Why This Matters to You
An outdoor area in Adelaide is comfortable for about eight months of the year. The other four it sits empty, which is a lot of money spent on paving and a pergola you look at from indoors between May and August.
This job in Golden Grove was two Lucci outdoor heaters, around 3.2 kW each, each on its own dedicated circuit. The heaters are the easy part. The circuits are the reason it works.
Why Each One Needs Its Own Circuit
A 3.2 kW heater pulls roughly 14 amps on its own. Two of them running together is around 28 amps of continuous load, which is more than a general outdoor powerpoint circuit was ever built to carry.
This is the single most common misunderstanding with outdoor heating. People assume that because the heater comes with a plug, an existing outdoor powerpoint will do. It won't. That outlet is very likely sharing a circuit with other outlets, and heating isn't an intermittent load like a drill or a radio. It runs flat out for hours, which is exactly the condition that finds the weakest connection on a circuit and heats it up.
So each heater got a dedicated circuit sized for continuous load. That also means you can run one or both without anything else on the property being affected, and if you only want to warm half the area you aren't paying to run the other heater.
Why Radiant and Not a Fan Heater
Outdoor heating only works if it's radiant. A fan heater warms the air, and outdoors the air simply leaves. You're heating the suburb.
A radiant strip heater sends heat directly onto people and surfaces the same way sunlight does, so it works regardless of whether the air around it's moving. That's why it can be effective in a semi-open pergola where a convection heater would be useless.
It also means aim and mounting height matter more than raw output. Too high and the heat spreads out and thins before it reaches anyone. Too low and it's uncomfortable to sit under and harder to keep the required clearances. Both heaters need to cover where people actually sit rather than the middle of the paving.
If You're Adding Outdoor Heating
Work out the heater size and how many before the electrical, because the answer determines the circuits and possibly the switchboard. Two 3.2 kW heaters is a meaningful addition to a house's total load, and if the board has no spare ways then that's part of the job.
It's also worth doing outdoor heating at the same time as anything else out there. An outdoor area that gains heating usually also wants lighting, fans and weatherproof outlets, and those together are well beyond what one existing outdoor circuit can carry. Doing them in one visit costs far less than adding each one separately, and it means the whole area gets designed as a whole.
For what it is worth, this is a job that pays for itself in use rather than in resale. Cold evenings around Greenwith and Golden Grove are the difference between an outdoor area you use three seasons a year and one you use all four. There's more on what we do locally on our Golden Grove electrician page.
