Wall mount electric heater

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.

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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..