I need to install electric heat in apartments, any suggestions?

Question

There are two one bedroom apartments and one three bedroom apartment. If I put electric heat in the apartments, the tenant pays. I would like to install baseboard or some other electric heat.

Answer 1

Call a qualified professional electrician. They can verify that the wiring in the panels will handle the additional current without causing a fire.  Just adding the heaters is not too big a problem. Putting the correct size panel wiring and the required feeds and the main supply lines could be a large undertaking.  If you do not have the necessary experience to properly design and install the system, you need to call a professional.  If you try DIY, you could have a fire that kills someone and destroys your building.  It is not worth DIY.

Answer 2

Baseboard heaters would be fine, but you will need to see if you have spaces to add them in each power panel. If this is a duplex have have someone check if it can carry the extra load. Each one should be 240 volts. There would need to be at least 2 or 3 per apartment.

Answer 3

Is this the only heat you will be using?  I added some ceramic heaters to my bathrooms that cost pennies a day to operate.  Look for Econoheat online or in the back of home improvement magazines.  They are not very expensive, and you can leave them on all the time with no increase in the electric bill.  They are about 2' square, can be painted to match the room, so they disappear, and plug into the regular wall plug.  The bathroom heaters stay on all the time in winter and I have the towel bars over them so the guests think I have installed expensive heaters.  They run about $100 each or less if ordering more than 2, and you order per sq. ft. of heated area.  They are absolutely safe, and non flammable.  I have central heat, but hate to turn it on in the fall and spring just to heat the baths.  You can have multiple ones in each room.  I plan on using them in any rooms I add to my B&B.  It allows each guest to control the heat without running my bill through the roof.