How to Install Heat Tape
SAFETY FIRST!! Before you go crawling inside or under anything, enlist a friend to be your ‘safety buddy’. Your safety buddy needs to stay in a safe stable place where he or she can hear you, and still be able to phone for help if you need it.
Now, you need to determine how to get to your pipes. If you’re in a mobile or manufactured home, or in a stick built home with a crawlspace, your access is probably from the outside. Look for an opening along the base of your house. It may be a piece of skirting or foundation wall that lifts out of place or is hinged to open. If you have a full-height basement, you’ll probably be able to just go down there and look up. Your pipes are visible if your ceiling hasn’t been finished off.
The heat tape works by transferring heat directly from itself to your pipes by touching them. Since you’ll need the heat tape to touch the entire length of your pipes, you need to measure the total length of the pipes you’re going to be attaching the heat tape to. Just measure each segment of pipe and total up all the lengths.
Once you know how much pipe you have, you can go buy the heat tape. You’ll find it at your local building supply or home improvement store. Don’t be afraid to ask for help finding it and making sure you go home with the right amount for your project. The people who work there usually have a lot of knowledge and can be a great source of support and information to someone learning to do their own home maintenance and repairs.
Okay, so now you’re home, your safety buddy is standing by, and you’re ready to start, right? Wait! Heat tape is electric. Make sure that wherever you start the heat tape from is close enough to reach an electrical outlet. (But don’t plug it in while you’re working with it!) You don’t want to get it all installed and then realize that you aren’t close enough to a plug to use it.
If you are in a mobile or manufactured home, there’s probably an outlet under your house especially for this purpose, since they know when they make those homes that they’ll need heat tape. If you have a full basement you can use one of your wall outlets if you’re *sure* that you don’t get water in your basement high enough to get the outlet wet.
Read the instructions for your brand of heat tape carefully for specific installation details. In general, you’re going to be wrapping the heat tape around all your pipes, and securing it in place. The wires in the tape work like the wires in an electric blanket, transferring the heat to whatever they touch. That extra bit of heat, coming through the outside of the pipes, will keep ice from being able to build up in the pipes because the pipe should always be too warm.
You’ll definitely want to wrap all the pipes that bring water *in* to your home. Depending on the climate, you may also find it beneficial to wrap the pipes that take out waste water. You can leave the heat tape in place all year, but you should unplug it during the warm months to avoid wasting electricity by running the heat tape when there’s no danger of freezing weather. Just remember to plug it back in before the next cold spell.
Keeping your pipes warm can help ensure that they don’t freeze and crack open. This simple preventative maintenance can save you from a very costly repair later.
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