Radiant mystery - help needed! (PAH)

Dave Yates (PAH)

We had to excavate a warehouse office to expose and replace an underground water service. Bank Repo, so no one knew it was heated via in-floor electric radiant. We soon discovered it was! Everyone assumed the registers (turned out to be A/C only) were for HVAC.

1/2" electrical conduit conduit with a single strand of what appears to be 18-gauge chrome wire encased in black plastic. If you didn't have the wire cut off, you'd think it was a single strand of 14/2 due to the diameter of the casing.

This had been an electrical contractor's business who skipped town when it went belly up. So, we've checked with all of our local electrical wholesalers & they're all drawing a blank!

Seems like a mighty poor way to deliver radiant heating by placing a loose wire within a 1/2" steel conduit! Mighty stinky in those tubes of steel too. Smells like overheated wiring. Might be time for a duct furnasty!

Thanks in advance!

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Mike T., Swampeast MO

Relatively wide centers like with hydronic as opposed to very close as typical with electric "warming"?

Sounds to me like someone was experimenting...

I think the "theories" behind it would be:

1) easier to keep things aligned when pouring, fewer connections, etc.

2) cut off the electric resistance cable (probably nichrome) from most direct conduction allowing it to get MUCH hotter and heating the metal conduit to "spread" the heat. Smell might be telling you that this worked too well...

I [guess] it would be just as efficient as any form of electric resistance heat...