HELP WITH ELECTRIC BASEBOARD HEAT (PLEASE)

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Jimmyboy

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Dutchess County, NY United States
Hello... Got a call from a customer today that wants me to install Electric Baseboard Heat in her basement. After calculating, I will need 6,500 watts of heat, so I am planning on installing (4) 8 foot units and (1) 6 foot unit totaling 7,125 watts, using 240 volts.

Its been A LONG time since I worked with electric heat. Obviously, I want all the heat to be controlled by one t-stat... but how do I wire up all that heat onto One circuit? I do remember working with electric heat about 8 years ago and all the heat was activated by some sort of a relay.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks..
 
You could use a relay or you could run two circuits with a dp thermostat switching one leg of each circuit. You would then need lock out on the breaker, I believe.

You could also just have individual T-stats for each unit that mount on the unit themselves. It is an accessory for the heaters.

BTW- I went to school at Marist College in P'keepsie
 
Thanks for the reply Dennis.

I need to use a wall stat because the customer is elderly, and won't be able to get down to adjust the on board t-stats.
In addition, I had tossed around the thought of using 2 stats, but that looks amiture in my opinion.

I remember working on a scenario like this years ago, where the customers whole basement was controled by one low voltage t-stat. But all the heat feeds went back to some sort of relay control that was fed by (2) 240 circuits, and when the t-stat demanded heat, it would pull a contact relay in, and therefore, the heat would all come on at one time.
I have searched and searched... and can't find anything that mentions this configuration???

FYI... I'm about 25 miles East of P'keepsie :lol:
 
Any two pole contactor would work. You could have a 240v coil and the T-stat would break one leg of the coil.
 
How big is that room, I live in a cold weather climate , seems like a lot of heat for one room.

I would break that much heat into zones so that you can save energy if desired.
 
Jimmyboy said:
Hello... Got a call from a customer today that wants me to install Electric Baseboard Heat in her basement. After calculating, I will need 6,500 watts of heat, so I am planning on installing (4) 8 foot units and (1) 6 foot unit totaling 7,125 watts, using 240 volts.

Its been A LONG time since I worked with electric heat. Obviously, I want all the heat to be controlled by one t-stat... but how do I wire up all that heat onto One circuit? I do remember working with electric heat about 8 years ago and all the heat was activated by some sort of a relay.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks..
Click to expand...

Just so you know, Baseboard heat is 250watts per ft, so your math is off a little on the footage you need, you have 38' total length, thats 9,500 watts... 6,500 watts of heat is only 26' of baseboard, so you can loose one of the 8 footers...
 
Ok.. If I'm thinking this out correctly...

My total wattage of heat that I will be using is 7500... (sorry i miscalculated in my original post)
so I will need TWO heat relays and TWO different circuits. I will run one relay for one side of the room heat (on it's own 2 pole breaker) and another relay for the other side of the room heat (on it's own 2 pole breaker) and wire BOTH relays to activate with ONE low voltage T-Stat???

Am I correct?
 
Jimmyboy said:
Ok.. If I'm thinking this out correctly...

My total wattage of heat that I will be using is 7500... (sorry i miscalculated in my original post)
so I will need TWO heat relays and TWO different circuits. I will run one relay for one side of the room heat (on it's own 2 pole breaker) and another relay for the other side of the room heat (on it's own 2 pole breaker) and wire BOTH relays to activate with ONE low voltage T-Stat???

Am I correct?
Click to expand...

Yep, that would work, or you can just buy one heat relay that will do two circuits....
 
:( Yes.. My opolgies....
My math was off ( I was looking at the 208 volt scale)...

The total square footage of the room is 624 sq. ft. therefore by rule of thumb I would need roughly 6,300 watts of heat. It's not insulated that well so I'm upgrading it a bit and going with 7,500 watts (3) 8 footers and (1) 6 footer.
 
room type?

room type?

Just curious. Two questions...1. Is the room going to be partitioned with multiple windows by any chance? 2. Is there a local Climate Zone design heating requirement for the permit?
 
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