Wall mount electric heater

[ZINGERLITE]

Does anyone run a wall mount electric heater? What about the ones that look like a glade plug in?

We've got an 18' travel trailer we'd like to keep warm in the spring/fall. The Gas furnace is just too powerful in my opinion. Its either 75/80 degrees inside or off. The campers too small for the gas furnace. It warms it up nice and quick when we want it warm. At 2am we wake up in a sauna.

The last couple seasons ive been using a cheap duraflame heater i picked up for $20 or so at TSC. It works well but its always in the way. Something on the wall would be great as an 18' camper has its own storage issues.

Just curious if anyone else has this problem. Input is appreciated.

[Gdetrailer]

learntorv wrote:
Gdetrailer, thanks for the info. I did go ahead and buy the replacement T8 bulbs from Lowes. About $20 for a pack of 2 and the light in our kitchen is soooo much improved.

And now, back to the original point of this thread... which was something.

Your welcome!

An easy peazy fix and not all that expensive.

And yeah, I did hijack the thread subject which was 12Ga wire and 15A breaker spec'd by the manufacturer off the wall heater the OP mentioned..

Fire away folks as why it is wrong or incorrect for anyone to use a lighter breaker than the gauge of wire will permit..

[learntorv]

Gdetrailer, thanks for the info. I did go ahead and buy the replacement T8 bulbs from Lowes. About $20 for a pack of 2 and the light in our kitchen is soooo much improved.

And now, back to the original point of this thread... which was something.

[Gdetrailer]

CavemanCharlie wrote:

learntorv wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:
I went with a lot of T12 40W per tube 4ft fluorescent fixtures back then, over the last 5 yrs have been converting all of my fixtures to T8 18W LED retrofit bulbs.. less than half the wattage and not quite 3 times the brightness..

Thanks for that kick in the pants. I just went looking for replacement bulbs for the kitchen of my new house. Found that at the local Lowes and they're not very expensive.

Say,,, I could use them on my home kitchen too. . Maybe someday I will change them. Thanks for the info. I didn't know anything like that was made.

Retrofit LED tubes are a great way to keep existing fixtures which depending on the age and how it is mounted may not be able to find a suitable LED fixture to fit in that space without a lot of rework.

Folks seem to gravitate towards buying all new LED fixtures, but sadly, those fixtures are a "one and done" sealed type items and are not designed to be relamped in the future.. Most folk buy into the 50K-100K hrs life of LEDs without realizing that not ALL LEDs will get anywhere near that life. Basically when the LEDs start failing you have to replace the entire fixture.

LED Tubes tend to cost a bit more up front but allows you to just replace one tube if one fails down the road..

I am reposting here a section from another thread that I was involved with concerning retrofit LEDs lights.. These are pix from my garage with light readings..

"LED retrofit bulbs are an improvement in lighting..

I don't doubt that those non relampable "shoplights" will "work", but to myself, over the yrs I have learned that it is BETTER to buy fixtures which CAN be "relamped".

Had multiple outdoor light fixtures fail over the yrs that were never intended on having the lamp replaced.. Or used "proprietary" hard to find special bulbs with separate ballast.. More than once the failure was the ballast and out into the garbage with the entire fixture.

I make it a point to never buy any more non relamplable fixtures or fixtures which have special bulbs or ballast/driver that cannot be replaced. They build those fixtures as cheap as possible to entice folks to buy entire fixture at a low price point instead of buying a fixture with a replaceable lamp.. Down the road when the non relampable bulbs start failing you will be buying entire new fixtures (which won't "match") and paying a premuim price.

Myself, when one LED bulb fails, I can simply replace ONE bulb at a lower cost than replacing entire fixture.

LEDs DO, AND CAN FAIL and those non relampable LED shoplights WILL eventually fail.

Anyway, I did want to add a few photos of my LUX meter from my garage lights..

Light meter is sitting on a 4ft tall ladder.

First one is the brightness of a 4ft with T12 fluorescent bulbs shoplight..



471 LUX is the reading directly under the fixture.

Next pix is taken under one of the 4ft shop lights which I used Hyperikon conversion bulbs..


1145 LUX directly under the fixture!

Next is just basic "bare" Edison screw in LEDs in the garage..


