Small electric water heater as heat source

Conedoctor

I will be heating a 400sq foot fully insulated basement of a completed two story.



Air temp gets to about 57 in the winter with maybe one forced air ceiling vent open so I don't need to make lots of heat.

My question is can I use a 10 or maybe 30 gal 3000 watt electric water heater for this system?

Do I really needa 40 gallon gas water heater as I can do it as I have the gas but it would be way eaisier to just go electric but if it is going to cost a fortune to run or just not work it is not work it.





Thanks for any help on this.

BobbyG

electric water heater sizing

you need to get/do a heatloss of the area and get a btu load.  You may be able to use Slantfin's free program found somewhere on heatinghelp.com

Once you get the btu load, the conversion of watts to btu is approx. 3,412 btu = 1,000 watts.

on two element wtr htrs unless wired differently, only one element will come on at a time meaning it may have two 1500 watt elements but you don't ever get 3000 watts going into the water.

1.  Get the load requirements

2.  convert btu to watts

hope this helps.

Gordy

Electric cost

Is what I would look at first, and if your service can handle the load.

I'm doing about 350 square ft of floor warming with a little electric 2.5 gallon ariston water heater. It costs a fortune at .12 cents a kilowatt.



Gordy

Conedoctor

I just want heat

Thanks for the replies.



Well I have about 10,000BTU's so the 3000watt would be ok if indeed I can get both elements to come on and I don't see why it would have two but only one come one as it is 240V so that is only like 12.5 Amps right?

The water heater I want is the Bradford C-DW2-504T10FBN, this would solve all my problems but it is like $2200 so that is out.

I was thinking of a tank like this, cheap and not so big.

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