Tag: heating

March 4, 2026 – Troubleshooting 201

March 4, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I won’t assume that everyone reading this went to college. We hear the term 101 thrown around all the time, but what does that mean and what is the difference between 101 and 201? Well, 101 is a survey level course. In the case of Chemistry the year long sequence of 101, 102 and 103 attempts to cover three different disciplines of chemistry in a year long, high level series of courses. If you ask me, in many ways the 100 series is the hardest because the student is not given any basis for understanding the disciplines as they are intended for non and unrelated majors.

In contrast to the 100 series, the 200 level courses are intended for students that are going to go forward in the area of study. This means that the topics are harder and deeper with more emphasis on the why and not just the what. Today I am going to cover, why is the bathroom so cold?

From the first picture on the left, I see a bathroom fan with an integrated heater. It is not heating. This means that it could be broken or it is not wired correctly. Those are really the only two options. When I look at the picture to the right, I see two switches. One controls the lights in the bathroom and the other controls the fan. Based on what fan switch does, it should turn on the fan, a heater and a light. Only the fan worked.

That cannot rule out either of my hypotheses yet. It is either miswired or broken. I took the cover off of the fan. Low and behold there was a connector that was not connected. This is missing heater connection. I plug the connector in and turn on the switch, the heater belches and smokes to life. The problem now is that there are three things and only one switch.

This is a permissible mode of operation. What I mean by that is that power to the unit turns on the light and the fan and the heater. But, does that make any sense? I say no. Imagine that this is summer and now the heater is on every time the fan is on. Further to that, you are now blowing heat into the room and then sucking it out with the fan. This seems wrong in my book.

When we installed a similar unit in the ADU a few years ago, I separated the heater and the fan operation. That way you can have heat or the fan or both if it makes sense. In order to do that, you have to look at the wiring. I pulled the switches out to determine if it just wasn’t wired correctly. You probably can’t tell from the picture below but unfortunately it was not wired for separate operation.

Certain devices benefit from a more complicated wiring scheme. Take for example a ceiling fan. Before remote controls and external switches, it was very common to wire two hot wires to the fan. That way you could operate the fan and the light independently. Today you can control most ceiling fans at the device so that makes two hot wires irrelevant.

In electrical vernacular, the cable operating the device is labelled 12/2, 12/3 or 14/x. The first number is the wire diameter and the second number are the number of conductors in the cable. Without getting too deep into theory, 14 gauge wire is for 15A circuits and 12 gauge wire is for 20A circuits. This particular heater is a 1300W heater. If you do the circuit math, the total load is 15A * 120V = 1800W. The means that the heater could be on either a 15A or 20A circuit. I know it is 12 gauge wire because the cable insulation is yellow. But, what I do not see is 12/3 cable. Based on how the switch is wired, it is not possible for independent control.

To fix this situation, a cable would have to be pulled from the fan to the switch containing three conductors instead of the two conductor cable that is currently in use. OK, I don’t like that but it is doable. When I look at the other bathrooms, it gets more complicated. The pictures I am showing is the bathroom with a fan/heater combination already installed. To upgrade the other bathrooms, the overall circuit load has to be considered.

What has been standard was 15A circuits for lights and 20A circuits for outlets. Doing the math again, 1800W/ 60W = 30 permissible bulbs on one circuit. In old houses, you might even have all the lights on one circuit. In these days of LEDs, light bulbs are drawing 10-15W. That is now 120 or more permissible bulbs on one circuit. Not only is this power efficient, but it means that the lights can be on while you work on the outlets or other electrical concerns.

That is one way of wiring, the other is to have all terminations on one circuit. This means the lights and the outlets are all part of the same circuit. According to AI, a hairdryer uses about 2000W of electricity. That means one device is taking the entire circuit load on a 20A circuit. There is simply no way to add a 1300W heater and operate a hairdryer at the same time. This means running a new, dedicated circuit. Not only is the wiring from the fan to the the switch inadequate (but perfectly acceptable for just a fan only) but the power requirements are simply not there.

End Your Programming Routine: As I have stated previously, this new house is in a heating climate and the heat that is available is completely substandard. The good news is that one bathroom has the capacity to be fixed and operate properly, the other two are going to take more effort. It is my opinion that the house was miswired and even poorly designed. While not code to have heat in the bathroom, it is required in certain loans (not ours). More so than any of that, the house is simply uncomfortable. We aim to rectify that.

January 28, 2026 – Gotta Use Your Noggin

January 28, 2026 /

So, the war is on. We were at the lake house last week for our longest stint ever, three days. We were there primarily because we had the house inspection and Radon test. I was willing to come back so that the tester could pick up the Radon module after two days but my wife wanted to stay.

One of the things that the inspector asked was if there were any concerns. I said that the heating is absolutely inadequate. My wife and I actually were discussing about purchasing and replacing one of the wall heaters the previous night. One of the heaters I could put my hand on the metal grate while it was running for as long as I wanted. It was warm, but that was it. The other heater I could hold my hand about an inch from the metal grate for about two seconds before it was too hot.

I was also interested in the electrical panel to see if there was any space if we do want to add a mini split. Maybe we will resize the heaters? I don’t know for sure but I will say that it takes 24 hours before the downstairs living space is comfortable. One of the thoughts we had was to turn on the ceiling fans in reverse. That is supposed to help keep the heat from moving upstairs.

