Recently installed an electric garage heater. It’s hard wired to the box through a switch. 30 amp 5000w heater. I currently have a multi sensor in the garage that i’d like to run this heater off of to keep the garage at a certain temp as the heater has a thermostat but no temp.control, just a dial with hi/low settings. Looking for some suggestions on how to set up and what switch to use. Would I be good just getting one of the small “in box” on off switch and wire that to the toggle switch I have on it? I used one of these “GoControl Z-Wave Isolated Contact Fixture Module - FS20Z-1” to build my garage door opener…would this work? This is connected to a double 30 amp switch (210 volt) in the electrical box…
Everything out there with Z-wave/ZigBee built in will not handle 5000w, at least that I know of. You are going to need a power relay between your switch and your heater that can handle that type of load. Something like a RIB01P30. You’d wire something like a standard Z-Wave wall switch to the relay and then the relay would be the thing turning the heater on and off.
The GoControl FS20Z-1 is rated for 20amp @ 277v…it would burn up pretty much instantly if you tried to use that.
I think the only one I know is this one below. Saying that, give us more detail about the heater. Does it have a fan and does it run when the heat element is off?
Thanks for the info. I did find, after a bunch more searching that Navat’s solution would work, but i wasn’t really interested in doubling the cost of my project unless it was the absolute last resort. So, after talking it through with my electrician brother, the relay solution came up. I ordered https://www.amazon.com/Lux-TX9600TS-Universal-Programmable-Thermostat/dp/B0044UYVFW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1513866123&sr=8-2&keywords=Lux+TX9100U. which is a much better temp reader than the multipurpose sensor i was going to use (which goes completely wacky when it’s cold) to switch the heater on an off.
To answer the question, it is a forced air heater. Fan doesn’t run when the element is off. It has the option to toggle between 3k, 4k, and 5k watts. My goal is to just keep the garage at around 40-45 degrees so my beers don’t freeze next week when the high temp outside is supposed to be below 0…So i’ll generally run it really low…