Electric baseboard heater wont turn off?

Answer 1

Wiring a baseboard is no different than wiring a plug or light. A simple picture in your mind is this. You have to imagine yourself an electron travelling from the panel along the red wire to the thermostat, thermostat to the heater, heater back to the panel. With that read on. I find making a sketch helpful sometimes if the possible connection become unruly. I will not go into electric panel connection since a licensed electrician should do that. Too much juice there for the faint of heart. a) The wire type is different (red jacket (red & black conductors) instead of basic white (black and white conductors)). b) The breaker in the panel is of the 240v variety (twice as thick as the normal 120v variety). b) Most heating "circuits" are of the 20A variety. What that means is that the 20A breaker, combined with 240V, will allow 4800w (20A x 240v) peak. Rule of thumb is to use 80-85% of allowable wattage. So, that means you can feed up to 4000w of baseboards on 1 20A circuit. This will avoid a breaker jump if they fire full-blast at the same time. This scenario appaers in cottages most often. You are away, come up for the weekend and crank them all up at the same time. Go watch the meter when you do this. You can cut wood at the speed it spins. c) You will have a black, a red, bare ground wire entering the baseboard. Red goes to red, black goes to black, bare copper to frame (usally there is a green colored screw). That's your ground. VERY IMPORTANT to ground the unit. 240v kills real quick. BEFORE YOU MAKE THE CONNECTIONS READ FURTHER FOR THERMOSTAT INSTALLATION Here is where the fun starts: a) If you have a baseboard thermostat, then follow instructions in the thermostat package (which there usually is). The source wiring is as described above. b) If you choose to install a wall mounted thermostat, its a little different for 2 reasons. - If the source wire from the panel comes to the thermostat, then on to the heater you need to wire as follows: [AT THE WALL THERMOSTAT] The black wires from the source and one to the heater are wired together. You are now left with a red from each wire. You wire the thermostats wires to each of the red wires. Bare wires together & to box [AT THE BASEBOARD] ]The wiring at the baseboard is as described above (red to one side, black to the other side, bare to the casing) - If the wire from the electrical panel and the wire from thermostat meet at the heater, different scenario. [AT THE WALL THERMOSTAT] The Thermostat wires are wired to the red & black, at the thermosat. [AT THE BASEBOARD] At the heater connect the reds from the thermostat and source together. Connect the remaining blacks to either side of the basebaord. The bare wires are connected together & to the baseboard casing.

Answer 2

Baseboard heaters use a process called convection heating to heat a room. There are fins inside the heater called elements. These elements have a set resistance which consumes the energy provided by electricity and dissipates it in the form of heat. This heat given off from the fins then heat the air surrounding them. Because the warm air is lighter than the cooler air it rises out of the top of the heater and the cooler air closer to the floor is drawn in from the bottom to replace the displaced warm air. Thus convection. This cycle continues until the air surrounding your control center or thermostat reaches the temperature specified by the user.

Baseboard heaters usually run on 220v. Therefor there are two live 110v feeds supplying the heater with no return line. The circuit is able to work without a return because the two 110v feeds are 180 degrees out of phase with one another. Therefore the opposing currents cancel one another out at the end of the line giving a net current of zero amps thus eliminating the need for a return path.

Answer 3

They are pretty simple . You have

1 - A thermostat . Trouble shoot it to make sure it works .Use a meter . Input on most thermostats is red . Out put is black . Between input and output , resistance will either be 0 ohms or infinite ohms .

2 - You have the heater element . That may have some reststance or infinite resistance .

3 - There is a thermal limit switch in series with the element . A little round gadget with 2 wires on one side of it and a copper tube on the other side that runs the length of the heater . A check with the ohm meter should read 0 ohms . The switch should be normally closed . Will open if the heater it gets to hot .

If this switch is bad , reaplace the unit . I don't think anyone on this planet sells replacements .

I have been trying to get one of these limit switches and have come up empty . I don't want to replace the unit because I don't want a odd heater in the room .

Answer 4

It can be turned off at the breaker panel or by turning the thermostat off.

The thermostat could be in two places, on the wall or in the baseboard heater itself.

Answer for USA, Canada and countries running a 60 Hertz supply service.
If the baseboard heater is 240 volt you can shut it off at the breaker. Look for a two pole breaker in the electrical distribution panel and the word heater marked on the panel index. A wall thermostat can shut the heater off just by moving the set-point pointer to the lowest setting. On some baseboard heaters you will find the thermostat is in the baseboard heater itself. As with the wall thermostat just turn it to the lowest setting to turn it off.

<<>>

Unplug it or find the temp. dial on the wall and turn off.

Before you do any work yourself,
on electrical circuits, equipment or appliances,
always use a test meter to ensure the circuit is, in fact, de-energized

IF YOU ARE NOT REALLY SURE YOU CAN DO THIS JOB
SAFELY AND COMPETENTLY
REFER THIS WORK TO QUALIFIED PROFESSIONALS.

Answer 5

Get a cheap volt-ohm-meter (VOM)at Radio Shack. Learn how to test voltages or ohms.

Answer 6

Check the thermostat; the contacts may be damaged.