What is Trace Heating?

With this month’s blog we are going back to basics, explaining exactly what Trace Heating is and what it is used for. As we are specialists in Trace Heating systems, we automatically assume that everyone knows exactly what it is and how is works, which is obviously not the case. So what is Trace Heating? Read on to find out...

What is Trace Heating?

Trace heating, known as Electric heat tracing, heat tape or surface heating, is a system used to maintain or raise the temperature of pipes and vessels. Trace heating takes the form of an electrical heating element run in physical contact along the length of a pipe. The pipe must then be covered with thermal insulation to retain heat losses from the pipe. Heat generated by the element then maintains the temperature of the pipe. Trace heating is used for many applications from protecting pipes from freezing, to maintaining a constant flow temperature in hot water systems, or to maintain process temperatures for piping that must transport substances that solidify at ambient temperatures.

When did Trace Heating come about?

Electric trace heating began in the 1930s but to begin with no dedicated equipment was available. Mineral insulated cables were run at high current densities to produce heat, and control equipment was adapted from other applications. Mineral-insulated resistance heating cables were introduced in the 1950s, and then parallel-type heating cables that could be cut to length in the field became available. Self-limiting thermoplastic cables were marketed in 1971.

So what is Trace Heating used for?

The most widespread pipe trace heating applications include:

Temperature maintenance

Road & Ramp Outdoor Surface Heating

Anti-condensation

Gulley and roof snow / ice protection

Frost protection and freeze prevention

Door / frame interface ice protection

Window de-misting

Pond freeze protection

Soil warming

Anti-cavitation purpose

Here at Cross Electrical, we’ve been controlling the temperature for industries for over 40 years, so why compromise? Call us today on -01159722050

Benefits of Underfloor heating

Underfloor heating is where heating cables are applied within floor structures or beneath flooring systems to provide both primary and comfort heating. Here at Cross Electrical we have a wonderful range of unique, quality underfloor heating solutions for homeowners and the contracting industry alike. Installed in hours without the need for specialist tools or skills, our special underfloor heating products are low profile and won't raise floor levels.

But why would you install underfloor heating in your home? Here’s just a few reasons...

Space Saver -

Under floor heating allows you the freedom to design your room layout without having compromise around conventional heat sources. It can be irritating working your furniture and around heat sources like radiators. Underfloor heating gives you the flexibility to put your furniture where it best suits your lifestyle needs and room shape.

Minimum Maintenance –

There is little that can go wrong or that needs to be maintained in an underfloor heating system.  If correctly installed and tested, any potential leaks or problems can be identified at an early stage and dealt with before the laying of the floor. Thus there are no regular maintenance costs to incur which can sometimes be the case with traditional convection heating.

Fabulously Flexible -

Unlike traditional convection heating systems, controlled by a single thermostat, an underfloor heating system provides the flexibility to control individual room temperatures via thermostats. This means you can control the temperature of every area of your home instead of wasting energy and money heating areas of the property which are used less.

Crazy Comfortable -

One of the worst things about getting out of bed can be stepping out onto a cold laminate or stone flooring! Whether it’s in your bedroom, kitchen or bathroom, cold floors on warm feet can be really horrible! Thus, one of the key advantages to underfloor heating is that it banishes this problem, heating the whole floor area of your home. Furthermore, compared to conventional radiators, an underfloor heating system generates more radiant heat as opposed to convective heat, leaving you with a generally cosier environment.

Super Safe

Installing and using a floor heating system means there are no radiators, and so there is no longer a risk to small children and other vulnerable groups to get burnt.

Health improvements

Floor heating is good for asthma sufferers and people with allergies as it produces a lot less airborne dust than radiators.

With a range of under floor heating systems for safely heating under tile floors, under wood floors, under laminate floors, under carpet floors and more, we’re confident that we can supply a heating system for your project. We have the products and support to make your project run smoothly and we offer a free quotation service and practical advice. This simple method of heating has been available from Cross for many years, providing a cost effective and energy efficient system for any application.

Heating throughout history

Fire had been the original and obvious source for home heating for throughout history and until recent times was the only source for home heating. With this being said, the manner in fire has been used for heating has changed greatly.

