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I have a difficult situation, there is a need to turn the heater permanently off without my father/home owner 'knowing' I did this. On a daily basis he tosses paper products in front of an electric baseboard heater, that is turned up to 70* and is around 160*+ heat emanating. I am terrified of a fire when I go to work or am asleep. There is two heaters in the kitchen area, that are heating the kitchen + Living Room area, where a single baseboard heater that no longer works. So if I somehow achieved shutting off the heater of concern, one remaining heater would be heating two rooms and that entire end of the house.

I have read here one might disconnect, then cap off wires. Or shutting off thermostat. And for the circuit breaker, I would "guess" there is one for at least both heaters. So these things are not a choice.

(I would like to mention am an adult. No need for unnecessary concern in to this matter further than just any ideas one might have!)

Thank you.

Astael
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    Hello, and welcome to Stack Exchange. If there are separate thermostats, then the heaters might be on separate breakers. Turning off a circuit breaker would be by far the easiest task; try that first to see if there's a dedicated breaker to the heater in question. And, I'm personally doubtful that a surface that never gets over the boiling point of water could actually ignite something. – Daniel Griscom Feb 01 '17 at 17:48
  • Is there a single thermostat that controls that heater? Disconnecting the wires in the thermostat might be an option. Don't make assumptions on the breakers: baseboard heaters can draw a lot of power and that limits the number that can be on a single circuit. – gregmac Feb 01 '17 at 17:48
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    FWIW the autoignition point of paper seems to be 424°F. I can find some news articles about baseboard heaters causing fires from electrical cords and drapes hanging on them -- and should note, these articles tend to either say "all occupants escaped safely" or "there was no (working) smoke detector". A reminder to be sure yours work, and even if you do absolutely nothing else, it would be cheap and easy to install a battery-operated smoke detector in the room near this particular heater. – gregmac Feb 01 '17 at 17:58

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