Hi all,
Thank you very much for your responses.
No disrespect taken... I appreciate all your help and your sound advice. I'll give you some more details on what I've got going so far. Hopefully that will both allow you to help me out a little more and ease any concerns. :)
I have a large supply of standard 12/2 wiring with bare ground (so max
20A, 16A being "common sense") ... which is why I asked. If required I would certainly purchase 3 conductor if I have to, but the cost of copper these days is so prohibitive, I was hoping to use what I have on hand.
Apparently the new electrical code coming into force (at least here in BC, Canada) actually allows 100% load on the wire, that said, every professional I have talked to is still abiding by the 80% rule, which just seems like good common sense to me. So that's what I'll do.
I'm just trying to plan out my circuits before I start seriously feeding wire.... so here are two examples, is something like this doable?
Circuit #1: Living Room: 2500W - room stat Bathroom #1: 500W - stat-on-heater Bathroom #2: 500W - stat-on-heater
3500W = 14.5A (240V) or 15.9A (220V)
Circuit #2: Dining Room: 1500W room stat Kitchen: 1000W room stat Bedroom: 1000W - room stat
3500W = 14.5A (240V) or 15.9A (220V)
Those loads should keep me in an acceptable range... obviously below code.
My question centers more around actual wiring. Is there any benefit in terms of load sharing / wear to series vs. parallel?
Do I use the connections on both ends of the heaters (they have identical connections on both ends for convenience) to "pass through", or simply connect them through wirenuts on the same end.
And as for the question of efficiency, we looked at all the options when replacing our oil furnace and baseboard was the only realistic and affordable option for us. (heat-pump, retrofit too expensive... gas, price too volatile + retrofit... radiant floor -- inappropriate softwood flooring) Also, considering 100% of the energy you put into an electric baseboard gets turned into heat, it's actually *more* effecient than oil, gas, or wood furnaces in terms of energy use. The actual effective heat you get out of it comes down to the efficiency of your house as a whole, which affects all heating systems equally.
Baseboard gives us both ease of installation/expansion, cheap long-term energy (BC has cheapest power in North America), virtually nil maintenance costs, and flexibility to turn off unused portions of the house.