They sell heating cables of various lengths to attach to a metal pipe to prevent freezing. If a heat cable is 6ft long and rated at 40 watts, how hot does the cable feel to the hand if the cable was not attached to a pipe? IOW, could they be used to keep other things warm than just a pipe?
If you expect an answer you need to actually ask a question that has an answer.
This is not difficult to determine for yourself. Take a 40W light incandescent bulb. Grab it tight and hold on. Turn it on. You'll have your answer in less time than it takes to call the burn unit for advice.
There are many kinds of heating tape. Some with thermostats , some that are self regulating for temperature, and some that are rated for so many watts per foot.
What does warm mean ? It could be just above freezing all the way to just off the cook stove warm.
That's why I asked about the pipe style heating cable. Picture wise it looks like 10/2 romex electrical wire rather than tape. There is tape that is wound around a pipe and there is cable that is attached parallel to the pipe. But I'm wondering how much heat reaches the cable surface before it's transferred to the pipe.
If you're wanting to keep other things warm, just buy a battery blanket (for keeping a car's battery warm in winter). To control the amount of heat, make up a simple cord with the dimmer switch for an incandescent light spliced into that cord. Plug the cord with the dimmer switch in it into an outlet, and plug the battery blanket into the cord with the dimmer switch. That way you can control the amount of heat with the dimmer switch.
I've made my own beer for well over 25 years. Where I live, it can get chilly enough indoors (in the winter) that it can be hard to get proper fermentation. I have a variety of "mullion heaters" for refrigerators that I use to warm up the primary fermenter to get the beer fermenting. Some mullion heaters are only 15 watts, and I can just plug them in to an electrical outlet and they produce enough heat for what I need. Other mullion heaters are 45 watts, and they'll get too hot, and stop the fermentation. So, for the 45 watt mullion heaters, I simply mount a dimmer switch for an incandescent light in an electrical box, and splice that electrical box into a cord between male and female cord ends. That way, I can simply plug a night light into the female cord end to see if the dimmer switch is passing electricity or not (cuz you push the dimmer switch dial it to turn it off). If it is, then I just adjust the dial to a midway setting, and plug the mullion heater into the female cord end instead of the night light.
Since mullion heaters were used to warm various parts of fridges to keep frost from forming in those areas, and nowadays they use the condensor coil tubing to provide the heat, mullion heaters are no longer widely available in appliance parts stores. By, you can use a battery blanket for a car instead, and it should work equally well.
Yes. There are lots of different technologies though. Some have a simple resistance wire. Some have two wires and the heater is between them and continuous. They can be cut to the required length.
Some need a thermostat and some don't.
You need to get read up on the manufacturers info.
All of it. Insulation is applied on top of the tape. How hot it gets depends on ambient temperature and the properties and flow of whats in the pipe. Also the nature of the pipe itself.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ under a moble home can the heat pipe cable feel slightly warm near the plug if the tape is on and its cold outside say 30 degrees
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