electric baseboard heating

Go to an electrical supply house for the replacement

120 volt heater. 6' 1500 watt 120 volt baseboard heaters are a standard item. They'll eiher have it in stock, or be able to get it.

You most likely cannot replace the 120 heater with a

240 "easily". On the other hand, if you are comfortable working in the circuit breaker panel, and can easily determine which wires go to the heater, and can also easily verify that it is on a dedicated circuit of the correct wire gauge for the new heater, and have the room in your panel for a double pole breaker, then converting to it to 240 is easy. You remove the existing white (neutral) wire from the neutral bus, tape it with red tape to cover most of the white insulation, and install it, together with the black it is paired with into the new double pole breaker, with the (now) red wire connecting to one pole and the black wire connecting to the other polse. At the heater end, remove the old heater, tape the white wire to make it red, and install the new 240 volt heater.

But with the added expense of the two pole breaker and the various things mentioned above that may not be familiar to you, easiest and cheapest is to just replace the 120 V heater with another 120 volt unit.

Ed

It can be done fairly easily, but if you don't know any more than to ask this question, chances are you will make at least one or more mistakes attempting it. If you can get it to where all that has to be done is connections, then a competent sparky should be able to handle it in about 15 minutes. What size is the wire? Start there, and you should be able to figure a breaker size and max wattage for your replacement.

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:01:01 GMT, ehsjr Gave us:

I wouldn't do it. A 240Volt heater will work, just at half the wattage.

A 240v heater on a 120v supply will draw half the current, not half the wattage. The wattage dissipated will be just a quarter, as both the voltage and the current have been halved.

I agree with you - I wouldn't do it either. He can get a 120 volt heater easily - they are a standard item at electrical supply houses. It renders the 240 volt conversion idea as a poor second choice, as did my long list of why it would not be easy to convert. Putting a

240 volt heater on his 120 volt circuit is a non-starter, unless the 1500 watt heater was grossly oversized in the first place. At 375 watts, he won't get enough heat.

Ed

WTF does it "need" to be replaced? There isn't really anything to wear out.