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I currently Have one Honeywell programmable thermostat, two wire hooked up to two baseboard heaters that are 240 V. The thermostat controlling these two baseboard heaters equals 3500 W max now what I am looking at trying to do is also install a fan forced heater which I would have set for 700 W going on the same 12 gauge wire Now the thermostat that would be powering the fan forced heater would have to be pigtailed or daisy-chained chain.

The breaker is 20 double pole. The 2 baseboard heaters are 6’ 1500 each.

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    What size is the breaker - 15A or 20A or more? What size are the existing baseboard heaters? (Watt or Amp rating - no other measurements really matter. If you can't find a Watt or Amp rating on the heaters or model #s then there are ways to figure it out with a multimeter.)
    – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
    Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 3:01
  • Hello the breaker is 20 double pole the 2 baseboard heaters are 6’ 1500 each the new fan forced heater is set for 700w that I would install a 2000w max thermostat to. and they all would be on 12-2 wire so I’m trying to figure out if this 2000w stat daisy-chained will work or is there going to be too much current on it
    – Bryan
    Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 5:22

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A 20A 240V circuit can provide 4,800W of power. However for continuous use such as heaters it is derated to 3,840W (80 %).

With 2 x 1,500W = 3,000W that leaves 840W available. A 700W heater fits, with very little room to spare.

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  • That is correct but if I have 2 - wall thermastats (on the same power feed) side by side one maxed at 3500w connected to the baseboard heaters and another one pigtailed to another box with a thermostat that is rated for 2000w and then to the wall heater? - would there be 3700w current flowing to both thermostats or because they are pigtailed it would only be the wall heaters current flowing through?
    – Bryan
    Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 16:05
  • Assuming everything is wired correctly, each thermostat will only carry the power needed for the heaters it controls. In fact, if it is wired incorrectly so that thermostat A controls heaters A and heaters B then thermostat B will not function as expected. The thermostat rating is similar to the breaker rating - a maximum. But a breaker actually uses very little power itself (none for a plain breaker and milliamps for a GFCI or AFCI breaker) and a thermostat uses very little power itself (none for a bimetal thermostat, milliamps for a electronic or smart thermostat). TL;DR no problem.
    – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
    Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 16:10

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