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Ralph Mowery Ralph Mowery is offline
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Default help me solve my baseboard heater mystery.


"Charlie" wrote in message
...
Hello All, now that my girlfriend and I are homeowners, we're starting
to run into some mysteries/problems.

So we've been in the house for a little over 2 weeks now, mostly been
painting/cleaning etc. Up until about 3 days ago, ALL our heaters were
working perfectly, however, now 4 of them have stopped working
altogether.

The information:

The 4 heaters are all listed on the same circuit on the breaker panel
- well its two switches on the panel, connected by a small metal
piece, such that they flip on and off together. Both switches say 20
on them (im assuming this stands for 20amps).

2 of these heaters are on the first floor, 2 are on the second floor:

2 of the heaters are standard baseboard heater types, one is longer
than the other (largest on main, smaller in half bath on second
floor).

1 of the heaters is a ConvectAir (on 2nd floor) - appears newer than
the others (side note: I originally discovered the problem because I
noticed the red power light on this heater had gone off)

The last heater is something I've never seen before. Its called a
"Chromalux" , its basically a heating coil with a fan to blow the air
around (this is in our bathroom - first floor). This looks old and I
would like to replace it with a newer heater, but for now I would just
like to get some heat in there again.

The Questions:

so question #1: I pried off the front of the two baseboard heaters,
and under CSA Approved stamp it lists it as 277volts and 17amps. I
thought heaters only used 110 or 220volts?

question #2: I used a multimeter on both the baseboard heaters and the
chromalux, where the voltage fluctuated between 109 and 112ish.
Because I was seeing a voltage, does this mean that the breaker in the
panel is functioning okay? I thought it a little odd that all 4 of
these heaters which stopped working were located on the same circuit
but the breaker did not appear to have tripped.


The 277 volt heaters could have been a leftover from some 3 phase
applications that are normally used in large plants that have 480 volt 3
phase in use. They may work ok on 230 volts with a slightly reduced power
level and heat output.

How are you measuring the 120 volts ? Sounds like you are going from the
ground to the heater wires. You should be going across the heater
terminals.

I would guess that either one of the braker sides tripped or you have a bad
connection somewhere.
Cut the braker off and back on to see if one of them may have tripped.