What’s your thermostat set to any why? Heat source?
- Thread starter gathermewool
- Start date
12A @ 120V or 1440W is the max a space heater is allowed to pull if it's designed for a 15-amp circuit.
Sticker states 120 V 60Hz 1500 watts . Used on 15 Amp circuit .
My bedroom set at 60° and I run an electric oil filled heater on low to supplement it. Sometimes need medium when it gets really cold.
Rest of the house is 63° and have another oil filled electric heater to supplement during the day as needed.
I do have another little infrared heater in another bedroom to keep it more comfortable.
All those heaters are on their own 20a circuit.
Oil furnace is expensive to run and I can much more handle a higher electric bill each month (last months was $170 and one of the coldest so far) than filling my oil tank to the tune of $800-$900 on the low end a couple times a season. Converted the boiler to a cold start after abandoning the tankless coil and I've been using very little oil. Also took out the old dial style thermostats for a simple non-programmable digital thermostat.
Rest of the house is 63° and have another oil filled electric heater to supplement during the day as needed.
I do have another little infrared heater in another bedroom to keep it more comfortable.
All those heaters are on their own 20a circuit.
Oil furnace is expensive to run and I can much more handle a higher electric bill each month (last months was $170 and one of the coldest so far) than filling my oil tank to the tune of $800-$900 on the low end a couple times a season. Converted the boiler to a cold start after abandoning the tankless coil and I've been using very little oil. Also took out the old dial style thermostats for a simple non-programmable digital thermostat.
68 during the day, 64 at night because that is comfy (heating)...natural gas forced air
They rounded up.
Even with no heat my house hasn't gotten below the mid 50's degrees so far this winter.
Set at 68 and we have a heat pump, with a high efficiency oil furnace as back up. In a typical winter, we’ll use 1/2 tank of oil during the colder times when the heat pump can’t handle the demand. Before we had a heat pump we used almost 2 tanks of oil per winter…
This is the ticket. Be it NG, LPG, or other.
Plus if you have some local resistance heaters for short use rooms (baffroom, office, even guest bedrooms), plus either wood or pellet for say a main occupancy space (living room, bar, etc)
I am a first believer in combo heat sources.
D
Deleted member 89374
Depends how well built and insulated your home is.
My brother out in Carlisle has been using his fireplace a lot. With a deflector shield/thing. Helps he has plenty of hardwood all around him. He switched from fuel oil to propane and is happy.
Who has 15 amp receptacle circuits? Most homes are wired with #12 wire on 20 amp breakers.
Yes indeed.
I love testing it when the house is stabilized and the power goes out. No cheating with generator!
No, most homes are only wired with #12 wire on 20 amp breakers on the circuits required by code, which is dining/kitchen, laundry, and more recently, bathroom circuits. In most houses, all other 120V circuits are 15 amps.
And you'll have a real hard time finding a 120V space heater rated for the 1920 watts you can pull out of a 20 amp circuit. Even if you did, you probably won't be able to plug it in because it'll have a NEMA 5-20 plug on the end of it...and most 20 amp circuits in houses only have NEMA 5-15 receptacles on them.
Not true here unless you specified/built/wired your own place.
Most all houses built on the west coast (CA. OR, WA) have 15A, 14G for rooms except kitchen
It must be a regional thing. I wired lots of apartments/homes in the '90's and the only 15 amp circuit was the smoke detector circuit, sometimes lighting circuits. West central Indiana.
There was a time when 12/2 Romex was cheap and plentiful.
I agree about the common power rating of appliances being 1500 watts, max, pretty basic.
Regional thing, I'd say.....
The contractor I worked for in the '90's was quite the cheapo and we still used 12/2 Romex in apartments and homes. It used to be cheap and plentiful.
It isn't anymore and it's always been more expensive than 14/2 romex, at least when procured in a legitimate manner...
12/2 Romex is harder to work with than 14/2 Romex. My old house, some electrician decided it would be a swell idea to install four 12/2 romex cables into a box with a GFCI in it.
Replacing that GFCI with a new one and getting it back into the box was real fun.
Yeah, I run into that sort of thing all the time. Lots of people out there that can twist a wirenut on a couple wires and they think they're an electrician. No training. No knowledge of the NEC. No ability to calculate power, box fill, conduit fill, ampacity etc...
Everyone wants the cheapest. OIls. Mechanic. Electrical installation.
Some things are worth paying extra more for to get quality......
I wonder what a Kill-A-Watt would say (if you want to risk one of those).