24 LUX (had hard time seeing this threw the camera eyepiece)

Next is all LED shop lights turned on and meter is in the same spot as the Edison bulb photo.


568 LUX average light, not bad at all!

Pix of garage with all shoplights on..



Looks garage look like "daylight" inside even late at night with all lights on.."

By the way, I have just completed a couple more shop light conversions a few days ago for the garage.. I took some pix of the process I used which includes adding a outlet and pull chain switch to each shoplight..I will have to sort through the pix sometime and post the process..

In my case the process takes about one hr but if you don't add outlet and switch the process takes not much more than 15 minutes.

[CavemanCharlie]

learntorv wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:
I went with a lot of T12 40W per tube 4ft fluorescent fixtures back then, over the last 5 yrs have been converting all of my fixtures to T8 18W LED retrofit bulbs.. less than half the wattage and not quite 3 times the brightness..

Thanks for that kick in the pants. I just went looking for replacement bulbs for the kitchen of my new house. Found that at the local Lowes and they're not very expensive.

Say,,, I could use them on my home kitchen too. . Maybe someday I will change them. Thanks for the info. I didn't know anything like that was made.

[learntorv]

Gdetrailer wrote:
I went with a lot of T12 40W per tube 4ft fluorescent fixtures back then, over the last 5 yrs have been converting all of my fixtures to T8 18W LED retrofit bulbs.. less than half the wattage and not quite 3 times the brightness..

Thanks for that kick in the pants. I just went looking for replacement bulbs for the kitchen of my new house. Found that at the local Lowes and they're not very expensive.

[Gdetrailer]

time2roll wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:
Instead of using 4 15A lighting circuits I could use 3 20A circuits, saving the cost of another breaker and the extra 14 ga wire that would be needed.

Today a 100w equivalent LED draws maybe 14.5 watts. With 1380 watts available you could put 95 of these bulbs on one circuit. Crazy.

Correct!

And the light would be so bright you would need a arc welding helmet with all of them turned on at the same time!

Back then when I rewired my house, only had choice of incadescent and linear fluorescents since CFLs were just hitting the market and uber expensive at the time..

I went with a lot of T12 40W per tube 4ft fluorescent fixtures back then, over the last 5 yrs have been converting all of my fixtures to T8 18W LED retrofit bulbs.. less than half the wattage and not quite 3 times the brightness..

With the improved quality of todays LED lighting you could most likely get away with no more than two lighting circuits for a 2,000 sq ft home if it wasn't for the electrical code calling out a max amount of fixtures per circuit..

[time2roll]

Gdetrailer wrote:
Instead of using 4 15A lighting circuits I could use 3 20A circuits, saving the cost of another breaker and the extra 14 ga wire that would be needed.

Today a 100w equivalent LED draws maybe 14.5 watts. With 1380 watts available you could put 95 of these bulbs on one circuit. Crazy.

[Gdetrailer]

rhagfo wrote:

pappy43756 wrote:
stiebel-eltron-electric-fan-wall-heater-1500w-w-120vac Hard wired to fuse box. Works great. Have had it for awhile no problem.

Link

Interesting wiring call out 15 amp breaker 12 gauge wire. Nice looking unit.

Nothing wrong or "illegal" with protecting using a lower amperage breaker for the given wire gauge.

Reasons can vary widely as to why one would wish to do that..

12Ga will have less resistance so there will be less heating of the wire for the current passed. Will be less voltage drop per ft(important especially when you exceed 100ft of wire). Generally you want less than 3%-5% voltage loss so upsizing to the next ga sometimes is appropriate. There are wiring size and distance calculators you can use now days but if you are planning to exceed 100ft it can be in your best interest to move up one ga size to minimize voltage loss.

I also believe there is some additional considerations on wiring used for heating purposes that may also come into play that a manufacture may request the next higher ga wire but yet request a lower breaker amperage.. Electric heating tends to have a longer and more constant heavy load so minimizing the resistance in the wiring feeding the heating device is always a good thing.

Now days not that much difference in cost between 14ga and 12 ga wire.

Current price for 14-2 with ground Romex is $.25 per ft, about $25 for 100ft

Current price for 12-2 with ground Romex is $.33 per ft, about $33 per 100ft.

