Bathroom Electric Heater

[Edward Buker]

One complaint I have about our 2002 Marquis Jasper is that the small toilet room enclosure has absolutely no heat in it. With a tile floor it can get pretty chilly in there....seems like a crazy oversight given these units are built for the Pacific NW.

Small electric baseboards with an integral thermostat are redily available in wattages that could be tapped into an existing circuit. A 2' unit draws just 3.3 Amps. I'm hoping that someone has crossed this bridge and has some 120V wiring insight as to where one might pick up a circuit point without too much pain. There is a cabinet in the bathrooom on the outside wall that goes down to the floor. The lower area is boxed in below the cabinet doors. Anyone know what might be in there and if a 120v runs through there?

later Ed

[Ken Buck]

Our 07 Contessa was the same. With the door closed in the cold weather it must have been like old times headed to the outhouse. But, the previous owner had a baseboard heater, identical to the others in the coach, added to the Aquahot system, with the fan wired to operate at the same time as the bedroom heater. I don't recall if you have the Aquahot system in your coach, but it's another way to skin the cat.

[Edward Buker]

Plumbing instead of wiring, I had not considered that approach. I do have the Aqua Hot system. I guess you would run the tubing from the sink kick panel heater down through the storage bay and back up in the bathroom toilet room probably placing the heater in the base of the cabinet on the outside wall. Is that the path/approach they took in your coach?

later Ed

[Larry Fritz]

On our 98 Patriot 37', the bathroom stool has a cabinet angled on on the rear corner. Next to that cavity and toward the rear of the coach is the washer dryer which has a dedicated 115vac outlet.  I tapped that outlet with a romex wire and installed a gfi outlet in the corner cabinet in the bathroom and use a small portable electric heater.  (If you do use your washer/dryer, I suggest you avoid using this outlet at the same time but that depends on the amps you will be drawing with your heater. We have found that a 500 watt heater is quite adequate for this purpose)  Of course, this only works when you are plugged into camp power or the generator is running.  Works for us.

[LEAH DRAPER]

I have a heater in my 08 Contessa  and provides adequate heat when the bedroom heat is activated.  There is also a heater switch which supposedly lets one activate this heater independently.  Problem is that nothing seems to happen when when I activate the switch.  

Are there any other Contessa owners with this issue?  Any clues?

[Jerry Carr]

Our 06 Pat. came from the factory with electric base heaters in the bath and Kitchen areas, we also have the Aqua Hot system.
The system we have I find that both bath and kitchen areas are toasty in the AM, I leave them on during storage at a low setting.

I am sure you could use the same base toe heater system they have a thermostat on them.  

[Gerald Farris]

Ed,
I needed another circuit in the basement to run an air compressor, so I ran a 10 gauge wire from the output side of the transfer switch to a small breaker box (two breakers) that I installed next to the breaker box that the ground faults run from on the basement ceiling. From the new breaker (20 amp) I ran a 10 gauge wire to the base plug that I installed on the basement wall.

You can take the same approach and just run the wire through the floor to a baseboard heater. Since the new breaker runs directly from the transfer switch, it will not cause any problems with overloading the existing circuits (like I was having) and it does not run from the inverter, so no accidentally left on heater to kill the batteries.    

If you want the power to be run through the inverter so that you can use batteries for the 120V supply at times, you can run the wire from the unused inverter output taps to the new breaker box instead of from the transfer switch.

Gerald

[Ken Buck]

Plumbing instead of wiring, I had not considered that approach. I do have the Aqua Hot system. I guess you would run the tubing from the sink kick panel heater down through the storage bay and back up in the bathroom toilet room probably placing the heater in the base of the cabinet on the outside wall. Is that the path/approach they took in your coach?

later Ed

Yes, just added another heater in that loop. I haven't traced the hoses but that looks like the most direct route. The heater is in the toekick in the toilet room vanity, just like the vanity across the hall by the shower.

Leah, there is a Hi/off/lo switch for the fan installed in ours too, but it only adjusts the fan speed when the thermostat in the bedroom says it wants heat and the other heater fans are on. We typically leave it on low because it's such a small space.

Ken

[Edward Buker]

Thanks all for the ideas. I do not have anything handy behind the wall to tap into like a washer dryer outlet Like Larry did. On balance I think I would like a little baseboard electric heater given the advantage of having its own thermostat and not having to run plumbing from the existing heater lines. The Aqua Hot system would work but I'm not sure that it would be balanced given we usually have the toilet room door shut. We tend to camp plugged in at a campground most always so I like the tapping into the inverter feed, adding a small breaker box, and routing a wire up to the toilet room. I will have to see if the floor hole location works out for a heater and that a wire drop to the basement falls in a good spot. Given it is warm now this may be a project for this fall....

Thanks Ed

[LEAH DRAPER]

Thanks Ken for responding.  I hadn't paid much attention to whether it worked as it is always plenty warm in my small  toilet room.  But as I said it didn't seem to do anything even if the bedroom  furnace was running.  Maybe I better unscrew the switch and see if anything is hooked up behind it.
Leah