Electric Baseboard Heater Problems

[serialcomm]

Dear group: We recently had problems with an electric baseboard heater in the office building where I work. The heater began throwing sparks and burned through part of the heater's metal casing. The line voltage thermostat was turned off but the breaker was still on. The building and heaters are about 25 years old. I do not know the make/ model heater other than it is 240 volt. I have two questions:

1. When we had an electrician look at the heater, we asked him why the heater would have power when the thermostat was turned off and the heaters were not "heating". He said that they always have power and always produce a little heat, something like a pilot light on a gas furnace. It doesn't make sense to me why the heater has a "pilot circuit". Do any of these heaters have such a circuit? I know that the heaters in my office have no power until the thermostat calls for heat.

1. Are baseboard heaters noted for this type of failure and are the other heaters in the building in danger of a similar failure?

Thanks for your assistance on my long winded problem!

[tony]

Get another electrician one you had missing few screws

[Stormin Mormon (on backup com]

Baseboard heaters use 220 volts, typically. They have two "hot" wires. The thermostat might only break one of the hots. The entire heater may be energized, all the time.

The "pilot circuit" is nothing I've ever heard.

[Bubba]

Stormy is our resident hack. He is on "back-up" brain.........as usual. Bubba

[Nelson Ogden]

Thanks, couldn't imagine there was a pilot circuit!

[Bob Sisson]

Get another electrician, that one has no idea what he is talking about...

Bob Inspections by Bob

[<kjpro]

Pilot circuit.... LMAO

[hsimm14]

[john]

Since you have your answer, I bought a house with electric heat back in 96. The home had a 30" crawl space and I was down there looking things over when I noticed the romex conductors that fed the electric baseboard heater in the master bathroom. There was a perfect skeleton of a tiney mouse with on hand on each side of the 240VAC circuit. He fried himself. I scrambled to get out of there and retrive my camera and take his picture. I don't know if it was me or just his time but when I returned to the circuit with my camera the mouse was gone. He was a pile of bones underneath where he was hanging. Too bad. The picture would have made a great submission to the IBEW magazine.

Mice will eat insullation (and a lot of other things) off electric wire. I used to have a major problem with a McQuay air cooled A/C unit. Dam mice would eat the wiring on the temperature control circuit. We had 3 units down there and only one seemed to be a target for the mice. I ended up installing a terminal box and conduit from the temperature probe to the control box. I recently had a snake in a residential unit short out the capacitor. The incident probably just happened though the snake was fried like he'd been there for a long time.