A difference of $8 per 100ft of wire.. That ISN'T going to break anyone's bank account even if you had to use 2,000 ft of wire to wire a house you are only talking $160 more cost for an entire home!

Heck when I rebuilt my used TT, I removed all of the existing wiring (14ga for outlets and a variety of different wire gauges for 12V) and replaced it with all new 12Ga wire (and yes, even all of the 12V spaghetti circuits of 20A or less got 12Ga wire).

As a side note.. Back nearly 30 yrs ago when I bought my fixerupper house, it needed a complete wiring upgrade from the 60A fuse box to the second floor that had two light bulbs (one for each bed room) and only one outlet shared by both bedrooms..

A coworker of mine who was the building maintenance go to guy advised me to install a 200A service panel AND to use 12Ga at 20A circuits for not only all of the outlets but the lighting circuits..

His thought was by using 12ga 20A circuits for the lighting and outlets I could reduce the quantity of circuits over all..

Instead of using 4 15A lighting circuits I could use 3 20A circuits, saving the cost of another breaker and the extra 14 ga wire that would be needed.

Needless to say, my Electric Company inspector was very happy with how I wired things, pointing out that it was a great choice using all 12ga wiring for lighting and outlets and it passed with flying colors..

[rhagfo]

pappy43756 wrote:
stiebel-eltron-electric-fan-wall-heater-1500w-w-120vac Hard wired to fuse box. Works great. Have had it for awhile no problem.

Link

Interesting wiring call out 15 amp breaker 12 gauge wire. Nice looking unit.

[pappy43756]

stiebel-eltron-electric-fan-wall-heater-1500w-w-120vac Hard wired to fuse box. Works great. Have had it for awhile no problem.

[pnichols]

ZINGERLITE wrote:
Does anyone run a wall mount electric heater? What about the ones that look like a glade plug in?

We've got an 18' travel trailer we'd like to keep warm in the spring/fall. The Gas furnace is just too powerful in my opinion. Its either 75/80 degrees inside or off. The campers too small for the gas furnace. It warms it up nice and quick when we want it warm. At 2am we wake up in a sauna.

The last couple seasons ive been using a cheap duraflame heater i picked up for $20 or so at TSC. It works well but its always in the way. Something on the wall would be great as an 18' camper has its own storage issues.

Just curious if anyone else has this problem. Input is appreciated.

It sounds like you have perfect gas furnace heating capacity in your little trailer. In other words - a furnace that is sized generously enough such that it can keep you comfortable in any cold weather situation that you should ever encounter. I'd much rather have this situation in an RV than an under-sized furnace situation.

That being said ... however what you have is a temperature control problem for that great gas furnace. Install, or have installed, a digital thermostat to replace what you probably have -> just a simple slider type "analog" type control that is probably not operating properly or is just plain getting worn out.

For comparison, the digital control in our small Class C turns the furnace ON if it detects an interior temperature one degree BELOW what we have it set for, and turns the furnace OFF if it detects an interior temperature two degrees ABOVE what we have it set for. This is a tight 3 degree temperature band that keeps us real comfortable.

Digital RV gas furnace controls are not expensive. I suggest you try this first before considering other heaters.

[Lwiddis]

My 22 foot TT keeps warm with a portable electric heater set at 750 watts....when I’m plugged in...which is rare.

[wa8yxm]

As someone said those "GLADE PLUG IN" ARE well under 1000 watts. Like 150 watts as i recall) they are OK for RV wiring but not much heat.

I'd not trust RV wiring for anything over 1000 watts by the way. now understand I do not repair RV's for a living but I've seen too many melted outlets.. All from 1500 watt heaters. Those Uni-box outlets are .... Well.. I don't use polite language to describe them.

[nickthehunter]

I have one in the basement family room in my house (the basement is always cold). It is 400 W and works good. It has a small fan and blows directly in the area i need heated. Since it doesn't matter in the rest of the basement, the heater is well matched to the task at hand. In a bigger area such as an RV, you may need 2 or 3 (depending on size) in different areas of the RV. The heater has a thermostat so you can adjust it to whatever temp you desire.