Especially on poorly insulated roofs, snow melts and the water refreezes in the roof gutters and depressions, causing problems. Auxiliary phenomena include:
- icicles posing danger for bypassers,
- damage of the gutters, including perforation or collapse,
- gradual accumulation of ice at roof edges and infiltration of water under the roof, into the interiors or walls,
- additional cost and danger connected to the manual removal of the accumulated ice.
Necessary repairs of roof gutters, cover or wall plaster are often more expensive than the heating costs.
We highly recommend heating the roof gutters with electric heating cables. They should be installed in all locations where water from melting snow can accumulate, such as the gutters themselves, roof depressions and edges.
Let us introduce some of our projects:
Employment office in Česká Lípa
Long-term problems on the building of Česká Lípa Employment office led to the decision to install a roof gutter heating system. The roof edges above the street often carried icicles and posed danger to pedestrians. Drain pipes in the yard often froze and eventually disintegrated or collapsed, icicles formed here putting the cars parking in the yard in danger of damage. Water from the broken drains infiltrated the newly constructed section of the building.
In 2011, REVOS designed and implemented a roof edge and gutter heating system using the FLEXELEC FTC30 heating cable designed for such applications. Heating is regulated by a paired detector EBERLE EM 524 90 independently sensing conditions on the sides of the street and the yard. Because of the relatively high maximal current of this particular system, we included a current regulator that switches off parts of the system as needed when power consumption is high elsewhere in the building.
Masaryk Railway Station in Prague
The complex reconstruction of the railway station entrance hall by Revos included the installation of a roof gutter heating system. The photographs show the unique character of the roof with the gutters placed in depressions between to roofs. This kind of roofs and drains are especially sensitive to water infiltration, with emphasis on snow elimination. The vertical drains from these roofs are hidden and connected to the historical ground drainage system. Our FTC 30 heating cable provided an adequate and a robust type of the heating cable for this problem. This type of cable can be suspended into the vertical drains without any additional support. This simplifies the installation procedure and prevents clogging of the gutters and collapse of the entire heating system.
Electric energy distribution plant of CEZ in Vrchlabí
It is very important, especially in technological buildings to prevent drainage water from entering the interior of the object, particularly if the object is an electric energy distribution plant. The owners realize this and gradually improve their protection from damage caused by snow and ice.
Finally a few numbers:
- Employment Office Česká Lípa – 500 m FTC30, 15 kW, paired snow detector EM52490
- Masaryk Railway Station – 950 m FTC30, 28.5 kW, snow detector EM52489
- Electric energy distribution plant Vrchlabí – 90 m FTC30, 2.7 kW, snow detector EM52490