In the Skara Brae site in Orkney, Scotland (3180 BCE-2500 BCE) the homes contained a square hearth in the center for both eating and cooking. This standard heating unit with a hearth in the center of the room and a smoke hole overhead, continued in some parts of the world up until the Middle Ages, but in the Roman world great improvements were made. The upper class Roman had a hypocaust heating system. In this system, the floor was raised several feet off the ground on tile pillars, and fires were then built underneath the floors, becoming the first known case of radiant heating.[i]

The fireplace as we know it today first came around in the 1200’s. During these times they were likely to smoke up a room due to the lack of chimneys. This impracticality meant that fireplaces themselves were often built more for aesthetic reasons over practical uses.

The radiator was obviously a huge improvement in heating a room when it was invented in 1855. Hot water or steam was used to heat individual rooms, but with simplistic thermostats often meant it was difficult to get the temperature right where it was wanted. There have been stories from the 1800’s of people having to open the windows in winter when a room have overheated.

The furnace was introduced in the late Victorian period, where a central unit could heat an entire building. By the middle of the 20th century, Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning systems had been introduced throughout the western world.

Cross Electrical (Nottingham) Ltd specialises in the design, manufacture, supply and install electrical trace heating systems incorporating a thermal insulation division. Our fully qualified service and installation engineers provide both a national and international coverage for all types of application within industry and commerce.

HERE AT CROSSELECTRICAL WE ARE THE CONTROLLERS OF TEMPERATURE!

Call us today on - +44 (0)115 937 5121

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[i] http://timourrashed.com/ancient-methods-heating-home/

Temperature Maintenance from Cross Electrical

Many raw materials and products will only remain in a liquid state if they are kept above a specific temperature. Electric trace heating and thermal insulation isa system used to maintain or increase the temperature of vessels and pipes. This process can be used to protect pipes from freezing or to maintain process temperatures for piping that must transport substances that solidify at ambient temperatures.

Traceheating is an electrical heating element placed in physical contact along the length of a pipe. The pipe is then covered with thermal insulation to maintain the temperature and reduce any heat losses, so that the heat generated by the element then preserves the temperature of the pipe.
Electrical trace heating and thermal insulation provides the solution of maintaining the temperature of a product in a pipe or vessel ensuring that your process pipework and systems deliver your product to the point of delivery at the required temperature.

When subjected to low ambient temperatures, heat loss can cause the contents viscosity to increase. This can cause the material to harden or set within the pipework, either slowing down the process or causing problems to pumping equipment. For example, wax is a substance which starts to solidify below 70 °C, which is usually far above the temperature of the surrounding air. Therefore the pipeline must be provided with an external source of heat to prevent the pipe and the material inside it from cooling down.

Trace heating can also be done with steam, but this requires a source of steam and may be inconvenient to install and operate. By utilising the correct type of Heating Cable, Thermal Insulation and Temperature Control, process pipework will operate efficiently for many years.
From our range of XSSTC (mineral insulated heating cables) XSW, XSWE (single wire), XHP and self-regulating heating cables we can confidently Design and Install, Maintain and Supply heating systems ensuring  production never stops.

With CrossElectrical controlling the temperature for industries for over 40 years why compromise? Call us today on -01159722050

The history of underfloor heating

Did you know that underfloor heating is far from a new concept? It has actually been dated back as far as the Neolithic period and has been used throughout history as a main form of heating. The type of underfloor heating we offer to you today is a far cry from some of the methods used in the past.  We’ve compiled a concise history of some of the inventive systems used by our ancestors to heat their homes.

The earliest forms of heated flooring have been dated back to as early as 5,000 BC. Archaeologists have found evidence that shows the use of ‘baked flooring’ dating back to this time. Found in China, these methods heated floors by drafting hot smoke from fires through trenches cut into the floors.
There is evidence that the Romans were using underfloor heating systems on a larger scale by around 500 BC. Their homes were constructed with voids in the floors and walls through which air, warmed by an open fire, could pass through to heat the structure. These systems were often used in Roman baths and would heat the pools of water as well as the rooms.

