HELP WITH ELECTRIC BASEBOARD HEAT (PLEASE)

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Jimmyboy

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Location
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..
 
Dennis Alwon

Dennis Alwon

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Staff member
Location
Chapel Hill, NC
Occupation
Retired Electrical Contractor
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
 
J

Jimmyboy

Member
Location
Dutchess County, NY United States
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:
 
Dennis Alwon

Dennis Alwon

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Staff member
Location
Chapel Hill, NC
Occupation
Retired Electrical Contractor
Any two pole contactor would work. You could have a 240v coil and the T-stat would break one leg of the coil.
 
Sierrasparky

Sierrasparky

Senior Member
Location
USA
Occupation
Electrician ,contractor
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.
 
stickboy1375

stickboy1375

Senior Member
Location
Litchfield, CT
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...
 
J

Jimmyboy

Member
Location
Dutchess County, NY United States
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?
 
stickboy1375

stickboy1375

Senior Member
Location
Litchfield, CT
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....
 
J

Jimmyboy

Member
Location
Dutchess County, NY United States
:( 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.
 
G

gndrod

Senior Member
Location
Ca and Wa
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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