wires/cable embedded in floor.

[danjennings1958]

Were having two holes dug in sitting room floor to take concrete pads to support two new beams and upon digging through floor found these wires across the entire floor, embedded a few inches into the existing concrete floor.
Its not ree bar, its flexible cable, a little like co-axial, but it isnt live or cant detect any current - we think it might be an old style underfloor heating?

Any thoughts as to what it might be?

 

[stuart45]

Looks like an underfloor heating cable put on top of the slab and then screeded. They work better with insulation under them. I put one in our kitchen about 20 years ago, got it from Screwfix.

 

[danjennings1958]

Thats what we thought - its in a 15th Century house that had a concrete floor laid, we think about 25-30 years ago, so kind of ties in with your dates.
would it normally be linked, to a theromstat on the wall somewhere? but we can see anything so guess it has been long redundant.

 

[stuart45]

I've got a digital stat on the wall. Yours may be redundant now, but worth checking. Would be really inefficient without any insulation under it.

 

[danjennings1958]

Weve been all around checking and having lived there a few years, we know where everything is now and we do not have any stats or control panels in that room, so i think we can safely assume its redundant.
Really appreciate you getting back to me, very helpful.

Kind regards

dan

 

[worms]

Have you looked for any evidence of an electric heating system at the fuse box? How is the property heated at present?

 

[danjennings1958]

hi - yes, they were all checked over when we bought the place 2 years ago and a trace check to see which fuse handled which circuit and theres nothing there at all.
we will be taking up all the old carpets in the next few months so ill be looking for any wires coming out of the floor, which may bee currently hidden under the carpet/smooth edge or underlay.
More for my own curiousity is as these old houses throw up all kinds of mysteries and its nice too be able to document them and pass on what youve learnt, as were all custodians of these old places until the next owner.

We currently have gas fired boiler, which is at least 15 years old but in very good working order and conditon.

 

[worms]

Strange that there is no residual evidence of any electrical connection to these wires. I wonder if a separate off-peak board was completely removed when the gas boiler was installed. Or has the property had a complete re-wire?

I know of another property (commercial rather than residential), where a complete re-wire had to leave the old underfloor heating system untouched, as there was no economically feasible way to update it. The solution was to leave the individual floor circuits and control panels intact but supplied from a new master fusebox to give modern levels of protection. However the modern fusebox for the heating was still supplied by the original time-clock and 1960's off-peak feed - a real mix of systems, but apparently necessary to meet modern fixed electrical standards. I would imagine that faced with a similar problem in a domestic setting, trying to sort out an electrical heating system (that would have been expensive to run) would have been considered more trouble than it was worth.