Baseboard Heating and Receptacle placement.                 Chelan Home Inspection

In the land of hydropower it is common to find many variations of electric heat, from radiant ceilings to wall heater to those lovely baseboard heaters.

The most common heating and cooling is electric forced air with either a heat pump or AC unit.

Another pretty common heating component is the electric baseboard heater. There are some nice advantages to them. They are quite, easy to install and relatively cheap to purchase.

Another advantage is that you can easily adjust each zone to fit your needs. If you have a room you don’t use often you can just leave that heater off. You only have to turn on the heaters in the rooms you are in and you can adjust the heat accordingly.

But they have an issue that is very common to them… receptacles!  All too often I find receptacle over baseboard heaters or the room will not have proper receptacle spacing.

This is a problem.  There are ways to correct this issue, one way is that some baseboard heaters have an option to add a receptacle to the heating unit.

Another is maybe using smaller units that will allow receptacles outside the ends. Baseboard heaters use around 250 watts of power for every foot in length. In older homes with less insulation will need about 10 watts to heat each square foot. Newer homes with better insulation values will only need about 6 watts per square foot.

So in a 100-square (10x10) foot room that is part of an older home, the baseboard heater will be approximately 5 feet long. In a newer home, it will be about 3 feet long.

Remember we want to always minimize the need to for extension cords, they are only for temporary power and we do not want cords over the baseboard heaters

“If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.”

Red Adair

NCW Home Inspections, LLC  is a Licensed Washington State Home Inspection service located in Wenatchee Washington serving Chelan County, Douglas County, Kittitas County, Okanogan County and Grant County Washington and the cities of Wenatchee, Leavenworth, Cashmere, Oroville, Cle Elum, East Wenatchee, Quincy and many more…  

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www.ncwhomeinspections.com                                               509-670-9572