I didn’t have a ladder so I climbed up on one of the few pieces of furniture that we had, a bar stool. I didn’t have enough height to see on top of the fan base but I felt around and I could not find anything. On the list for the next trip was a ladder. Only the cheapest of ceiling fans cannot be reversed. Ask me how I know but these had remotes and different light hues and fan speeds. I found it hard to believe that there was no reverse switch.

On Saturday, we were working on a puzzle and really just killing time until the Radon test was picked up so that we could leave. This was my time to get busy with the ladder. On the first fan, I plopped the ladder down, climbed up and the switch was right in front of me; fan reversed. I was excited that in five minutes I would be back to the puzzle.

I move to the second fan and I don’t see a switch. I checked three different angles on the fan base. Then my wife wanted to see. She said, “here is the hole where it is supposed to be”. I said “what”? I still couldn’t see it. Once I got through the paradigm that the switch wasn’t there, I missed it because I was looking for something raised, not a hole She was underneath the fan and said that it looks different than the other fans. We did some bickering about why I could not see the hole and I reluctantly agreed to take the fan down and see what I could see.

Ceiling fans are job that I don’t like doing. These things are heavy and awkward. More so than this, it really is not my place to be taking down someone else’s fan to see if I could determine what is wrong. But I did it anyway. When I got the fan off the ceiling, I could definitely see the hole. I stuck the flashlight in the hole and I couldn’t see a switch anywhere. I reluctantly agreed that I would take the fan apart further to see if I could determine the problem.

Once I got the upper housing off, I could see that it was installed about 120 degrees from the switch. Hence, the switch was underneath the housing but not visible or accessible. Once I got thing put back together the way they were supposed to be, I begin to wonder how this was possible. This had to have been built incorrectly in the first place.

The escutcheon was painted to the ceiling. It is possible that this was a homeowner installation, but based on the fact that the previous owners only lived in the house three years, there has already been a major remodel and there are some other electrical oddities, I suspect that this is exactly the way it was installed. Before I am too hard on the installer, I can’t say that I would have noticed this problem either. I strongly believe this is how the fan was built as the fan cover is not a typical user installed part.

End Your Programming Routine: Because we had already been at the house for three days with the heat blasting the whole time, it is hard to say if the fans actually helped. It also makes me wonder if I should pull apart the heater that is only kind of working. I will probably do that while we are here this week. I would have never have guessed that something made incorrectly, installed an used but never noticed the problem would be the case.

March 18, 2021- Ice Storm’s Lasting Effect

March 18, 2021 /

Every day that I sit down in the basement, I get more and more motivated to get started with my office. It is usually 57 degrees when I turn on the lights in the morning. The heater that I wired in barely makes sitting for long durations bearable. Usually, by lunch time I am ready to take a hot shower just so I can warm up my feet.

A little over a week ago, we won a Little Buddy propane heater in a raffle. It came with two, one pound cylinders. I thought that it was a good temporary solution to add supplemental heat. The problem is that one pound cylinders only last for five hours according to the literature.

One of the area’s that I am not too prepared is heat and generally comfort. I always imagined that I would put on more clothes and do manual work. I have a kerosene heater that I use in the shop and I figured that was my fall back heater. Running for two hours, the shop is heated to the point that I can turn off the heater.

But, kerosene is not common in this area of the country. When we lived in South Carolina, you could buy kerosene at the gas station running about the cost of diesel. Not here, I am paying $8/gallon. And to top it off, to buy in volumes of 2.5 or 5 gallons, it is only seasonally available at the stores. From a runtime perspective, a 2.5 gallon jug will last about a week of working hours in the shop.

Propane is a much more prevalent option. The thing that I am noticing is that propane is scarce. It has to be the after effects of the ice storm. There are no one pound bottles anywhere. There are also no larger, refillable containers in stores. Stock is out online as well. I was able to buy a hose that attaches to a 20# cylinder for my heater and I do have one cylinder.

It has been on my list for years to get some more cylinders and attachments. I bought propane conversions for my camp stove so I could also use one pound cylinders. So I have always thought this was a direction to focus but it never seemed like a priority. Probably because I only had one item that used propane and maybe once a year do I use that burner. Now, I am looking to augment my heat and it cannot be found.

I guess what I am trying to say is that preparing is about evaluation, discipline and recognizing opportunity. For instance, the best time to buy gasoline to have on standby is in the winter time when the price is usually lowest. But the worst time to buy it is when the power is off and everyone is either trying to fuel their generators or running the car to stay warm. I evaluated my needs but I didn’t execute the discipline part.

The opportunity part is knowing that some fuels (and parts like wicks and adapters) are seasonally available, the time to buy is when you can. I was able to take advantage of a seasonal close-out and save $4 a jug on kerosene this week. It is unlikely that I will need too much heat until next fall but just like propane you don’t know when you will not be able to buy it, if you wanted it.

I am grateful that I have one cylinder, but I would like to have at least two. One to use and one to fill-up. Some people in my area were without power for a week, so it is possible to have a long term outage. An generally speaking, the outages are because of some weather event be it too hot or too cold or flooding or whatever, so not the best time to have no heat. An event like what happened in Texas was so catastrophic that even natural gas was frozen in the pipes. A lot of things don’t like to run real well when that get that cold either like engines, so consider that.

Finally, related to heat and cold. If you are without power in the winter, don’t let your items go bad in the refrigerator. Put them outside! I am amazed at how many people just let the fridge go bad when they could have shoveled ice from outside into a cooler or even just put stuff outside. When all you’ve got is cold you should at least be able to keep stuff cold. The freezer might be a different situation but the same thing applies.