Why is electric heat capacity calculated using floor area instead of space volume

heating

Doing some homework for a customer who wants to install electric baseboard heat. As I am trying to determine how many feet/watts I need. I ran across some guidelines that make sense, except they use the "X" number of watts to square foot ratios.

Why wouldn't it be "X" number of watts to Cubic foot of space? Wouldn't that be more accurate??

Best Answer

Floor area is used for two reasons:

The temperature of a room results from a balance between the rate at which heat enters and the rate at which it's lost through the walls. The rate of loss, in turn, is proportional to the surface area of the walls, floor, and ceiling, which, for a normal-shaped building, is roughly in proportion to the floor area.
Floor area is easier to measure.

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Best Answer

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