Line voltage programmable thermostat?

[Ben]

Hello!

We just moved into an apartment with electrical baseboard heating. We currently have manual thermostats - I think they are Honeywell T4398B - it says on it 120/208/240 VAC, and 20 or 22 amps (in different places). It has 4 wires going into it. I am looking for a programmable thermostat that will work on our system. Honeywell tells me their T4700 thermostat won't work, since that is rated at 16 amps. I don't know much about electrical wiring. Does anyone know how to go about finding a programmable thermostat that will work?

Thanks,

- Ben

[RBM]

Four wires on your current thermostat would indicate a 240 volt thermostat. If you add up all the heater wattages connected to the thermostat and find that it is less than 3840 watts, the 16 amp Honeywell is fine. If you can't find wattages listed on the heaters, in general electric baseboard is 250 watts per foot

[Ben]

Thanks! There is no visible writing on the baseboards, but one thermostat has 10 feet of baseboard, and one has 12. If I try out the T4700 and it doesn't work, what would happen? Nothing? Fire? etc.

Thanks,

- Ben

RBM wrote:

[RBM]

It'll work fine. The amperage draw of the 12 foot heater is 12.5 the thermostat is rated for 16. One word of caution if you do this yourself. Make sure all your connections are tight as you'll be jamming a lot of wires back into the switchbox. You don't want anything coming loose