Electric Patio Heater Wiring and Installation

hi today i want to install an infrared patio heater for my tiny patio here why because it's my god-given ride to be able to use my tiny patio in the cold of the night this area used to be a part of two-car garage we tore this one down and turned it into a patio and kept one garage so that at least we have a little bit of backyard the heater will go right in the middle of the roof here and the problem is that we don't have proper wiring to handle 4000 watts so i'll have to wire it all the way from my fuse box to this spot here without setting the house on fire by the way if you care about safety this type of work should be done by licensed professionals i do it because i'm confident in my skills no but seriously don't do it if you don't know how to deal with this stuff after a bunch of research this is the heater we bought a 4 000 watts infrared electric heater you probably have seen this type this element heats up and radiates tons of infrared that is also reflected from these reflectors and is supposed to be able to heat you up now if you're thinking hey you have natural gas here why don't you buy one of those jazz heaters or why won't you just buy an electric heater and plug it in i'll make another video about my logic on why i chose this heater and put it on my meditation channel where i meditate about stuff for now let's install this thing i don't want to ruin the looks here by running wire over the wood it will go behind inside the ceiling and come to the center and drop down to the heater fortunately my joists are running this way so the wire can come here but there are some support joists this way at the center so it should be fine on this side it doesn't really matter if the wire runs over the surface it's a garage anyway it would run from the fuse panel into the wall there somewhere and that would be really the only option that didn't need tearing all the drywall down what we need now is a bunch of cables which is ac90 or armored cable which means it has this metal cover so that accidentally you can't drill a nail or screw into it and of course breakers that match my fuse panel and boxes and switches and stuff now you might think fine we will run some 120 volt lines and power our heater wrong to run a 4 000 watt heater you would need over 33 amps of current so you have to rate your system for 40 amps so some thick wires and 40 amp breaker which is fine i guess but 40 amps is a huge chunk of your entire house's current budget and why do that when you can run your system on 240 volts it's getting warm inside anyway i have told you that in north america we do have 208 or 240 volt available on 240 volts a 4 000 watt heater would draw up to 17 amps which is much easier to supply i would need to rate my system for 20 amps so a 12 gauge wire and a 20 amp breaker but i decided to rate my system for 30 amps to keep more margin and also in case in the future i need to change this heater to something more powerful should be enough though so i have 10 gauge wire and 30 amp breaker power the only thing is that where i bought this breaker they were showing non-stock so i don't know where they got this from and it has some scratches on so it might be used a little bit suspicious so let's see if i can test it and the other problem is that how can i draw over 30 amps from 240 volts to see if it pops i might have some load in my room let's see hey look what i found the shower head of doom i used in my other video it is rated for 5 400 watts of power on 110 volts or 49 amps of current in your shower which house in the world is wired for this my entire patio heater is only 4 000 watts let's see if i can use it as a load look at the heating element it's around 6 ohms on 240 volts it means 40 amps i guess my breaker will pop if i connect it but i really wanted to test to see if the breaker doesn't pop for currents less than 30 amps let me see what i can do i should say right now this is dangerous work so if you're like me or if you're not comfortable doing electrical work then don't do it let me get inside the fuse panel it is much safer to turn off the house breaker but then i won't be able to see anything and who's gonna re-tune the microwave clock as i told you before these alternating contacts are plus minus 120 volt and their difference is 240 volt and this thing connects to two of them so the output would be 240. how does it go on now like this it doesn't fit what in the world is that did somebody just nail right in the middle of my breaker box is this live no no let's just cut it and see if my breaker fits yeah and and and what the hell ah there you go now let's connect my load with some alligator clips now if i connect the other terminal the breaker should pop right away no what the hell this burnt but my breaker didn't pop was it less than 30 amps or 40 amp is not enough to pop it immediately let's choose a smaller resistance now i selected four ohms for 60 amps wish me luck i accidentally connected to two and a half ohms instead of four ohms so somewhere like 90 amps and the heating element popped open instead of the breaker should i feel safe with this i think it should be fine it must have something to do with the i square t rating of the breaker you know the more current you draw from it the faster it will trip probably my wire tripped before this guy could here is a bucket of water and so we are on the same page none of this is the part of the process so don't do it i'm just a scientist trying to understand how long it takes for the breaker to treat before my house burns down i still have a 4 ohm resistance left in here so i'll put this in the water so it doesn't burn right away and i'll measure the current too here we are let's see oh geez it started burning in the water 70 amps and it still didn't pop i have to keep it for longer and see when it pops okay this time i'm not gonna let go until the breaker pops one two three four my wire popped open i still have