Heat trace maintenance

Pre-winter inspection, testing and repair of heat tracing systems for Edmonton buildings and industrial sites, with records you can track year to year.

Heat trace fails quietly

Heat tracing sits idle for months, hidden under insulation or on a roof. Damage from other trades, water getting into insulation, a failed end seal or a controller knocked out of calibration often goes unnoticed until the system is needed. By then the pipe has frozen or the gutter is a block of ice.

A pre-winter check finds those problems while there is still time to fix them. For commercial and industrial owners with many circuits, it also builds a record that shows which circuits are getting worse.

• Tripped ground-fault breakers that nobody reset
• Thermostats set wrong or with failed sensors
• Cable damaged by a ladder, a scaffold or a new pipe hanger
• Insulation that is wet, crushed or missing
• Kits and end seals that have let in moisture

What we test

Every circuit gets the same set of checks, and the results are recorded so this year's numbers can be compared with last year's.

The insulation-resistance test is the most useful single measurement. A healthy circuit reads consistently high. A falling reading points to moisture or damage long before the circuit trips. Trending those numbers lets us plan repairs in good weather instead of during an emergency.

Finding and fixing faults

When a circuit fails, we isolate it, test it, and narrow down where along the run the fault is. Common fixes are replacing a failed end seal or connection kit, cutting out and splicing a damaged section with the correct listed kit, drying or replacing wet insulation, and replacing controllers or sensors.

Sometimes the right answer is replacing the cable. Older constant-wattage cable, cable at the end of its life, or a system that never met the design is often better replaced than repaired again each winter.

Records that make sense

Good maintenance depends on knowing what you have. On many sites we find heat trace breakers labelled only as heat trace, controllers with no circuit numbers and cable runs that are not shown on any drawing. The first visit often focuses on building that inventory.

Each circuit gets a number that appears at the breaker, the controller and the power connection, and a one-page record with its location, length, cable type and test history. With that in place, the annual check becomes faster each year, and anyone on your team can tell which circuit serves which pipe.

That record is also useful for insurers and for planning capital work, because it shows which parts of the system are near the end of their life.

Setting up a program

For a single house with roof cable, a simple fall check is usually enough. For a commercial building, parkade or plant with dozens of circuits, we recommend a scheduled program: an inventory and labelling of every circuit, a test sheet per circuit, and annual testing before winter.

We post results and deficiencies to our online job management system, so you can see the status of every circuit and approve repairs without chasing paperwork. Cost depends on the number of circuits, access, whether we have good records to start from and the scope of repairs found.

If you are not sure where to start, a one-time assessment of your existing system is a good first step.

Questions we hear