we are having a nightmare w/o newly installed (expensive $3000 not from Home Depot) electric heated bathroom flooring! the ceramic tile installer said he oms tested it before mortaring, after and again after the tile was laid. Heat DIDN'T WORK! cost $1500 to rent the machine to find the breaks/the electrictions time. found 2 breaks. repaired. still not working! the machine doesn't pin point the exact location, just general area. now they will be tearing up our whole floor! Tile guy won't stand behind his work and said he won't redo it or pay for the new heat mats we must re-purchase. said he can't afford it. make sure your installer uses the machine that is hooked up to the mat and buzzes if you cut the line rather than relying on just oms testing since it may heat up once then any slight breaks in the lines will fry and come apart. Such an easy job but done by gorillas! we thought no one could have messed up this job but they did! the heat mat rep was awesome trying to help.

Sure, Build.com and other sites sell them. Found one in about two minutes. Here But they are not going to work for a sloped ceiling. No one probably makes one that swivels like you would need for that application. Heat in a radiant form, as in a light bulb heater, travels in a straight line and you will be heating whatever surface the ceiling pitch has the bulb pointing at. You need to build out a triangular box to put the fixture in. You can drywall it so that it is not as obvious as mine was. It is not a great picture, but in the upper left side of the photo you can see the maple triangular box that gives my light fixture a level surface to hang on.

Petey may be a bit cranky here because we DO get a fair number of people here who want us to bless their code violations as some kind of special case for which an exception is justified. There are a few regulars here who sometimes do that where it makes sense and where there is reasonable precedent - just check out this thread. However, I agree with Petey that this isn't such a case. The code is clear-cut and rational on this point. It shouldn't be a significant burden to comply. In Jeremy's case it just means a little more fishing. To me this is, if nothing else, a matter of good workmanship and pride. Some of the code requirements for ranges were relaxed during the second world war when saving copper was a national priority. That's why the code allowed only 3 conductors instead of 4 for ranges. However, that rule persisted for 50 years after the war! Finally somebody noticed. ;-) I do recall seeing the NEC allowance for connecting both a cooktop and a wall oven to a 50 amp circuit, instead of having separate circuits for them, but I don't remember that the code allowed a smaller tap for each. I could be remembering wrong though, and I don't have the code here to check. But in any case I'd suspect that this ruling was originally another copper-saving measure - which is now no longer really needed. (I know, copper's scarce and pricey right now, but we have aluminum instead. ;-) I don't mean to suggest that I speak for Petey here; he can certainly speak for himself. Nor do I mean to impugn Jeremy's motives. I'm just explaining why some of us (including myself at times) now and then get annoyed with posters who come here for advice (which, I remind you, is free ;-), and then get sore and complain when they don't get the answers they had hoped for. After a while maybe some of us can get a little touchy about this, that's all.

Glad to hear you'll be insulating. That'll certainly help. I'd consider the walls bordering the furnace room and those other rooms to be uninsulated, although it still helps that they are interior walls and the presence of the furnace may help a little. I forgot to ask you about the climate in your area, but judging from your screen name, I'll guess New York. Still, there's quite a bit of difference between Long Island and, say, Syracuse or Buffalo. (I know--I went to college at Syracuse and remember feeling colder there than at my farm in Maine!) My seat-of-the-pants guestimate (and take this as precisely that, no more!) is that you can probably heat this space with a minimum of about 22' of ordinary electric baseboard (one 6' and two 8' segments, for example, with other configurations possible) for a total of at least 5,500 watts. (Make sure to check the actual amperage/wattage ratings of the heaters, though!) Unless you're in a warmer climate than my assumption, I wouldn't go any lower than that. This sizing should permit wiring on a single dedicated 30A 240V circuit with #10-3 wire, which makes for about the simplest of approaches. I recall buying an inexpensive double-pole thermostat at Home Depot a few years ago that was rated for 25A total loads, so I'd think you'll be able to find one in the $40-$60 price range, although I haven't spent much time on that aisle in a while. (I could be off on that.) As for placement, I'd make sure that at least one of the 8' segments is placed near the walkout door, and one on the other exterior wall. The third could go on the other side of the door or an adjacent wall, depending on your dimensions, anticipated traffic flow, etc. When I say "near the door", what I'm suggesting is that you wire a receptacle outlet close to the door followed by the baseboard section and then an outlet past the other end. This would maintain your outlet spacing such that there is a receptacle outlet within 6' of any point on the wall. (That's an abbreviated version of usual code requirements for minimum placement of receptacles.) As bus driver noted, you'll want to place the thermostat(s) well away from any of the heaters.