HEATING CABLES

[Seba]

Dear Sirs,

in the North of Italy - where I live - some people have lost some palms due to the actual very bad winter. I will plant 1 young Brahea armata, 2 six years old Jubeas, 1 young Butia capitata this spring, but I am thinking with much terror about the next winter...
I've read that some people in the North of Europe use heating cables with a thermostat (inside various covers), I am anxious to read about your experiences and to see some pictures. I love my palms and I prefer to not make big mistakes.
Moreover I have 2 questions:
1) where is the THERMOSTAT in your heating cables?
2) how do you connect the heating cables to the outlets? I probably will neeed an extension cable but I am fear that some rain could enter between the plugs (I know I could by some commercial plastic protections, but rain is rain...). In fact probably I will never find a heating cables as long as the distance between my garden and my home outlet.
I hope in your replies .

Best regards
Stefano

[BILL MA]

Hey Stefano,
I've used the heating cables under my washintonias, they have worked extremely well for me. I have pictures of them when I installed them last spring. To see the picture go to page 3 of cold hardy palm and look for spring plantings in Massachusetts. The thermostats are in the middle of the loop somewhere. They just have a standard plug on the end that you can plug into a extension cord. I haven't had any problems with they electric, I have them on a gfi outlet with a plastic bag over them to keep everything dry. Hope this helps, I haven't checked the temp of the soil but it's much warmer I'm sure.

Bill

[lucky1]

Hi ! Wonderful to have you here from N.Italy...welcome!

Bill's pictures of his heating cables are really interesting.
Let us know if you have trouble finding them.

Soil heating cables are gaining real interest, especially for restaurants that grow their own salad greens on a roof or patio.
Here's a picture of one:

http://www.digginfood.com/2009/09/basti ... p-garden/#

as long as the distance

An electrician may be able to give you some tips.

Your terrible winter this year was apparently rare.
Maybe you won't see another one of those for 20 years, giving your Brahea and Butia lots of time to grow.

Do you have pictures?
We'd love to see the palms...
Barb

[TerdalFarm]

Stefano,
good questions, and ones I had myself as I was getting started. I'll try to explain. If I cannot explain well enough with words let me know and I'll take some photographs for you.
1) the thermostat is located at the end of the electric heating element in the tape. Thus, it needs to be located where you need the heat. In my case, it is under the hessian ("burlap" in U.S. English) and close to the palm tissue. Thus, the heat only comes on when the plant itself is cold, not merely when a cold wind blows by.
2) I run an outdoor-certified extension cord from an outlet in the exterior wall of my house to the heat tape. Under current U.S. building codes it should be a GFCI outlet but my older home does not have that safety feature. I should fix that defect but have not.
For my large Butia, the extension cord meets the heat tape under the cover of the plastic greenhouse I built for it. I set the junction on a brick to keep it off the ground.
For my Ch. humilis, I confess that the junction between the extension cord and the heat tape is out in the open. It gets rained on, and has had several cm of snow over it. Appalling, I know. However, I have not had any problems. Beginner's luck?
As usual, I would really appreciate input from others who have used heating cables. I fear that there might be hazards I am too inexperienced to appreciate.
--Erik

[Seba]

Stefano,
good questions, and ones I had myself as I was getting started. I'll try to explain. If I cannot explain well enough with words let me know and I'll take some photographs for you.
1) the thermostat is located at the end of the electric heating element in the tape. Thus, it needs to be located where you need the heat. In my case, it is under the hessian ("burlap" in U.S. English) and close to the palm tissue. Thus, the heat only comes on when the plant itself is cold, not merely when a cold wind blows by.
2) I run an outdoor-certified extension cord from an outlet in the exterior wall of my house to the heat tape. Under current U.S. building codes it should be a GFCI outlet but my older home does not have that safety feature. I should fix that defect but have not.
For my large Butia, the extension cord meets the heat tape under the cover of the plastic greenhouse I built for it. I set the junction on a brick to keep it off the ground.
For my Ch. humilis, I confess that the junction between the extension cord and the heat tape is out in the open. It gets rained on, and has had several cm of snow over it. Appalling, I know. However, I have not had any problems. Beginner's luck?
As usual, I would really appreciate input from others who have used heating cables. I fear that there might be hazards I am too inexperienced to appreciate.
--Erik

Dear Erik,
can I have a picture of your outdoor-certified extension cord? How can it isolate from rain? I have found some german heating cables from an importer, anyway i have still the problem to find a waterproof extension cord...
best regards
SStefano

[lucky1]

Outdoor cords are all waterproof except at the connection, which can be protected (like Erik said) by raising it off the ground on a brick, and covering the connection with an inverted plastic bucket to keep out rain.

http://electrical.hardwarestore.com/12- ... 30525.aspx

Barb

[BILL MA]

Erik,
How do does your butia look after heating cable type protection?

