First time here? Did you find what you were looking for?
Rare Exotic & Domestic Hardwoods, Milled In-House in Oregon. Browse Unique Stock.

WoodCentral Forums

Knowledge You Can Build On — Est. 1998

Yet another mistake I can save you from....

Posts

Yet another mistake I can save you from....

#1

Yet another mistake I can save you from....

Barry Irby

I heat my tiny shop with a little barn/bathroom electric heater. One in mild weather and two if its really cold. The problem is that the thermostats are terrible. Turn them up slightly and the shop goes to about 75 degrees. Down slightly and we are at 45 degrees.

So I bought a thermostat and mounted it in a double gang box along with an outlet. Wired it so that the thermostat controls the outlet and plugged in the heater. Left the heater in the ON position so that the thermostat would control it. In really mild weather it does fine. When its colder, not so much. Turns out the outlet and plug get warm when there is a prolonged draw. The warmth fools the stat and turns it off. With both heaters plugged in, its even worse. Didn't see that coming. Got to rewire it and separate the stat from the plug in separate boxes.

Re: Yet another mistake I can save you from....

#2

Re: Yet another mistake I can save you from....

Lee Schierer McKean, PA

You might want to buy a better quality outlet. The really cheap ones have lighter gauge metal inside and don't grip the plug as well, which will cause them to get hot.

Lee

Re: Yet another mistake I can save you from....

#3

Re: Yet another mistake I can save you from....

John in NM

If you can, hardwire the heaters in with screw terminals. Lee is correct about outlet quality, but also the nature of outlet connections makes them the high impedance point in a circuit. We normally don't notice, because our circuits are typically lightly loaded and loaded at a low duty cycle. Running a heater or two all night is a heavy load at a high duty cycle.

On the other hand, the good thing about how it's tricking the thermostat is that this is reducing your duty cycle somewhat and therefore reducing the risk of a fire.