some resistance left ready one two my resistor burns open every time before the breaker one more time even smaller resistor one yeah it doesn't last anymore do these breakers take so long to pop open or did they sell me a broken breaker i'm pretty sure that's how it's supposed to be is it how it's supposed to be let's continue the most important part of the project is for the wire to go above the ceiling of the patio so let's start there because if i can't do that the rest of the project is doomed testing testing one two three oh what the hell oh i'm pulling insulation now well the wire has to go in here and we have a beam here and on top it's empty so i should be able to go in straight above the ceiling hopefully i can push through and above the insulation though okay let's do it why doesn't it go in it has gone in for over five feet though so this is expected now i have to open a nice and clean square right around here [Music] there you go the question is where's my wire now i screwed up by a few inches i'm on the wrong side of the joist it's okay it's garage i can fill it up later ah there you go it only took me three hours to pull the wire out now i just put a bracket on it so it doesn't go anywhere i just put the original piece of wood back in place now we just nail this piece of wood back in place and there good as new from a kilometer away you can't even notice it now we just install these legs on the joists [Music] [Applause] attach the heater without dropping it pass the wires through the here [Music] oh my god the 10 gauge wires are so tough to bend anyway i didn't need the neutral i just needed the plus minus 120 and the earth now i just put the front panel on and there we are i'm done for today actually let's directly connect the cable to the fuse panel and see if it turns on ready [Music] there and as expected it's drying close to 16 17 amps let's go check it out ah yes it's working now i need to do the rest of the wiring hi today is the next day let's do some wiring i was a little bit worried about my breaker not tripping so i contacted the manufacturer and they sent me this data what you see here is the trip curve of my family of breakers if i zoom in you see the horizontal axis is a multiple of the rated current and the vertical axis is time in seconds so for example for my 30 amp breaker 1 means 30 amp 2 means 60 amps and so on so if i come up here for 30 amp or 1 it takes a thousand seconds to infinity for the breaker to trip and for any current below 30 amp it doesn't trip at all for 2 or 60 amps it takes between 10 to 50 seconds to trip for 90 amps or 3 it takes somewhere between 4 to 15 seconds to trip so breakers at home won't trip for fast surges of current and in all my tests the heater element blew open before the breaker had a chance to trip so i guess my breaker is fine and we can continue so from the breaker the wire must go inside the wall and come out somewhere around here at a stud and from there go over the surface i'm gonna put my breaker down here because it's a little bit crowded up there so we first somehow pop one of these doors open something like this and then i suppose we have to drill into this stud without shorting anything there we are then we pass the wire through the hole geez this thing is metal it can't short the power lines we have to be careful apparently the stud is here where the wire has to come out maybe a little bit further this way damn it i should have covered here this is fine because it's going to be covered with some electric box now we fish the wire through without shorting anything there we are uh [Music] [Applause] turn it off [Music] done on this side [Music] there we are now you might ask why didn't i take the wire straight to the heater and cut it here the reason is simple i want to install a 240 volt outlet here for my future use [Music] a bunch of 10 gauge wires are so hard to bend i install the box sideways doesn't matter now we fix the wire to the wall screwing these things into the studs what do you call these things brackets [Music] or [Applause] [Music] everything on my system including the switch must be rated for 30 amps and because on 240 volt lines both of them are live wires this switch is a double pole so it disconnects both lines from the load my heater doesn't need neutral lines but i'll pass it along by tying them together anyway [Music] and done the wiring all the way to the switch and to the heater i guess now we can safely turn the breaker on okay let's test the switch is off the heater is off now i flip the switch the heater is on another success i guess time will tell if my house will burn down and make sure to check my meditation channel on more information on heaters and if this thing is any good or not have fun

Channel: ElectroBOOM

Views: 1,489,143

Rating: 4.966826 out of 5

Keywords: educational, electrical, ElectroBOOM, science, electronics, engineering, entertainment, equipment, measurement, experiment, mehdi, mehdi sadaghdar, arc, mishap, physics, Sadaghdar, test, tools, circuit, funny, learn, shock, spark, discharge, high voltage, electric heater, patio heater, infrared heater, 240 volts, Infratech, AC90 wire, three phase

Id: yGAJDhl11ZE

Length: 14min 52sec (892 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/dobsss]

Almost shat myself when he passed the BX through the panel.. LIVE

[u/g0tter]

Canadian Electrical Code violations

12-608 cable not mechanically secured to panel

12-610 (1)(a) - no anti-short bushing on armored cable

12-3034 - table 23 allows 4x #10 wires in that box, I count 8 (6 wire, 2 for the switch)

62-110 - that circuit should only be feeding the heater, not that receptacle as well

62-202 - i didn't see if the heater had an integral thermostat, if not it will need one

I'm sure i missed some too

[u/thenewmaricon20]

I am scared just watching him playing around the main breaker with everything live besides.

[u/Eskoot195382]

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