Bill

[TerdalFarm]

Bill,
I think it looks good.
My comparison is with my one other Butia. That one (my avatar image) has been in the ground since 2007. It was a one gallon pot brought home on the plane (carry on) from Cistus nursery in Portland, Oregon. I cover it each winter but it loses most all leaves and so has to grow new ones. It does well each summer and so presumably has grown nice roots.
The new Butia was from a 15-gallon pot. I bought it from the local Home Depot in May. They had no business selling such plants as they know nothing about palms. For example, they left out their unsold palms all winter. Do you know what a Rhapsis or Washy or Ch. humilis looks like in a pot outdoors, up on a table, in 3oF weather? Not pretty.
Anyways, I bought my Butia (and Trachy) there. The Butia has a flimsy plastic greenhouse, 4' by 4' by 4' over it. Some fronds touch the plastic walls. I put 1/4" foam insulation sheeting over the top and the north wall, and OSB over the top. My damn chickens have eaten the bottom half of the foam on the north side. Seriously. I'm very annoyed.
Anyways, back to the Butia, I think it looks great. Portions of fronds which touched the exterior walls are fried--brown. Leaves out in the shelter which did not touch the exterior walls look pretty darn good despite suffering air temp (bot no wind or rain) into the upper single digits (per a wireless thermometer). The actual spear looks fabulous to me.
My old Butia without the heat tape looks as it usually does this time of year. I'll lose most leaves but keep the spear. (Yes, I've tugged it good a few times in the past month.) From this very limited data I think heat tape is an easy and cheap way to overwinter palms.
I'll know more in a couple of months. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from folks who have used it more. I fear to report positive results to date only to learn later how bad heat tape can be for reasons I'm too ignorant to appreciate.
--Erik

[BILL MA]

Erik,
That's great to hear, I wasn't really sure how it was going to work out for you with no real heat for the fronds on your coldest nights. You must have a tough one, upper single digits should do the fronds in or really, really, close. I just shows how important keeping them dry is.

I'm pulling for you that your trachy will make a full recovery. I wouldn't doubt it makes it through no problem once spring gets here. They grow a ton in spring
before the sun gets baking hot.

I have some News! My lights in all my palm huts went out while I was in Florida for about two weeks I'm guessing. They saw some pretty prolonged cold during that time. I know we had our low for the year of 4f and that day only got to 15f I think. Plus several days of below 32f. Well the trachys are untouched but the front washy is 100% frond burned. The spear didn't pull and is still green so I have hope, all the stems are green too. The two out back both look surprisingly well with lots of green tissue left.

Now here's my problem! I own a 3 family and I rent the other two apartments to two of my uncles. How oblivious are they that they didn't notice the lights off
in the palm huts? They glow like light bulbs! Hell one of the uncles just has to look out his window. What can you do! I'm going to change my structure this week to gear up for growth mode.

Time to put in the Jet Heaters Jim!!!

Glad your Butia is ok Erik, seems like most of use had some kind of horror story to deal with this winter.

Bill

[lucky1]

Oblivious is right!
They obviously knew how important it was to you from the effort you put into it.
I'd be ticked. Big time.
Maybe a neighbor would be more helpful.

Your enclosures were obviously sound to get the Washies through almost unscathed.
That one out front may need more help next winter.
I can't remember if you applied Freeze-Pruf.

Good to hear you're planning for growth mode.
Barb

[BILL MA]

Barb,
That's the same thing Jim said Oh I was pissed trust me!

I did use freeze proof on them in Early December, no real way to tell if it helped though.

I'm thinking I might strip all the dead leaf tissue off of them and leave the stems so the spear can get some sun.
What harm can it really do at this point, if I can grow 1-2 leaves before I open them up I'll be happy. I'll come
up with something.

Bill

[TerdalFarm]

Bill,
you wrote above that you had heating cables under the Washies. Did those stay turned on even when the lights went out? If so they may have helped.
Also, did the water in all those milk jugs freeze? I discovered that the water in my bottles sometimes did not freeze even when the air got very cold. They may have given some radiant heating benefit.
As for me, I had given up on Washies last March after losing my large robusta AND the filifera which had made it through the previous winter. However, I met a fellow Okie on the European Palm Society forum (small world, huh?) who has a big Washy in Tulsa, just a few miles from here. Here is the thread: http://www.palmsociety.org.uk/forum/top ... picid=2539
If he can teach me how to protect them I'll give Washy another try.
--Erik

[BILL MA]

It's funny the front one stayed on and the two out back did not. I'm sure it did help if the ground froze I'm sure they would be dead as a door nail.
By the time I opened them up the milk jugs where frozen, not solid but close enough. I'm sure they played a fairly big role too. I'm guessing they
saw temps in the 10-14f range.

John has some really nice palms I've seen them before. I would definitely try to make it over to his place this summer since it's only 20 miles away.
I saw pictures of his washy all wrapped up some time ago, very cool.

I actually got the two Birminghams from Gary Hollar in New Bern NC, That's where the Butias came from too. He's a really nice guy, my girlfriend
and I are going to go back this summer.

Bill

[hardyjim]

[quote="lucky1"]
Maybe a neighbor would be more helpful.







Yea,your neighbor could go over there and thump them on the head!

[wxman]

Bill,

Did your GFI trip and thats why the power went out? I removed all my outside GFI's last winter because I was playing the "reset the GFI hourly" game. My washy I had planted in the backyard burned to a crisp because the GFI went out and it saw 19F. I will never trust GFI's again for keeping the power on to palms. Yes they are important safety devices for electricity around water, but they are way too sensitive to use in an outdoor environment where it rains and snows. My yard doesn't form puddles, so I should be safe from frying myself.

[TerdalFarm]

Thanks for the tip.
I have plug-in GFCI adapters I keep meaning to insert between the extension cords and the outdoor outlets (pre-safe building codes). Haven't done it yet. Maybe my laziness saved my palms!
--Erik

[BILL MA]

GFI tripped, I had it in my head to switch it before I left but I didn't. I wasn't really planning on being gone for a month either. What can you do? I wanted cut all the fronds off that one anyways to see how fast it would come back. Guess nature did it for me as long as isn't dead.

Bill