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coljhoss · 08-26-2013, 01:45 AM

hello, I want to put wood flooring in my 40 foot bounder rv.under the floor I want to put electric floor heating pads. my question is can I hook up the floor heating thermostat to existing furnace thermostat power wires?this way I wont need a dedicated power line put in for new floor heating pads.obviously I wont be using gas furnace anymore, just want to no if I can steal furnace thermostat power wires to hook up new heating pads thermostat. any ideas?

hanko · 08-26-2013, 05:30 AM

What are the voltage requirements for the floor pads? I would assume they are 120 volts, if thats is the case then a line voltage themostat is in order. A low voltage therostat could be used (like the one on your existing furnace) via a contactor. but remember any themostat is just a switch its not a complete circuit. I would need more info on the pads them selves ( voltage and wattage) to give you a proper answer

michelb · 08-26-2013, 07:00 AM

A couple of clarifications.

First, You mention not wanting to run a dedicated power line for your new floor heating pads. I'm assuming you mean 'not running 12V decidated power liner for your new floor heating pad THERMOSTAT' - you'll still need to run new 120V lines for the actual power pads.

Second, you don't mention what year your Bounder is but I believe the older ones only had 30A electrical. If you only have 30A electrical, you might not be able to run the heat pads without sharing the circuit with something else (e.g. AC unit (which I guess would probably work unless your AC units also have heat pads)).

Third, you mention wanting to disable the LPG furnace. For resale (and even for your own use), I'd recommend not doing that. Radiant heat is nice but are you going to cover the whole motor home (e.g. bedroom, bathroom, slide floors, etc) - you might find that while the under floor heat is nice where the pads are, you still need supplemental heat in other places. The other thing to consider is that in general, mhs are not insulated like stick houses - in-floor heating might not work very well in a motor home because you lose too much heat.

gemini5362 · 08-27-2013, 11:59 PM

I agree with michel b about the LPG furnace it might heat your water storage areas so you might need it.

I do not know if they make a complete 12 volt under floor heater. If they do the current might be a tad high. I know that the one in my bathroom is 110 volts and according to just a fast google search those pull 10 to 13 amps (depending on how close the cables are together) so a 12volt system would be close to 100 amps. The thermostat in my under floor heater (from Lowes) which I installed myself is a full 110 volt thermostat. The thermostat to your furnaces is only 12 volt since the furnace igniters and fans run on 12 volts so that would not be an option.

You could probably run power from the air conditioner. ( I am thinking a selector switch for either air or under floor heater here is in order. Then take it and run the power through the underfloor heater thermostat. This would solve a couple of problems. You probably are never going to run the air conditioners and under floor heater at the same time. By having the underfloor heater with a seperate thermostat then you have not changed anything in the LPG furnace at all and you can set the thermostat on them to not come on but have them for emergency or resell.

The only problem with my advice would be if you have a heat pump air conditioner and plan on using it. Then you either have to plan on having the selector switch I mentioned and plan on not using the heat pump at all if you have the under floor heater going or run an entire new fuse panel with seperate circuit breakers for the under floor heater ( if your circuit breaker panel has spare circuit breakers you can use them provided you are not near your load on that panel)