Spotlight on Electric Heat

There are three basic types of heat for homes here in Nova Scotia: hydronic (hot water) baseboards, forced air furnaces, and electric baseboards. They are generally of equal popularity, and according to my latest inspection stats a total of 27% of homes I have personally inspected use electric baseboards as a primary heat source.  

I am pointing to two separate baseboard breakers.

​There are benefits and drawbacks to all systems but one thing I can say about electric heating is that it is simple and easy to understand. Beginning from the electric panel: the heaters typically use double pole 240-volt breakers, which means that they take advantage of both 120-volt bus bars (120+120 =240) on the main panel.

The heaters are controlled by thermostats, which, unlike a furnace, can be adjusted room by room. I take full advantage of this at home: right now (winter) the utility room is about 15-16°C versus around 21°C in the main living room and 19° in the bathroom. There are also two basic types of thermostats: programmable and manual. As you probably expect, programmable can be used to set heat to turn on and off and various times: for example, our kitchen heat turns down at 6:30pm as mealtime is usually completed and cleanup is generally done. The bathroom is set to turn up an hour before we are likely to shower and shut down to overnight mode 90 minutes later. 

Not all baseboards should use programmable thermostats. One example is our half bathroom. Given its location in the home it rarely gets cold and there is no need to have the heater operating. There is no point in spending the extra money for a programmable thermostat when it is rarely turned on. 

Electrically powered heaters are almost always baseboard heaters, which use convection to take cold air from the floor to heat it using electrical resistance, which causes it to naturally rise without fans or blowers. While very simple, there is still a fair bit of building science in properly placing them. For example, you might notice that they are almost always under windows: this is not a coincidence and helps to create positive pressure (or if you prefer a thermal break) that keeps cold air outside where it belongs in winter. 

Here is an example of a thermal break in action.

Electric heat needs no fuel tanks, is (almost) always available, is cheap to install and is long lasting. Unlike a furnace or boiler, electric heater either works or doesn't and is very easy to inspect. The downside is that while it is 100% efficient, this is very misleading as it is by far the most expensive way to heat a home unless Nova Scotia Power decides to drastically drop power rates!