Electrical Problem-baseboard heaters
I recently ran into a problem with a baseboard heater in the master bedroom of a 3 bedroom apartment in a recently constructed facility owned by my company. This CADET heater is a 240 volt model and is fed by a 12/2 romex branch circuit . The white conductors have been blackened as they carry 120 volts as does the real black wire. I can measure 120 volts to the copper ground on each lead but the heater still does not come on when the stat is turned up. The safety sensor passes current through it O.K. Why won’t this unit heat-the coil shows continuity when checked with a meter. Any ideas will be appreciated.
Addendum: 1/10/04 I checked the voltage L 1 to L 2 and found 0 volts!!!!! I can still measure 120 V to ground on one side only at this time. Whatthe?????
Edited 1/10/2004 3:57:26 PM ET by Dave
Replies
Uh, duh, did somebody put a 1/2 size split breaker in a GE panel (or similar) and both sides are the same 120 side. Does your meter read 240 black to taped black????? Or maybe zero?
Other than that, somebody put a wire nut on without stripping?
Thanks for the helpfull hints. I did solve the mystery and made a reply to myself so everyone could read it.
Thanks, Dave
check between your two hots and see if you have 240
if not it could be a bad breaker or a bad spot on the buss bar inside the panel or a bad main lead connection or a bad meter outside or a bad connection between the transformer and your meter.
Pete, thanks for the suggestions. I sent a "reply" to myself with the solution to the mystery.
Dave.....................
Well, after a about 4 hours of tearing into the electrical system feeding the baseboard heaters in the apt. unit, I figured out the problem. The suggestion to check L1 to L2 voltage for 240 volts was a help. What I found was that the defective heater was fed from a box in the guest bedroom that also contained the line voltage stat for that room. There were 3 12-2 romex lines into this box, one being the homerun back to the panel where it was fed from a pair of full size breakers. The other two 12-2's fed the master bedroom stat and the CADET baseboard in this room. I noticed there were 2 wires connected to the output lead of the stat. It turned out that this put the stat in series with the stat. in the room with the non-working heater. This meant that the guest bedroom heat had to be on before power would be fed to the stat in the master bedroom. Even when power would be flowing to the heater (and to the mstr. bedroom stat), it would then be in the same phase as the line feeding the non-working baseboard heater so no current would flow through the coil, thus NO HEAT! but I would see 120 volts to ground on each lead some of the time. When the stat was not in the heat mode in the guest bedroom, it was cutting power to the master bedroom stat so I would not see 120 volts at all times at the non-working heater.
Thanks for the suggestions provided.