how to measure heating capacity of a heater - http://www.hvacmechanic.com/ Forums

Original message

deiner

71.132.4.249

"how to measure heating capacity of a heater" , posted Tue 25 Oct 00:44

PLEASE HELP US! a building inspector said we needed to show our electric baseboard heaters are adequate or else get better heaters. We don't know if there is a place to get the manual for the heater or esle how to calculate the square footage of a room that can be heated adequately by our heaters and are hoping to get some advice on finding the manual or doing the calculations. We have 6 foot baseboard electric heaters. I am including everything I can find that's written on the heaters because I don't know what information is useful to make these calculations.
1) Intertherm Inc.
2) Underwriters Laboratories, Inc
3) Soft Heat II
4) NP1500-3
5) NP85NV1
6) 500W, 1000W, 1500W
7) 4.2A, 8.3A, 12.5A

Replies:

Freon

68.220.62.48

"Re(1):how to measure heating capacity of a he" , posted Tue 25 Oct 15:55

I'm surprised a BI can require you to have adequate heat. I thought as long as it was safe heat (up to code) that was their job. You might ask about the BI's "powers" and be sure he can make you do what you're telling us. Anyway....
you have mentioned three different baseboard units. You need to know which ones are in each room. your baseboards have the following BTU/hr capability--

500 watts-1706 BTU/hr
1000 watts-3412 "
1500 wtts- 5118 "

You'll need to calculate the BTU/hr loss for each room. Look on the Internet for simple "averages" or rules of thumb. That should be enough to get you past the BI. However, you might want ask someone who knows about heat loss calculations to help so you do get it right and aren't freezing next February. There is also inexpensive software that can do those heat loss calculations.