In the following 500 years, similar methods of underfloor heating was widely used throughout China and Korea, but was not used significantly in Europe until much later. These days it has developed so much that it has become one of the most energy efficient forms of heating available on the market. As people are striving towards more energy efficient homes, underfloor heating is being used more and more in both commercial and residential new build properties.
The systems of today are exceptionally comfortable and controllable. They remove the need for radiators resulting in more room space and heat provided underfloor is distributed completely evenly causing is zero dust circulation.

This simple method of heating has been available from us for many years, providing a cost effective and energy efficient system for any application. We have the products and support to make your project run smoothly, offering a free quotation service and practical advice. Our electric under floor heating products can be installed in hours without the need for specialist tools or skills, the products we propose are low profile and won't raise floor levels.   Call us today for more information!

Prevent Downtime with Heat Tracing

By preparing for winter; processing plants, machinery and equipment means production can continue as normal through the season. Installing Cross Electrical heat tracing cables can avoid constant maintenance and improve machine efficiency and ultimately prevent downtime.

It is considered good practice to develop an action plan during cold snaps to assist in prioritising and managing problems. This could include anything from frozen pipes to the unavailability of staff during very bad weather conditions.

Investing in trace heating will mean that vulnerable parts of machinery and the plant itself stay operational during the cold weather by running an electrical current alongside pipes. These pipes are then coated in thermal protection to prevent heat escaping. This allows the hot water system to flow continually despite the weather.

Cross Electrical have a wide range of trace heating cables to suit a variety of frost protection applications. This also includes our own XSSTC, XHP, XSW and XEL heating cables that can be designed for many winterisation projects. Thermostatically controlled, the heating cables only ever energise when temperatures drop below a pre-configured figure, acting to prevent the disastrous consequences of winter.

The XHP family of fixed resistance, constant wattage heating cables is used for metal, plastic pipes and vessels. XHP heating cables can be designed for non-standard heating applications using any voltage from 6 to 415 volts. These cables provide fixed resistance; therefore circuit resistance can be tested periodically regardless of ambient or process temperatures and can be used on applications up to 280⁰C.

The XEL family of self-regulating, parallel circuit heating cables is used for frost protection of metal and plastic pipes and vessels. With the facility to cut on site to the required length, XEL heating cables provide a reliable heating solution to the problem of frozen pipework.

Cross Electrical can manufacture, design and install a complete trace heating system to solve any problems that future winters may cause and will ensure that your pipe work never freezes again.

Remember last winter? Frost protection

Remember the drastic temperatures and weather spouts of last winter? Since then, trace heating has since become a requirement in many homes across the UK.

Since then we are all too aware of the damage that frozen pipe work can cause to domestic homes after temperatures plummet below freezing including building damage, temporary blockages and inconveniences while pipes and ice thaws out, the same problems are also very prominent in industrial, commercial and agricultural environments.

Particular problems during last winter were caused by heating condensate pipes which caused boilers to shut down due to frozen pipe work between boilers and homes which ran externally to the properties.

Note: It is important to note that it is not always the freezing that causes the expensive consequences and outcome such as leaks, but the splits and cracks once the pipes thaw out that do causing widespread damage to homes, businesses and production lines.

We all know that a proactive approach is always better than a reactive approach, and this same system applies to frozen pipe work with the best prevention being to install trace heating cables onto all pipes which are likely to be exposed to the freezing conditions.

This can involve wrapping a cable to pipes which heats up when temperatures plummet below a certain temperature. We offer various trace heating cable options as Cross Electrical which can be tailored to suit your output levels and temperature requirements to ensure optimum levels of performance with less downtime.

Once pipes are wrapped with these cables, thermal insulation is then be applied to the pipes to further insulate and keep heat in equaling a very cheap and cost effective alternative to the consequence that frozen pipe work can bring to businesses and homes, as a barrier against freezing temperatures.

Cross Electrical can manufacture, design and install a complete trace heating system to solve any problems that future winters may cause and will ensure that your pipe work never freezes again.

Apply anywhere from outbuildings and outside taps through to garages and processing pipe work.