Customer Reviews

M-D Building Products 64386 9-Foot Pipe Heating Cable with Thermostat

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I can recommend this product, but I had a problem that almost caused me to remove the heat tape with the insulation from my water line and return it, and that's not fun when it's cold outside. I wouldn't be surprised if some other people have had this problem, which is also a problem for the manufacturer and those selling the product. I assume the problem would exist with all of the other length heat tapes; they probably use this same thermostat.

After installing the heat tape and insulation, I wanted to make sure it was working OK. I could have done this by watching the pilot light when it got cold, but I decided to use the "Kill a Watt" meter that I had purchased at Amazon about a year ago. (I highly recommend that product. It's relatively cheap, about $21. You plug it into a wall socket and then plug an electic appliance into it and it tells you the volts, amps, watts, power factor, kilowatt hours, etc.) I plugged the electric heat tape into the meter and I could see when the heat tape turned on and the watts it was drawing. (It was 19 to 20 watts by the way.) For one thing, by using the meter I didn't have to go outside to see the pilot light. Actually the pilot light is underneath my mobile home.

The problem came when the temperature (where the heat tape was located) went down to a little below 30 degrees F on several occasions and the heat tape was not staying on. It was off quite a bit of the time. I wasn't anticipating that, and I thought the thermostat was probably defective. The instructions that came with the heat tape didn't prepare me for that. They mentioned some blinking for a while, but I thought the heat tape would be continuously on before the temperature dropped to 28 to 30 degrees.

I don't think the thermostat is defective, and you certainly don't need for the heat tape to be on continuously when it is something like 28 to 30 degrees, but like I said, my first thought was that the thermostat was defective. Apparently when the thermostat first kicks on and the temperature isn't quite a bit colder than 30 degrees the flow of electricity warms up the thermostat a little and it kicks off for a while again.

Fortunately I decided to monitor the heat tape for a while instead of removing it. Since then I have found that the colder it gets the more it stays on, and when it is cold enough it stays on all of the time. So far this year the temperature has dropped to 5 degree or so and I haven't had any problems with freezing water lines. Of course you have to insulate the water lines to recommended levels, remembering, for one thing, that this heat tape only uses some 19 to 20 watts. The 9 foot heat tape available in the local hardware stores uses 63 watts. I hope this note helps some people.

I ordered this to keep the pipes on our external water heater from freezing. We live in Dallas, so it normally isn't an issue, but this winter has been extra cold. Got it in three days ago and installed it right away. For the last two days, the pipes have been frozen in the morning. We've had to thaw them out with a space heater. I'll be looking for a full refund.

This heat tape fits our situation just right. I wish I had thought of buying this from Amazon a month earlier but I kept shopping in local hardware stores.