Please help! I need some expertise on electrical circuits.

[Ike Bana]

Any help I can get with this would be much appreciated. I'm attempting to make a sort of gutter defroster line out of 50ft or so of 14-2 Romex. I'm pretty ignorant of what might be required to accomplish this.

We have a freeze up in the city water supply line between the city meter well out by the street and the entry of the line into our home. When the city water was brought in about 8 years ago we used an existing poly supply line that ran to a well and hooked up to the municipal service in the well pit. Were the supply enters the house it's only about 2 ft below grade and with the severe cold here in the upper midwest it's frozen, probably near the house. We can't defrost it using electric because the supply is poly. But there is underground romex that runs all along the supply that they buried right with it to power the well pump out in the pit. When we closed the well, I pulled the romex up out of the well above grade and taped it up, so I can wire that end together to make a loop.

Does anybody have the knowledge, formulas, or whatever information necessary to know how much resistance I would need in a loop of 50 ft of 14-2 romex to heat it up to maybe 80 or 90 degrees to try to defrost this water line? Or does this just need to be a trial and error thing, put a receptacle in the loop and plug a bunch of toasters into it until the romex starts to warm up. Sticking resistors in the loop would just be so much easier, and I suppose that could be a trial and error thing as well, but I have no idea where to start. I can actually probably get this as hot as 120 or so because the melting point of the plastic romex sheathing is probably over 200 degrees. You can stick this plastic in boiling water and it gets real soft but doesn't fall apart.

One other thought was, would it be better to convert it to DC? Or is the gauge too heavy to warm up at all with DC. I'm not even sure I can do this at all without popping a breaker before the loop would get hot enough.

If we can't defrost this line, we will probably not be able to go back into the house until late March or early April.

Thanks in advance for any help anybody might provide.

I'm going to post this over on AK as well...I'm just not sure which would be the best forum.

[JJIII]

Hate to hear of your situation. I have no idea at all about how to help. Good luck.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

One other thought was, would it be better to convert it to DC? Or is the gauge too heavy to warm up at all with DC. I'm not even sure I can do this at all without popping a breaker before the loop would get hot enough.

I'm not sure anything is possible here. If hooked up through a 15 amp breaker, the breaker will trip by design before the Romex heats up at all (15 amp breakers are sized for 14 gauge Romex). Though hooking up a 14 gauge conductor to a 20 amp breaker would theoretically heat up the conductor (by code, a 20 amp breaker requires a 12 gauge conductor), I doubt it would heat it up very much at all and likely not enough to get through the Romex jacket and the surrounding soil to the water supply line.

I think your only viable solution is to wait until the ground thaws, dig it up and bury it deeper.

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by finnbow

I'm not sure anything is possible here. If hooked up through a 15 amp breaker, the breaker will trip by design before the Romex heats up at all (15 amp breakers are sized for 14 gauge Romex). Though hooking up a 14 gauge conductor to a 20 amp breaker would theoretically heat up the conductor (by code, a 20 amp breaker requires a 12 gauge conductor), I doubt it would heat it up very much at all and likely not enough to get through the Romex jacket and the surrounding soil to the water supply line.

I think your only viable solution is to wait until the ground thaws, dig it up and bury it deeper.

That's what I was afraid of. There are products like eve/gutter defroster lines that can be left out in the weather for years, so I'm assuming there are some similar products suitable for burying. Dig up the line near the house where it's up above the frost line and dropping in a heater element line would be a lot cheaper than having a new deeper line dug and run. So I might investigate something like that for the future. Just turn it on Nov 1, and turn it off April 1.

[Ike Bana]

OK...if that wouldn't work...one other thought. Rather than running it directly out of the house current where I'm gonna keep blowing the breaker...

So don't wire directly in to the house current. Connect it to some other piece of equipment that produces heat in a loop.

When they thaw out copper line, or when the cast iron parts in a meter well or shut-off well freeze up...I'm pretty sure they run a charge through it from an electric welder. Is there a piece of equipment that I could attach to the ends of the romex where I would have enough control to heat up the romex without melting the sheathing?

Could I jury rig the leads from like, a space heater or a hot plate or panninni press or one of those hot water elements you stick in a cup of water to the romex that would warm it up?

All I need is some way to get a loop of wire to warm up. There's gotta be a way.

[Rajoo]

Look into something like this. I have used this type of heater to keep pipes from freezing. Similar heating cord is also used to keep snow melting off the roof in areas like Tahoe.
http://www.lowes.com/pd_23496-72436-...r|1&facetInfo=

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by BeamOn

Look into something like this. I have used this type of heater to keep pipes from freezing. Similar heating cord is also used to keep snow melting off the roof in areas like Tahoe.
http://www.lowes.com/pd_23496-72436-...r|1&facetInfo=

Thanks. What I would have to do is crack it open and attach my lines to the output terminals in the control box. I'm going to go take a look at this today.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

Thanks. What I would have to do is crack it open and attach my lines to the output terminals in the control box. I'm going to go take a look at this today.

Note these 2 points on the description of this heat trace. The first is a safety issue, the second for efficacy. If that Romex is a couple of inches away from the pipe, I'd say there's little chance of this working:

Cable must be plugged into a ground fault protected outlet
Cable must be installed straight on pipe

[mpholland]

You can get the easy heat cables in almost any length you might need also. The one I got for my mom was about 120' long and cost about 75 bucks. They make different items for different purposes also. If you go to the Emerson Industrial website you may find something to exactly suit your purpose.

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Note these 2 points on the description of this heat trace. The first is a safety issue, the second for efficacy. If that Romex is a couple of inches away from the pipe, I'd say there's little chance of this working:

Cable must be plugged into a ground fault protected outlet
Cable must be installed straight on pipe

Right, you'd still have to dig down to the pipe and attach the heater directly to it. And, I'm not so sure Romex is going to work the same as whatever they are using as heater element.

Dave