Every pipe and vessel will experience heat loss when its temperature is greater than the surrounding ambient temperature.
When subjected to low ambient or freezing temperatures this heat loss can cause the contents to crystallise and freeze.
For example, most water pipes are located either outside or in unheated internal areas, where in winter months the ambient temperature may drop below its freezing point. When water freezes, it expands and this expansion can cause a lot of problems to the pipework.
Typical applications for frost protection trace heating include:
- Freeze protection heating cable to water pipework - both external and unheated internal areas.
- Trace heating of building services pipework.
- Fire sprinkler pipe frost protection.
- Surface heating to vessels and tanks.
If the contents of a pipe is allowed to crystallise and freeze this can cause the pipework to burst, leading to considerable damage, disruption and expanse.
Thermal insulation alone cannot fully protect pipes from freezing. Thermal insulation reduces the rate of heat loss but does not eliminate it. In order to minimise the effects of heat loss, frost protection trace heating is used to supply a heat source to replace this heat loss and therefore maintain the pipe temperature.
Typically in pipe frost protection, an air sensing trace heating thermostat is used to sense the ambient air temperature. This energises the freeze protection heating cable when the temperature gets below a set point - usually around +3°C to +5°C.
Both constant wattage heating tape and self regulating heating tape systems perform excellently for use within frost protection applications.
Engineers and installers using frost protection trace heating will always have their own preferences as to the type of electric trace heating tape to use. This is why at ESH Trace Heating Ltd we offer a comprehensive range of both constant wattage and self regulating heating tapes to allow the end user to utilise the system that best suits their application and personal preference.
We also offer a range of factory terminated/ready to install heating tapes which are designed to be a quick and easy to install frost protection trace heating system for short run pipework.
