LCARS
Member
Hello, I've been lurking for a while but first time posting.
I've got a home that I spend about half the week away from and I really need to be able to control the temperature of the house when I'm away. I'd like to be able to dial down the temperature so I'm not spending money to heat an empty house, but also not be too cold so pipes freeze etc. The only real problem is that the house is entirely heated using about 10 standalone electric wall heaters. There's no central control or thermostat, just a knob on each individual heater controlling the temperature. The knobs don't give you a very good sense of what the temperature is going to be either, it's not really a thermostat, but rather just numbers 0-9. I have a wood stove for when I'm there, which cuts the expense out of the electric heaters, but no system on earth is going to automate that
I would post a link to the type of heater I have but my new account status doesn't let me do that yet. So we're clear, we're not talking about a baseboard heater, it's recessed into the wall and no wires visible.
I've yet to take one of the units out of the wall to look at the inside, but I'm assuming there would be someplace that I could wire in a UPB or Z-Wave relay to power on/off the heater. My question is this though: all the relay modules I've seen so far are wall receptacles, not meant for behind the wall use. I don't want to do any modifications that would be unsafe, but I really don't like the idea of having the controller be on the wall. I'd rather have it be tucked away so that everything looks the same as it does now on the outside.
How have other people automated their in-wall electric heaters?
I've got a home that I spend about half the week away from and I really need to be able to control the temperature of the house when I'm away. I'd like to be able to dial down the temperature so I'm not spending money to heat an empty house, but also not be too cold so pipes freeze etc. The only real problem is that the house is entirely heated using about 10 standalone electric wall heaters. There's no central control or thermostat, just a knob on each individual heater controlling the temperature. The knobs don't give you a very good sense of what the temperature is going to be either, it's not really a thermostat, but rather just numbers 0-9. I have a wood stove for when I'm there, which cuts the expense out of the electric heaters, but no system on earth is going to automate that
I would post a link to the type of heater I have but my new account status doesn't let me do that yet. So we're clear, we're not talking about a baseboard heater, it's recessed into the wall and no wires visible.
I've yet to take one of the units out of the wall to look at the inside, but I'm assuming there would be someplace that I could wire in a UPB or Z-Wave relay to power on/off the heater. My question is this though: all the relay modules I've seen so far are wall receptacles, not meant for behind the wall use. I don't want to do any modifications that would be unsafe, but I really don't like the idea of having the controller be on the wall. I'd rather have it be tucked away so that everything looks the same as it does now on the outside.
How have other people automated their in-wall electric heaters?