600 V hot bare handed, buttspliced 15 KV cables, worked on 250KV SF6 buss systems

A fox and hound would probably work, if you have a discerning ear!

http://www.amazon.com/Triplett-3399-Generator-Adjustable-Sensitivity/dp/B001ULPREW

Thanks,, I will try that

I am not sure that finding the break will help you as you still cannot repair it without ripping up a part of the floor. Once repaired can you be sure that another screw has not cut into a hot wire without breaking it? The screw is now hot. Now what do you do?

Can you get access to the heads of the screws? You would probably have already checked their potential if you could.

Few months later I decided to remodel the one below it. I warned everyone involved in the project to stay away from the 2nd floor planks, to avoid damaging the wire by screwing underneath it, but...

I can't believe anybody would screw into floorboards in the first place, let alone use screws long enough that they could poke through the boards. Floorboards typically don't support loads without sagging. It is the floor joist that supports cabinetry etc. It is for this reason alone that the job done by the remodelers was bad work. Here in Oz there are licensing bodies that would like to be informed about this type of tradie so that they could drum them out of business. Grounds for compensation!

Jim

Jimrat,

When I purchased my first custom built house in Nevada, I was touring the house with the Superintendent and I noticed that the electrical installers had drilled some routing holes very close to the inside portion of the framing stud.

I asked the Superintendent if they were going to install nailer plates to protect the wires and he replied "WE DON'T NEED THEM, THEY DON'T USE THE LONG DRYWALL NAILS" very confidently.

Fast forward about 4 months. I have the cable TV installers at the house and they have a direct short on the CATV wire in my sons room. I call the Superintendent and politely explain the situation and they send out a tech to look at the issue. He traces the wires to an area in the garage where the bulk of those wires were routed through the studs. After cutting out a small section of drywall he found the issue.

The drywall installers had used 2" long nails instead of 1-5/8" and they pierced the CATV wire so dead center that it had severed the center solid copper conductor in half. I told the tech to stop work and I called the Superintendent to come look at the issue. He said he was too busy and I replied then I guess your tech is going to sit here at my house until you show up. Let's just say that he was there in 10 minutes and was truly unhappy when I took him to task on the use of "THE LONG DRYWALL NAILS".

I guess the moral of the story is to never trust a contractors word unless you've worked with them before. They will lie to you more than a 3 year old in the cookie jar!

P.S. Then they never came back to repair the section of drywall they cut out. The Superintendent stopped taking or returning my calls. What an ass!

Hi, sorry for you story.

Your story is why the NEC in the U.S. states you will cover the wire with the proper plate to fend off the contractor doing what should not be done.

"...the NEC in the U.S. states you will cover the wire with the proper plat...", this would imply that the entire heating cable be protected both top and bottom for its entire length. Please provide the NEC Chapter and Paragraph that states this requirement.