lee what make is the mat you sell then ?
i can see the point of single wire in a small bathroom but a lot of floors i do are 30-100 sq mts and then cable mats are what i go for.
my undestanding is that gaffer tape is not problem to slc over but the most important thing is not to use gaffer tape over the end tail as this is recipe for a dig up later !!!!
Funny u should mention that [MENTION=15118]jonnyc[/MENTION]
Few wks before Christmas I was asked to do a repair to a shower floor in Fulham. Well not so much as a repair but to create a fall in the floor where there was no fall! Basically the fixer had laid this limestone floor with out taking any levels into account. But in fairness to him he's not a full time tiler, he's a joiner. Yeah I know. But it's a fairly small operation and he does some tiling from time to time and he's fairly handy. Anyway, result was that when it came to the shower base there wasn't enough of a fall for it to drain fast enough, consequently water flowed both sides of the screen, half in shower, half into bath area. The screen itself only came half way across shower opening. Effectively a wet room with a single piece of glass to keep shower water on the right side. If the glass had been 100mm wider there'd been no issue, but it wasn't. The client was and stil is extremely exacting, I mean beyond exacting! Even the protection in the room had to have protection and that's no exaggeration!
So my task was to remove several tiles and relay them to a fall so it would drain faster allowing all the water to be contained. Only there was no fall to work with, he insisted that the floor remain flush with no threshold. He WANTED his wet room. And because of the money he'd spent on the whole job, hundreds of thousands! He was gonna get it! Haha
I hatched a little plan, whilst not ideal I figured I could keep everyone happy.
So with the builder by my side I asked him to contact electrician and find out exactly where UFH was in relation to the shower. I was PROMISED that it finished OUTSIDE shower enclosure. So with my Rubi TC180 set to 16mm (15mm stone) and my brand new Trend T30AF dust extractor (bought especially for the repair, well that's how I justified it to myself haha) I set about making the first incision!! Straight thro grout line 30mm outside screen. Well outside UFH area, second cut about 60mm back. Just wanted to take a small piece out first and see what I was up against. Prised it up and it poped out! Stone, adhesive and 5 inches of UFH CABLE clean off the Ditra!! The air turned a very distinct shade of blue for quite some time!!!! Head in hands, steam bellowing from my ears ranting at the builder down the phone!! Now I had a problem. Damaged UFH and an extremely difficult client flyin back in Monday morning with the whole family and it was already 2pm Saturday.
I had absolutely no idea where the cable ran, and apparently nor did the sparks it would seem, and I stil had to remove several large pieces of stone.
So what I decided to do was run lots if cuts thro the stone, as in the picture, and remove it inch by inch to try and trace the cable. I had no idea if it was the start, middle or end of UFH.
Of course making so many cuts didn't help the dust situation at all! There was jus too much even for the Trend to cope with. I actually realised a floor in the Rubi after that. If the blade isn't at full cutting depth the shroud doesn't come down far enough to capture enough dust for it to be sucked out. Eventually I removed the stone and was able to follow the cable. It took hrs, I just didn't want to exasperate the situation by tearing out more cable because the spark was convinced he could repair it.
As u can see from the pic the cable snaked right into the shower, where it wasn't supposed to be! I managed to free it from the left side from under the tile and pull it straight from left to right to be rejoined on the right where it snapped clean off.
Problem 2! The tail on the right side came out DIRECTLY out from under the shower glass (see pic) Great! Frightened silly I'd snap it off leaving no tail I had to somehow get more cable visible so there was enough to form a joint. I managed to eventually excavate beneath the glass, stone and adhesive actually forming a channel in the ply so I cupould gently ease the cable down and away from the adhesive above it. It was now 11pm Sat night.
Next morning met spark 9am to re-instate everything. Hadn't even began to address original problem! Haha anyway, sparks pulled cable straight across, bottom left to bottom right of pic, to meet cable from under glass, cut excess off and tried to join it. He maintained there wasn't enough cable from under glass to fit two individual connectors to the twin cable so he taped it up instead! I wasn't impresses nor did I have much faith in his approach! Sure enough, power back on, breaker tripped time and time again. Eventually it seemed to hold. In this case for some reason, I know not why, the lights and UFH were both on the same independent circuit. So when UFH tripped so did lights. But he managed to get it to work. So I set about removing another couple of stones and set about making a fall out of nothing.
What I had decided to do was to raise the backs of the stone in relation to the rest of the floor to produce the fall, obviously this would form a trip and was definately not in my instructions. So I used my Flex polisher to sand down the back edge of the stone to form an invisible threshold. Hard to explain but see pic it's more informative. So when entering the room and looking into the shower area it could not be seen, but if it was stepped on u could feel a slight raised line. But it achieved a much better fall angle. One massive job for something that in principle would have been just another day for me. These type of jobs seem to seek me out. Haha
I finally completed by 12.30 Monday afternoon, grouted job done. There was an army of cleaners sat in the master waiting to pounce soon as I left. Client had called ahead to announce he would be home by 2 and we had better not be!
It took several weeks to find out if all was well because he wasn't happy with the rain shower head, not enough pressure, not surprised it was about 30cm across! At last, 4wks later I got the call, success! It worked, and well. The client was delighted! And I eventually breathed out! Seriously, I was very worried that it may not have worked. It's a lot if pressure sometimes when u have the builder and architect telling the client in front of you that "this is the man for the job, if anyone can do it he can!" It's not that I'm trying to big myself up, FAR FROM IT! TBH that's the last thing I want said in this situation. The pressure is enormous! It's such a fickle world nowadays, YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOU'RE LAST JOB!! Especially in London, god there's a thousand people just waiting for u to mess up, so they can have you're work. So if I'd failed then there would have been huge consequences. It may sound all very dramatic, and maybe it is, but that's how I approach my work. I do my very best each and every time. And I don't get dumped by builders or clients, I dump them! Haha
but a tilers lot is not a happy one! Because as well as I did or didn't do my bit, IT WAS WASTED! The UFH FAILED! Now there's a surprise! Scream? I could've gleefully removed someone's head!
So back I went to RIP UP AGAIN!
Fortunately for me the client was so pleased with my part in all this he agreed to allow me to cut the replaced tile in half and only remove half of it, creating a new joint line. (See pic) You can now see shape of the replacement tile in relation to floor and how invisible threshold was formed. When the piece was lifted the very burnt out UFH became visible. Not surprisingly the client would not allow sparks back to repair, a certified Warm Up Engineer was insisted upon.
So today I got the call, again, UFH repaired and can I go replace the piece I took out. Well I've already fabricated the new piece. So all I have to do in theory is go in Sat Morning and stick and glue it as my wife calls it! Haha
BUT, and this is what this incredibly long and drawn out post is about, the Engineer said "Under NO CIRCUMSTANCE cover the warm up pro-wire with Gaffer Tape!" This is their single biggest reason for a call out. If you cover the cable with tape it causes a 'Heat Pocket' and burns out the UFH in a flash!!!!
Wish me luck! Haha
